Trends: The Attempt to Stop Space Exploration

It costs a lot of money to fund space exploration, and there are always people who say that that money should be spent on social programs - subsidized housing for the poor, and so on. But money has been spent on social programs since the 1960s - with what result? There are more poor now than ever before - thanks to welfare programs that don't discourage waiting to start a family until you can actually afford it, and so on. "The poor are always with us," as I believe the Bible states somewhere.

Obviously, the money spent on space exploration shouldn't be wasted, by funding projects that will never go anywhere, but we - as in Americans, and as in the world - need to make a concerted effort to get out into space. Only a few thousand people will be able to make the trip, probably...but if the best and the brightest can go set up a colony full of atheistic capitalists on Mars, or Titan, or similar, and found a kind of Galt's Gulch, there might yet be hope for mankind, in this writer's opinion.

But let's see what Isaac Asimov thought about American's attitude toward space travel, way back in July 1939, when he was 19. (He shares the story in his essay, "How Easy To See The Future!")

...Even at the age of 19 I was aware that all those technological advances in the past that had significantly ruffled the current of human custom had been attacked by important segments of the population who, for one reason or another, found it difficult to accept change. It occurred to me, then, that this would surely be true of the development of spaceflight as well. My story "Trends" therefore, dealt primarily with opposition to space flight.

It was, as far as I know, the first description of ideological opposition to mankind's advance into space. Until then, all those who had looked forward to the new development had either ignored the reaction of humanity, or had assumed it would be favorable. When there did indeed arise ideological opposition, in the late 1960s, I found myself accepting credit as a seer, when I had merely foreseen the inevitable.

Below is an article, an opinion piece from the New York Times, reprinted in a local paper, first pubished on January 31, 1973, the dilemma of the expense of health care. Note that the example the writer offers - of an expensive program that can be given up - is space exploration.

The article will appear small here at this blog, but click on it and do a save as, and the large version will appear that you can read.

Isaac Asimov on Science Fiction

Isaac Asimov, perhaps the most famous science fiction writer of all time thanks to the popularity of his Foundation and Empire books, was also a prolific science writer. Indeed, his goal was to become the best science popularizer of all time.

A few of his essays dealt with science fiction, and many of these were collected into an anthology called Asimov on Science Fiction, published way back in 1983.

In one of them, he gives a brief summary of man's dreams of space travel, as related by authors from the dawn of recorded time:

1st century AD - Lucian of Samosata tells of a journey to the Moon, using a flock of birds
1657 - Cyrano de Bergerac writes a story in which he suggests rockets as a way to reach the moon.
1752 - Micromégas is a short story written by the French philosopher and satirist Voltaire. The tale recounts the visit to Earth of a being from a planet circling the star Sirius and his companion from the planet Saturn. (They observe Earth and laugh at its follies)
1818 - The first novel that might be defined as science fiction is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818)
1863 - Jules Verne becomes the first writer to specialize in what will become known as science fiction, with his 1863 publication of Five Weeks in a Balloon
1895 - HG Wells' The Time Machine, the very first true time travel story, is published
1898 - HG Wells' The War of the Worlds, the first interplanetary warfare story, is published
1902 - Frenchman Georges Melies films The Man in the Moon
1920 - RUR, a play involving androids supplanting man, was first performed
1926 - Hugo Gernsback publishes Amazing Stories, the first magazine to be drevoted exclusivey to science fiction.
1929 - Frau im Mond, by Fritz Lang, is one of the first "serious" science fiction movies, featuring a relatively accurate - based on science known then - journey to the moon, such as the use of a multi-stage rocket.

And here's an important paragraph that we all need to grasp:

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be--and naturally this means that there must be an accurate perception of the world as it will be. This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman, must take on a science fictional way of thinking, whether he likes it or not, or even whether he knows it or not. Only so can the deadly problems of today be solved.

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today--but the core of science fiction, its essence, the concept about which it revolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

Another use of science fiction?

It stimulates curiosity and the desire to know.