Misfired

[bloodyrosemccoy]

International Town Criers Day
Birthday - President Gerald Ford (38th President)
Bastille Day (France)

 

Apparently, Buzz Aldrin is understandably frustrated at the state of space exploration these days—and the public’s lack of interest. But Buzz is blaming science fiction for the apathy toward actual space travel, which, if you ask me, is just getting it backwards.

 

And I’m not the only one. Here’s a nice rebuttal by author J. Steven York on the issue. And other-science-fiction-author Jerry Oltion pointed out that it may have more to do with “lack of funding than unrealistic expectations”—most people don’t expect that we’re going to be beaming around anytime soon. But even the realistic steps we can take aren’t going to happen if we have no money.  “I share Buzz’s frustration with the slow pace of space exploration, but I lay the blame on short-sighted leadership, not far-sighted dreamers.”

 

And I want to add two things.  First, going with Jerry’s last statement, I’d say that science fiction, if anything, inspires people.  Sure, it goes above and beyond what we can do. But look how very quickly we’ve caught up to science fiction elements from older stories.  The fiction gives us a chance to play with these ideas and see how they might actually work, and it also makes suggestions—not everything in science fiction is impossible to do now.  We might not be able to beam people now, but since Star Trek came out over four decades ago, we've tried to catch up to things we can catch up to—the example people always use is cell phones, and with good reason.
 

And secondly, I want to say that science fiction also tells a helluva story.  It inspires real work, but it also just fires people’s imaginations the same way other literature does*—in abstract, immeasurable, and often life-changing ways. Sometimes that's all it's for.

 

Come on, Buzz. Look at your namesake.  “To infinity and beyond” is not realistic at the moment, but dammit we’re getting there incrementally—and the science fiction is only going to make us more interested in what we'll find.

 

 

*It’s always amazing to me that people still think science fiction ≠ “real” literature. Whatever “real” means.

Comments

[dreams-cametrue.livejournal.com]

Two things happened to cut the legs from under the space program in the '70's. First, the nation had focused so intently on landing on the moon (and we made it look easy!) that once we had reached that milestone we had no other goals before us to focus on. Second, the economic malaise of the '70's made space exploration a tempting target for politicians looking to convert funding from military and technology budgets into domestic social project budgets.

The space shuttle program was what sprung from the ashes of the Apollo program, NASA administrators looked at the lessons learned from the moon program and decided that a reusable vehicle that was equipped for more versatile scientific and exploratory missions was where the space program needed to go. It's been 27 years since the first shuttle flight, though, and NASA again needs to refocus on another grand mission. Manned interplanetary exploration will be fabulously expensive but if we partner with two or three other nations to share the costs and benefits it's doable. Unmanned expeditions just don't give us the knowledge nor capture the imagination of the public like manned missions, that needs to be in the future of our space program.

I still remember where I was and what I was thinking when I saw Apollo 11 land on the moon in 1969, practically 39 years to the day ago.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

For nations to work together like that, though, reaching the objective has to become more important to those nations than grabbing all the credit, whicch requires another kind of progress.

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

well? What were you thinking?

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

Dude, it wasn't a coincidence that the golden age of sci-fi was also the golden age of space exploration! I've been catching up on Spider Robinson's podcasts (which I highly recommend, btw), and he speaks glowingly of the relationship between science and science fiction. He does speak somewhat disparagingly, however, of "the generation who grew up reading Harry Potter instead of Robert Heinlein." *grins*