So, we’re going back to the Moon. By we, I mean humanity. The last time we were there was way back in 1972. Richard Nixon was President, the VW Beetle was the best selling motor car, and Steve Jobs just graduated from High School.
But with any luck, thanks to NASA’s proposed ‘Orion’ manned spacecraft, we’ll be back no later than 2020 (that’s 48 years later, if you hadn’t already figured it out).
That is, in itself, a tragedy. It’s hard not to be astonished by the pace of change in practically every field of science and engineering since 1972. Personal computers as we know them today essentially didn’t exist, and even calculators were big, expensive machines that sat on desks rather than fitted into pockets. Biologists were only just figuring out how to perform DNA electrophoresis, the bit of the process that separates out DNA fragments by size. Identifying individual genes was still way off in the theory, and it would be well over a decade before the Human Genome Project could even be contemplated, let along begun. By 1972, the progenitor of the Internet, the ARPANET network connected a couple of dozen different university computer labs, but it would be another twenty years before the Internet would become truly accessible to ordinary people in their homes and offices.
But space exploration has always stood apart from these massive acheivements. Of course, in the big picture, we’ve done some amazing things. For one thing, space has become internationalised, and that doesn’t just mean the International Space Station. Instead of the Cold War rivalry of the US and USSR, the list of countries that have embarked on some degree of space exploration is surprisingly long. Besides the “big boys” in the satellite launch game, the US, Russia, the European Union, and China lots of other countries have developed significant space programmes of their own, including Brazil, Canada, Japan, Sweden, and the Ukraine. Space has also become more commonplace, with satellites being involved in everything from prospecting for oil through to televising sports events around the world.
But for anyone brought up on Star Trek, this is small potatoes. The only thing that matters is human exploration. It’s hard for me to imagine that 100 years from now humanity will still be stuck on this tiny island planet in the vast ocean of space. But for anyone who watched Man land on the Moon back in 1972, the idea that no-one would go back there for another 48 years would have seemed just as outrageous. What have we been doing all this time?
The scientist part of me can see the facts for what they are. The Apollo programme played fast and loose with things like safety, and America just isn’t ready to take those risks anymore. Apollo XIII almost came off the rails, and the two Space Shuttles disasters wiped out any lingering sense of ‘fortune favours the brave’. So whether or not astronauts today have “the Right Stuff”, their political masters know they have to bring them home. And that’s difficult to guarantee, because space travel is just plain risky.
Space exploration is more easily done with machines, and robotic probes can simply go further and do more for much less money than human explorers. They are, in every measureable sense, better. The scientists back home don’t care how the data is collected, so long as they get some data. Visits to Venus, Jupiter, and almost all the other planets have been accomplished, and the amount they’ve told us is simply staggering. There’s very little we know about the Moon that didn’t come from robotic explorers, and the Russians were even able to have their robots bring back samples of lunar soil for scientists to work on.
The end result is our manned space programme has pottered about in our cosmic backyard. Just to make this clear: the International Space Station has a near-Earth orbit, about 220 miles up. The trip to the Moon and back is over 500,000 miles. While we might not have lost anything material, in terms of inspiration, it’s very difficult to get excited about the ISS. Even space scientists don’t care much about the ISS, often considering it more an exercise in politics than science. Heck, the ISS doesn’t even look good.
But anyway, we’re going back to the Moon in Orion. Physically, it looks a lot like old Apollo system, though NASA are quick to point out that it’s bigger and better. It carries 4 astronauts instead of 3, and they’ll have more space in the capsule.
Even so, I feel short-changed. After 48 years, I’d expect more than an upgrade from Apollo 1.0 to Apollo 1.1. I don’t see anything radical, and I don’t see anything inspirational. I know I can’t expect X-Wings or Starfuries just yet, but I’d like something in 2020 that doesn’t look like it was designed in 1965. Space exploration is one of those things that unites humanity, and surely, going off to the stars is what we do next.
I wish the Orion project every success, but I hope I’m not sure I’ll still be around 48 years later to see what comes afterwards!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5277736.stm
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