Back to the Golden Age

A staple of Golden Age science fiction was the idea that space exploration would be conducted by private individuals -- backyard inventors, eccentric millionaires, and plucky teenagers.  Then the real Space Age arrived and we all learned that was nonsense.  Space exploration required massive bureaucratic organizations working with giant corporate contractors.  This model got humans to the Moon . . .

. . . and then stalled out.  For thirty years now the best that space agencies like NASA have been able to achieve is low-orbit manned spaceflight and unmanned probes to the rest of the Solar System.  Impressive achievements, to be sure, but somehow disappointing after the early triumphs.

Meanwhile, new players are entering the space race, and they look suspiciously familiar to any fan of classic science fiction.  We've got eccentric millionaires, backyard inventors, and now even a group of plucky college students at Cambridge, all developing their own space programs.

It may be that the "Space Age" we all know and love -- the exciting period between the end of World War II and the last Moon landing -- was an anomaly.  The pressures of Cold War geopolitics caused an early flowering which couldn't be sustained.  In this view, our space heroes weren't rocket-powered Columbuses pioneering a New Frontier in space, but rather a series of cosmic Lief Ericsons.  The Norse explorers reached the New World and even planted colonies, but couldn't sustain them.  The technology wasn't quite ready yet and the economics didn't work out.  European exploration of the Americas had to wait several centuries until it made technological and economic sense.

Now the technology is catching up, with cheap computing power, advanced materials, and smaller rocket motors.  People are finding ways to make money in space -- ways which don't rely on government funding.  If they succeed, there will be a permanent human presence in space, with all that implies.

In other words, the Space Age didn't end.  It's just beginning.

Comments

[joanne]

i asked for the achievements of the scientists of golden age not this!

[Cambias]

?

[Dave*]

Perhaps you should ask more nicely next time.