The End of the Era ...

[LizzieMaine]

That's generally where it ends up before the night is over.

 

[Matt Crunk]

I hear that a private corporation intends to conduct a moon mission within the next few years.

 

[ChiTownScion]

That's generally where it ends up before the night is over.

The one day of the year I refuse to admit being of Irish descent. If "everyone is Irish on St. Paddy's Day," where the hell's the honor in it?

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Kiss me, I'm Irish!"
"Oh really?"
"No, O'Reilly!"

(That's when the mace gets sprayed.)

 

[MikeKardec]

I hear that a private corporation intends to conduct a moon mission within the next few years.

We can always hope. It might be a bit of a "Build it and they will come" attempt. The One Way Mars Trip is interesting too. Not that it sounds like a particularly good idea but that the number of interested people proves that we haven't yet turned into a world of of wussies afraid of the slightest discomfort.

It is notable that the people who went west in wagon trains from around the 1830s to about the time of the Civil War were mostly quite wealthy. Upper Middle Class. Outfitting for such an expedition cost the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars in today's money and at a time (and under circumstances) when loans were unavailable. Wagon train companies would not allow an under provisioned or equipped member to join as they would be a liability to all.

Few of these people made it to Oregon or California unscathed by disease or injury, Indian attack or natural disaster. All knew the risks. People would die before arriving in their new home and all would be uncertain for some time after their arrival. They were comfortable in their lives yet they risked all for something more or better. However, they daily risked deadly disease and accident at HOME in those days. Life, even an "easy" life, was full of hardship we can barely imagine. People died at home. Life had a different tone to it. People who look squarely at mortality tend to be willing to take more chances not less.

One wonders if tomorrow a New Willamette Valley (the place in Oregon that many settlers headed) or a New California Gold Rush was discovered, who would go? If the circumstances were the same, it was a hard journey but it was possible and there was a feeling that conditions would be a lot like the America you know and love but you would have to build it from the ground up, what sort of people would head there?

In the next 300 years space flight will not give us that. It may never. The days of people wandering off into the wilderness and making a new life for themselves without support from governments or corporations may have died with our great grand parents ... unless Siberia suddenly gets a new government. But it is interesting to think about.

 

[2jakes]

The one day of the year I refuse to admit being of Irish descent. If "everyone is Irish on St. Paddy's Day," where the hell's the honor in it?

With just a tad of “Irish” from grandma’s side, I usually limit it to
a bowl of Lucky Charms.

 

[Dirk Wainscotting]

You think so? There was a time when you could cross the pond in three hours and without an on board computer.
View attachment 55548

A person can poo poo it all from a distance because it really IS all about brute force but when you think about the size of a Saturn V and the relatively short time it is under thrust it's amazing that they could build systems and materials that could withstand the sort of chaos inflicted on it without the whole pile tipping out of balance and tearing itself apart (as many test rockets did). Imagine what happens when you simply throw a balancing weight from an automobile wheel. The precision that went into some of the simplest components that I saw was amazing.

This is both true and somewhat false. It's true that the period post-war up to the late 1960s was a technological leap - much of it generated from necessity during the war and later one-upmanship of the cold war - but it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that it has all disappeared into a vortex.
It's not as if the ability to build Concorde has vanished, or everyone has forgotten how to construct the technology that was used in the space programmes. The technology is well-known. Those scientists and engineers in the 60s would have loved the technology we have now, in fact many of them are its begetters.

The only real components missing (necessity being the mother of invention) are 1) the concept of a great struggle against an enemy, and 2) bottomless pits of money being funnelled into such projects. We live in an age of austerity, cost-cutting, constant short-term economising that doesn't want to properly invest in either people or futures and certainly not in a cohesive way, not as a nation or internationally.

It could be argued that we are looking for the struggle in the wrong places. Instead of looking for evil empires to compete with we could pour effort into technological solutions for energy, water preservation, climate, in fact so many things on this huge earth. Unfortunately there is a crank movement putting a stick in the wheel at every turn.

It's also not true to say that interest in space exploration has ceased; it has only shifted focus and the tools and methods have altered. It just doesn't look as dramatic as the Apollo programme and isn't quite as intertwined with public zeitgeist.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ Even during the '60s, support for the space program wasn't universal in this country. My parents were supporters, but not passionate. I remember other family members and friends (I was a kid at the time) who were incredibly enthusiastic and others who thought it was "a big waste of money." It seems to me, anecdotally and since it got funded in a democracy, there was majority public support, but still plenty of grumbling about the cost, necessity, "if it really did anything...."

That's democracy even in a Republic that, by structure, tries to address some of the challenges of a pure democracy. Today's initiatives you speak of will - like the space program - have to convince a large enough percentage of the population to support them or they won't get funded to the degree supporters wish. You call them a "crank movement," the people in those movement believe they are expressing their well-thought-out opinions.

It's all about convincing enough people, to get the votes to elect the politicians who will enact the laws, rules, programs, etc. We'd have a massive government space program today if people would elect politicians who supported it - or, looked at the other way, politicians would be tripping over themselves to propose space programs if it was a winner at the ballet box, i.e., it got them elected and reelected.

 

[Trenchfriend]

I think, the moon-landing is one of the oldest conspiracy-theories, before the age of DSL. Or the Dollar-note?

 

[LizzieMaine]

It could be argued that we are looking for the struggle in the wrong places. Instead of looking for evil empires to compete with we could pour effort into technological solutions for energy, water preservation, climate, in fact so many things on this huge earth. Unfortunately there is a crank movement putting a stick in the wheel at every turn.

If all the money that had been flushed down the great gaping toilet of the military-industrial complex on both sides during the Cold War had been put toward real human needs instead of adolescent missile-wagging, the world today would be a far better place. But there's no way that would have been allowed to happen.

 

[ChiTownScion]

If all the money that had been flushed down the great gaping toilet of the military-industrial complex on both sides during the Cold War had been put toward real human needs instead of adolescent missile-wagging, the world today would be a far better place. But there's no way that would have been allowed to happen.

^^^ And never lose sight of the fact that it was a Republican and former 5 star general who warned us of that military industrial complex.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Or as 100 Percent Freedom Loving American Junior Mint tycoon and Supreme Tinfoil Hatter of the 1950s Robert Welch called him, "a dedicated conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy."

 

[ChiTownScion]

Or as 100 Percent Freedom Loving American Junior Mint tycoon and Supreme Tinfoil Hatter of the 1950s Robert Welch called him, "a dedicated conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy."

He of such patriotic virtue who avoided military duty in two world wars, of course.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

And people think the Teabagger/Birther/ 9/11 Truther movements are something unprecedented.

 

[Zombie_61]

...It's not as if the ability to build Concorde has vanished, or everyone has forgotten how to construct the technology that was used in the space programmes. The technology is well-known...

I'm not so sure about that. The last company I worked for processed parts for the Space Shuttle program, primarily the steel casings for the solid rocket boosters that launched every shuttle mission. One of the representatives from Thiokol Inc. (as they were known at the time) told me that one of the reasons "we" haven't gone back to the moon was that the latest generation of engineers have reviewed the blueprints, specifications, and any other documentation related to the building of the Lunar Modules, and they can't figure out how they worked.

 

[emigran]

Great thread... It's often so difficult for me to know what is actually going on in today's world...even though my smart phone has more technology than the first space craft...so what Era are we in now...???

 

[ChrisB]

The loss of technical ability is real, and very much apparent in my field, high power RF. This field reached its zenith in the post war years. I was fortunate that my career overlapped with those of the engineers who started out at that time. While I learned a lot from them, it was only a fraction of their accumulated knowledge. There is little interest in RF among today's engineers, and much will be lost when my colleagues and I retire in the coming years.

As for the space program, It never went away, it just changed direction. Space probes sending back photos from the outer planets are just as awe inspiring as men walking on the moon.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I'm not so sure about that. The last company I worked for processed parts for the Space Shuttle program, primarily the steel casings for the solid rocket boosters that launched every shuttle mission. One of the representatives from Thiokol Inc. (as they were known at the time) told me that one of the reasons "we" haven't gone back to the moon was that the latest generation of engineers have reviewed the blueprints, specifications, and any other documentation related to the building of the Lunar Modules, and they can't figure out how they worked.

It's not that "today's engineers" somehow don't have the smarts to figure out what the engineer of yesterday knew. Technologies have changed. Equipment manufacturers have changed. Making complex machinery such as a lunar landing module work is much more complex than understanding a blueprint. And the Apollo missions didn't spring up overnight. It took years and years of research and testing and mountains of funding to ramp up the manufacturing. But it's not like it couldn't be done again with a similar effort.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's sort of what Ford ran into a few years back when they decided to build a few Model T's to celebrate the centennial of the model. They had plenty of blueprints and specifications but all of the tooling and the presses used to build the components and substructures had been scrapped decades ago. They had to find alternative methods of producing or otherwise acquiring what used to be routine, common parts, and some of it had to be machined by hand one piece at a time.

It would be the same with any technology of the Era. If you wanted to manufacture a 1937 radio or a 1953 television set today, you'd have no problem finding the plans or people who could understand the plans. But you'd have to figure out a way to produce the many highly-specialized components, especially the coils and tuning systems, that went into the finished product. And some of those components -- like cathode-ray tubes -- couldn't be manufactured because the infrastructure for manufacturing them no longer exists anywhere in the world.

 

[Dirk Wainscotting]

And some of those components -- like cathode-ray tubes -- couldn't be manufactured because the infrastructure for manufacturing them no longer exists anywhere in the world.

Cathode ray tubes are still manufactured and designed. Here's one specialised company.