This era of science always fascinates me.
First landing on the moon? July 20, 1969. First satellite launch? January 31, 1958. 11 years, 5 months, and 20 days.
Insane.
First landing on the moon? July 20, 1969. First satellite launch? January 31, 1958. 11 years, 5 months, and 20 days.
Insane.
If you look at the early space programme it can really be seen as a set of milestones directly aimed at the manned moon landing - orbital manned flight with safe landing (Mercury), two-man operation (Gemini), space suits, EVA, docking, and so on.
As Tom Lehrer sang [1], "'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department,' says Wernher von Braun."
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio
Von Braun was interested in astronomy and space exploration well before the war. He is quoted as saying "the rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet." - referring to the Sept 7 1944 launch. In essence it was a peaceful rocket turned into an ICBM and thankfully later on returned to its peaceful status.
And on a side note: imagine being Von Braun after the US handed him the keys to their state of the art space program with a cold war sized budget. Beyond a dream come true.
Luckiest man in the war. He could have been killed in any number of ways during the war, he managed to surrender to the Allies and not the Soviets, and they chose not to hold him responsible for the 12,000 slave labour deaths of the V2 programme. Not all the beneficiaries of slave labour did so well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Sauckel
The real problem with returning to the space race was that it was fundamentally a public sector project. People seem to forget that it was the state that put a man on the moon. In 2018 the key question for such projects would be not "how can we benefit humanity" but "who gets to keep the profit"?
It's not like the Apollo program was the space equivalent of a state owned rail system -- capable of making money for the first private owner to take it over. It was always "in the red" if you measure such things in business terms. People twist themselves in knots trying (IMO) to assign dubious "spinoff" benefits, with dollar signs attached, to NASA work.
Give up on trying to justify all scientific research in the vocabulary of business, I say. I support public funding for space probes, astronomy, high energy physics, and all sorts of other things that expand the frontiers of human knowledge without being likely to generate new commercial products or profits.