Humans In Space 50 Years Today!!!!

[exo_doc]

Today marks 50 years of human spaceflight with Yuri Gagarins flight!

50 Years!

What happened to the moon bases???
What about those big rotating wheel-shaped space stations?
Why aren't we on Mars yet? Much less the moons of Jupiter or Saturn?
Where's my jet-pack? And my personal robot??

The science fiction vision was so much cooler than the reality of it.
Shrinking budgets.
Disinterested citizens.
Retirement of the shuttles that never reached even a small percentage of the dreams that spawned their creation.

Space just never seemed so far away as it does now.

*sigh*....I still have my telescopes.

 

[Ezechiel]

Today marks 50 years of human spaceflight with Yuri Gagarins flight!

50 Years!

What happened to the moon bases???
What about those big rotating wheel-shaped space stations?
Why aren't we on Mars yet? Much less the moons of Jupiter or Saturn?
Where's my jet-pack? And my personal robot??

The science fiction vision was so much cooler than the reality of it.
Shrinking budgets.
Disinterested citizens.
Retirement of the shuttles that never reached even a small percentage of the dreams that spawned their creation.

Space just never seemed so far away as it does now.

*sigh*....I still have my telescopes.

Key to these questions is.... drum roll..... energy !!

This is year 2011 and we`re still using combustion engines and fossil fuels lol.

Why ? it works and we're lazy. Don't forget that the people living in the city of London were dying like flies under coal-driven economies until governments moved for change.

All your cool stuff requires energy levels way beyond our current capacity. New propulsion technologies, possibly fusion reaction driven are needed to reduce the cost per pound to eject mass from this planet .... Actually we're not that far away, maybe 10 to 15 years.

The 1952 London smog episode (also known as the Great Smog or Great Smoke) stands out as one of the worst man-made air pollution disasters the world had ever known given the sheer number of people who died as a result. Even though London was well known for its frequent smog, no one had ever seen a smog of such magnitude. For the week ending 13th December 1952, there was approximately 4,000 excess deaths (i.e. the number of deaths exceeding those during the same time period the previous year when there was minimal smog) and an additional 8,000 deaths occurred over the next two and a half months.

 

[RJHark00]

It's so amazing to think about human beings actually going into space and landing on the moon and all of the other great things that the world's space programs produced. How exciting it must have been to be a kid and see all of these things going on and dream about a future that seemed limitless. It makes me worry about today's world: how did we go from that to obsessing about "Jersey Shore" or "Dancing with the Stars" while fixating on accumulating more and more crap?

 

[kukalakana]

Google changed its logo on that day as it does for a lot of fully awesome anniversaries.

Fifty years: What a landmark in our history this has been!

In response to the question regarding jet-packs, however... Check out some of the idiots who end up with driver's licences these days. Do you really want to see these people -- uh -- flying?
(Word to the wise. "Flying" is not the same as "taking a dive into the Grand Canyon like Thelma and Louise.")

 

[TClaeys]

I think the key to it is ,.... MONEY!!

As good as people seem to think money is, it has it's drawbacks. If we weren't engrained in this montary compensation culture, perhaps we would be better off. And perhaps we would have all sorts of crafts (and people) scattered throughout the planetary systems in our solar system and beyond. But since we aren't able to compensate people and governments with MONEY these missions will never happen. The thing that is unfortunate is that we are technically capable of building, launching, monitoring, gathering crucial data, and sending people into space. We can do it although we will certainly get better at it. But even though we can do it, we cannot make it a reality because of this arbitrary thing we call money.

As far as western culture goes, we unfortunately seem to be more interested in how everyone looks and how they can entertain the eyes watching them. We have become a culture so disconnected from nature that people are often times uncomfortable with just being outside in the woods. And the last time any of these people ever looked at a star filled sky was ,... ... truthfully I bet many of these people have never even seen one. And that is a crime against human experience. We've just lost touch in this digital artificial world. It's pretty sad if you ask me.

 

[kukalakana]

As good as people seem to think money is, it has it's drawbacks. If we weren't engrained in this montary compensation culture, perhaps we would be better off. And perhaps we would have all sorts of crafts (and people) scattered throughout the planetary systems in our solar system and beyond. But since we aren't able to compensate people and governments with MONEY these missions will never happen. The thing that is unfortunate is that we are technically capable of building, launching, monitoring, gathering crucial data, and sending people into space. We can do it although we will certainly get better at it. But even though we can do it, we cannot make it a reality because of this arbitrary thing we call money.

In other words, "No bucks, no Buck Rogers."

Unfortunately, in the real world, humans do need that incentive to help keep the economy of society going. Working for peanuts is all very well if you are in some cool job like Science Officer or Starship Captain... But do you really want to be earning nothing as that poor sod who has to work the waste extraction systems?? (yeah I'm a Trekkie. So sue me!) Until the point where every job that needs doing is worth doing, we need money.

But I've heard it said too that once enough people really want to go to Mars, the time, the technology and the funding will be found to make it happen. And really -- there's nothing to be so sad about. The Earth is a beautiful place (let's keep it that way) and our curious cameras have journeyed as far as Neptune and Mercury, and look at this: In a non-scifi world, this message would never be getting so quickly to so many different parts of the world. And 2015... Pluto! How is that not so much better than flying cars??