21st Century Space Race?

[Diche Bach]

I am confident that the consensus of history will regard the Space Race as one of the defining positive and ascendant periods of human history, if not the single most important one. Despite the paradoxical fact that this scientific and exploratory 'movement' emerged out of a potentially apocalyptic ideological competition between to nuclear-armed superpowers, I would say the Space Race has done as much to accelerate human cultural and intellectual evolution (or perhaps 'revolution') as did any of the preceding eras of exploration and 'conquest' in our long natural history. It is difficult to contemplate how much 'worse' life on Earth would be for humanity if _not_ for the Space Race.

It troubles me slightly that, at present there seems to be a lack of a comparable solidary spirit of discovery among any humans (much less all of them). As such I fear that the 'momentum' gained during the Space Race might have been lost or risks being lost?

What will/would it take to spark a similar social/political/scientific movement, a "21st Century Space Race" if you will? Will it happen? Does it matter? Is the superficial perception that we 'need' such a thing wrong? Is there in fact a 21st Century Space Race already underway?

I would love to hear what all of you Kerbonauts think of this topic.

[Synapse]

I can't believe that you hold the Space Race as more important than the French Revolution, World War II, the Roman Empire, the burning of the library at Alexandria, Ghenghis Khan, the discovery of the wheel/fire, the American Civil War/War of Independence, Columbus, Kepler, Einstein, Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, etc etc.

That said I would not like another World War II, despite the technological improvements. I much more hope for a social/political movement than a scientific one.

[Scotius]

New Space Race will be between private corporations. They will be competing over launches, satellite placing and maintenance, space tourism, industry, mining and other business venues we can only theorize about righ now. It happened once already. First Age of Exploration began when European maritime powers: Spain, Portugal, England, France and Netherlands started sending people like Columbus, DaGama, Magellan to find new trade routes, rich new lands and gold After those great explorers went merchants, colonists, conquistadors and missionaries looking for opportunities and riches for themselves.

[Diche Bach]

I can't believe that you hold the Space Race as more important than the French Revolution, World War II, the Roman Empire, the burning of the library at Alexandria, Ghenghis Khan, the discovery of the wheel/fire, the American Civil War/War of Independence, Columbus, Kepler, Einstein, Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, etc etc.

It is certainly debatable whether the Space Race is the "single most important . . . defining positive and ascendant periods of human history." I don't mean to convey that I am a devout believer in this premise, though I am convinced it is among the top ten.

I've studied anthropology for most of my adult life, something like 30 years and I have a pretty holistic knowledge base. Call it intuition if you will, though I don't mean to convince anyone so much as provoke thought and discussion.

Lets just start with a simple point: what we are doing right now. I am sitting in a lazy boy in Western Massachusetts where my wife and I have cozy little house (God I cannot wait to get out of New England! ) looking at your text on a 43" plasma screen TV.

Now, while the text and the language in which we are conveying, as well as a great deal of the underlying semantics are all quite, quite old, the medium and the fact of our communication is exceptionally novel. Visionaries like 20th century Science Fiction writers certainly foresaw such things, but the fact that it has been brought into fruition as soon as it has is I would argue anomalous relative to where the world was in say ~1950 when the seeds of the Space Race were being planted.

The Arab Spring could be argued to have been an indirect outcome of the Space Race in that it relied quite heavily on mobile telecomms and web-based social media. I think if you take this inclusive view of the Space Race, it becomes hard to identify what aspect of life it has NOT dramatically altered, and moreover, at a rate of accelerating change that I believe has never EVER been seen before in any social dynamic for any species in all of Earth's natural history.

New Space Race will be between private corporations. They will be competing over launches, satellite placing and maintenance, space tourism, industry, mining and other business venues we can only theorize about righ now. It happened once already. First Age of Exploration began when European maritime powers: Spain, Portugal, England, France and Netherlands started sending people like Columbus, DaGama, Magellan to find new trade routes, rich new lands and gold After those great explorers went merchants, colonists, conquistadors and missionaries looking for opportunities and riches for themselves.

Indeed! I think you may be quite right!

I was playing Minecraft and got to poking around on wiki, etc., learning up on gold mining. A couple of points struck me.

1. It is estimated that all of the gold (which it seems is an exceedlingly useful element in myriad devices and functions, and not merely a pretty metal for jewelry) humanity has extracted from Earth would fit within a roughly 20-meter cube. Wow . . . that little?

2. It is hypothesized that most of the gold that is accessible in the upper crust of the Earth was not present when the Earth originally formed, but in fact has been brought to Earth after its coalescence into a planet by meteorite impacts.

3. The "Tau Tona" mine in Witwatersrand district of South Africa is 'in' one of the impact zones of one of the most notable deliverers of gold. This mine has been in operation for many decades and is CRAAZZY deep (4 km if memory serves). Despite its being less than 50 years old, it has already produced the majority of the gold humanity has ever extracted from Earth.

4. Rocks in space are likely to have untold fortunes of this metal (and I reckon lots of other ones, e.g., I was reading up about "metallic hydrogen" which is only a confidently hypothesized elemental state at this point. But assuming it does actually exist under the surface of Jupiter it would seemingly promise incredible possibilities).

The "Age of Discovery" was certainly driven by the fact that the "New Worlds" of the 1400s promised untold riches for European kingdoms and their subjects, but surely the distant celestial bodies of our own solar system must promise millions of times more?

Edited August 4, 2013 by Diche Bach

[Themohawkninja]

Seeing as any sort of international competition always creates wonders, I hope this happens some day.

What would spark such a thing is an interesting question. On one hand, this could be started as easily as a new ISS, whereby countries try and 1-UP the modules of other countries. On the otherhand, the Cold War may have been the end of international government based space races, and now a space race may consist of the private companies trying to win a massive contract with the government to accomplish some task (like refueling the ISS, manned mission to Mars, etc). In the far future, we may see ads, like we do now for fast food companies, who try and show why they are better than the other companies to try and persuade you to buy THEIR ticket to LEO, and not someone elses.

[Kerbface]

I think China could end up being the one who sets off another space race, combined of course with the commercial space companies helping advance technology faster. China wants to send someone to the moon and build their own space station, the latter they are already quite underway with, it's the sort of competition the US hasn't had in years, I think once they land on the moon (or start getting close to it), the US may start putting a lot more direction and money into their space program. By then we'll probably have Dragon and Dreamchaser for LEO crew operations and Orion for the moon and asteroids (and as a basis for further interplanetary craft designs).