Growing up during the Cold War did have its advantages as well as its disadvantages. Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 'Two Tribes' was a massive plus but then we had Nena and her '99 Red Balloons' which almost had you praying for a Soviet missile to land on your roof.Apart from the drawback of death to everyone and everything and having to watch 'When The Wind Blows' in school so we knew when to turn the sofa upside down and crawl into it, the biggest plus was the space race.
The competition between the Soviets in the red corner and the Americans in the red, white and blue one, pushed them both onwards and upwards to explore above the clouds.
The brave actions of Yuri Gagarin, Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Laika the dog took us to the moon where we drove around in a buggy, stuck a flag in the ground and then just forgot all about it which is a real shame because we should have done so much more once we got there so we had a launch pad for further space exploration.
Now one half of the Cold War opponents have mothballed their space programme but the Russians have made two exciting announcements this week which may get us back on track.
Firstly the Russian Federal Space Agency are sending two lunar rovers and several landing stations aimed at scoping out an eventual permanent manned base up there on the moon.
Secondly, the Russians are developing a nuclear powered engine for long haul flights to Mars and to establish a network of bases on its surface.
Ideally NASA and the RFSA will get their head nerds together and do it for mankind but if not, i wouldn't mind another Cold War Space Race to make sure the plans don't get kicked into the long grass because going out into space and colonizing other planets is probably the only solution to avoid the problems of pollution, over-crowding, global warming and 99 Red Balloons still being on a radio play list here on planet Earth.
2 comments:
lucy, the public is highly uneducated on man goingo into space. the usa focused all of its energy on getting to the moon and in the process negelected many other aspects needed to take the next step (mars). it was like building a house and putting all of your effort into the kitchen and doing little or no work on the other parts. in 1970 you would have a year 2000 kitchen but the rest of the house was still 1960...
what the usa has to do the next 20 years to go to mars is build the rest of the house.
much of what needs to be done the next 10 years is not sexy. many of the experiments that were conducted in the shuttles and the ISS that past decade were in prep for mars. many more experiments are needed. they do not make good headlines...
one of the experiments my boss conducted on a shuttle in the 1990's was to test how the inner ear works in zero gravity.
q
I don't know what is happening with my comments here, that's a few times lately that i have somehow lost comments by pushing that publish button at the bottom.
That is a good analogy q and now we are having to catch up with what you rightly call the unsexy experiments. Maybe the secret is to capture the imagination of the public again with a few 'spectaculars' while we catch up. I also wish that the USA, Russia, China, India and everyone else with a space programme would get together rather than do it individually but that is just me being impatient.
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