To some, space exploration seems like a natural manifestation of our innate desire to find new places, but space flights have always been dependent on transient geopolitical goals. Erica Vaules analyzes our strong ties to space through the lens of history and science fiction.
“Space exploration is just in the human heart,” says the astronaut (Sunita Williams). "We want to explore."
But for Williams, who flew two flights to the International Space Station and spent 11 months there, "that's just one emotional component." “We’re learning a lot of amazing things,” she says. Williams sees the ISS as a testing ground where humanity learns about the space environment and uses this knowledge to eventually fly to other planets in the solar system.
If US President Barack Obama insists on his own, people will be on Mars by the 2030s. Dr. Robert Zubrin, an American aerospace engineer and president of the US Martian Society, believes that humanity is in dire need of these kinds of challenges. “They are like people to civilizations - we evolve when we challenge ourselves and waste away when we don’t,” he says. "The human mission to Mars will be an extremely productive challenge for all countries that take part in it."
“The program will demonstrate to all young people that if they develop their intelligence, they will have a great adventure. Study your area of science and you can become an explorer of new worlds, a settler on new planets."
“This means that there will be places where people in the future will be able to fly endlessly, where the rules have not yet been written. This is a key moment for a dynamic civilization."
Bill Barry is a former US Air Force tanker pilot. In 2001, he joined NASA with a dissertation on Soviet rocket design and space policy in the 1950s and 1960s. He is now NASA's chief historian.
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Barry is handed and kicking for space exploration, however, he is skeptical of the unusual idea that without them civilizations will weaken and wither. “I don’t think it’s so, that if you don’t fly into space, the culture will definitely move backwards. I suspect there have been many thriving cultures that have remained in place,”he says. "The Chinese had a large fleet in the 13th century, but they abandoned it all, built a wall and retreated inward."
According to Barry, we need to think about why countries are investing in space exploration. He cites three main reasons: national security, economic competition, and pride and prestige. He calls the latter "an important factor."
“We've all seen this in the last 50-60 years of work in space,” says the historian.
In addition, Barry notes, there are a whole bunch of personal reasons why a person dares to fly into space: innate curiosity, the desire to explore, or the simple fact that people want to find new opportunities, sometimes in unfamiliar places such as outer space. …
Those who are less captivated by space say that space research is beyond humanity's means - space is not only huge, but also expensive.
There is also understandable cynicism here. Some argue that transient, politically motivated targets in space have a long-term detrimental effect on attempts to get humans out of Earth orbit.
It is well known that the President's decision to set the United States a goal to fly to the moon was completely conditioned by the events of the Cold War.
"In the early 1960s, the world was undergoing a process of decolonization, and many countries asked themselves the question:" What kind of state system should we establish in our new country, with our newfound freedoms? " says Barry. “Many looked at the Soviet system and said:“Yeah, this country was destroyed during the Second World War, and nevertheless, a little over a dozen years later, it had already launched the first satellite. Surely they know something."
Less well known, however, is that Kennedy's 1961 decision had two unusual consequences: one short-term and one long-term. As for the short-term consequences, Kennedy's announcement of the lunar race forced the United States and the USSR to start their rocket programs practically from scratch, since the larger Soviet ships, which successfully launched a satellite into orbit in 1957, were not suitable for safe manned flights into space.
A more long-term consequence was that the colossal funds that the USSR and the United States allocated to space were intended to deliver a person to the moon quickly, but not for long, although theorists of space research from the beginning of the 20th century spoke precisely about the colonization of this planet.
“The long-term plan was as follows: first you need to put a person into low-earth orbit, then build a space station, gain a foothold there, increase opportunities, and then in time it will be possible to fly to the moon, see what is there and how, and only after that go to Mars Says Barry.
“But when President Kennedy came in 1961 and decided that we would change our benchmarks and goals, that we would just try to overtake the Soviets in the moon race by dropping a man there, everything turned upside down. The long-term plans for space exploration were confused, and to a certain extent, they were thrown back."
After the historic moon landing on July 20, 1969, the American government's financial rivers for NASA dried up, turning into a weak trickle.
Deep space travel ideas
Although people have been able to fly into space only since the late 1960s (as in the text - approx. Transl.), We began to imagine life outside the Earth a very, very long time ago.
Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Lecturer of English at Monash University Andrew Milner is a science fiction expert. While dreams of space found their way into some of the earliest forms of literature, he said, there is one work that most scientists unanimously acknowledge as the first piece of science fiction. This is "True History" (Alethes historia) by Lucian of Samosata.
“This is an ancient Greek work from the second century BC, and it most definitely tells the story of a trip to the moon,” says Milner.
However, he says that modern science fiction did not appear until the 19th century, and began with writers such as the Frenchman and Englishman H. G. Wells. Like the ancient writers, they came up with travel to the moon, but this time they used "half-plausible mechanisms" in these travels.
By the beginning of the 20th century, Russian writers had also mastered a new unusual genre.
“In the early years of the Soviet Union, Russian science fiction flourished. Often it was accompanied by enthusiasm for the new communist regime, or the exact opposite of its denial. But the idea of space travel was very serious there,”says Milner.
For example, Alexei Tolstoy wrote the novel Aelita in 1923, in which he describes how Russian cosmonauts flew to Mars, where they supported the Martian revolution aimed at overthrowing the ruling class of the Red Planet. “These writers reacted to circumstances and experimented,” explains Professor Milner.
During the reign of Joseph Stalin, science fiction began to decline, but after his death in 1953, it began to revive. Writing in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, the Strugatsky brothers Arkady and Boris, who became the most famous Soviet science fiction writers, were the authors of many stories about space exploration, and in some works they described flights to Jupiter and beyond.
“These Russian books give a very positive view of the possibilities of space flight,” says Milner. They had a significant impact on the cosmonauts who participated in the Soviet space program.
In the West, science fiction has also influenced space exploration. In the 1960s, when President Kennedy launched the moon race, there was incredible positive television coverage of space exploration, as exemplified by Star Trek. As Milner points out, Star Trek and the space program not only overlapped in time, but also formed a symbiotic relationship.
NASA's first space shuttle is called Enteprirse, after the spacecraft from Star Trek. On the other hand, the fourth film was about the astronauts who died aboard the Challenger - so the connection between real space flights and their screening on TV is very strong.
“And of course, the portrayal of the future in this film is extremely optimistic and uplifting: we meet all these aliens and begin to cooperate with them within the framework of the United Federation of Planets; the Earth itself has solved all its problems, and the replicators can do whatever you want."
While many science fiction writers undoubtedly supported space exploration in their work, other writers, such as James Ballard, strongly opposed them. studies, other writers such as James Ballard have opposed them sharply.
Cinematic Direction The British New Wave has purposefully advocated the creation of a version of science fiction that is not interested in space travel. Ballard, for example, encouraged unusual travels to the interior rather than the exterior.
He wrote the famous collection of stories "Memories of the Space Age", where he says that people have already been on the Moon and Mars, and found nothing there. “So we canceled the space program because it was a waste of money,” says Professor Milner with a laugh.
One of Ballard's stories tells of how NASA employees fall ill with a time lag. Their consciousness is inhibited and eventually stops altogether. As a result of this disease, they fall into a daze, and their time does not move.
Many proponents of flight argue that space exploration is an important backup plan should the Earth ever become uninhabitable. Others believe that before settling on other worlds, we need to learn how to better take care of our own planet.
“We can't fly into space unless we solve our earthly problems first,” says Annalee Newitz, editor-in-chief of science fiction website Gizmodo, who wrote Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans will Survive a Mass Extinction. adapt and remember: how a person can survive in the event of a mass extinction).
"The challenges of climate change, food security and overpopulation that we face now, if resolved, will make space travel easier for us."
“And the question here is not to improve the quality of rocket fuel, to make more modern engines or ships for space flights. When we fly into outer space, we take the ecosystem with us, because humans cannot survive without all the plants and animals we eat that help us cleanse the atmosphere. So if we cannot rationally, taking into account future needs, live on our planet, we simply will not have a base to fly to other worlds."
Perhaps, if we learn to live on our home planet Earth in this way, taking into account future needs, we will be able to solve the difficult problems associated with the development of a sustainable and long-term space program.
Erica Vowles
