Opening the Next Frontier
by Anthony Tate

Part 2: What went wrong.


To be blunt, it was the 70's.

After the turbulent change of the 60's, the 70's were just a hard time for America. The Cold War dragged on and on, no end in sight. Vietnam was a horrible, bloody mess, deeply misunderstood to this day, and bitterly divisive even in the aftermath. Watergate destroyed the faith of millions in their own government. The Oil Embargo shocked the economy as well, causing the nightmarish condition of 'stagflation.' Cultural upheaval became the norm as gains in civil rights were cemented into place.

With that litany of bad news, there is little wonder that the public lost interest in space. When you are scared for your job, your children, and whether or not your paycheck next year will still cover the rent, idealism and exploration goes out the window.

Also, lets be honest, landing on the Moon in the 1960's was an incredible feat. That entire rocket, the whole plan, was designed, built, and flown using less computing power than you have in your PC. Genius level effort was used to make that program possible, and the chance of disaster was perilously high, even by the comparatively relaxed standards of the day. In other words, Saturn was ahead of its time, by many years.

If it wasn't for the Cold War imperative to beat the Soviets, we'd probably be looking to go to the Moon right about now, all things considered.


Add in the fact that science itself was throwing up massive roadblocks, and there is little surprise to be had from the seeming 'retreat from space.' The rocket fuel used in the Saturn V moon rocket at launch was BETTER than the rocket fuel used to launch the Space Shuttle today. Why is that? Well, it's simple: The chemical fuels used in the Saturn V are among the best fuels that chemistry allows. Science is remarkably inflexible: unlike in the movies we can't just 'whip up' better rocket fuels. Chemistry is pretty stubborn that way.

So, exploring further in space was not important to the country while we had other problems to deal with, and making rockets better than the SaturnV was pretty much impossible.

So, NASA went sideways for a while. The Space Shuttle is a remarkable system, but it is at its core a compromise. So while it is good at many things, it is great at nothing. But nonetheless, the Space Shuttle kept America in space, and slowly we were building momentum to move forward once again away from the Earth.

Then Challenger blew up (and now we've lost Columbia and her crew as well).

Now, to the doughty folks who made Apollo fly, that disaster would have been a learning experience, and development would have continued. To the folks in the 80's it was a stunning, shocking, stomach-churning event. See, the counterculture of the 60's had grown up by the 80's, and was wielding considerable political and social clout. Why spend money on dangerous rockets when that same money could be put to better use performing good deeds?

But as always, American restlessness asserted itself, slowly and surely. The Shuttle flies again. A new Space Station, terribly crippled for now but THERE, flies.

And a new generation, who think slamming themselves into cement looks like fun, are looking around and saying, 'So, like, where do we go next?'

I find this very promising.

<<Previous Page - Next Page>>

or

Contents:

1: The Frontier Spirit

2: What went wrong.

3: Where do we go next?

4: So, why aren't we going?

5: Dealing with the Devil

6: A brief technical interlude

7: So how good is Nuclear, anyway?

8: Heat, temperature, and cooling.

9: But isn't this dangerous?

10: Prometheus would be proud of us.

11: Ok, that all sounds nice, but this is just fantasy, right?

12: But isn't this just too big?

13: But doesn't this thing make nuclear waste?

14: Conclusions