Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier by Neil Degrasse Tyson & Avis Lang

Author:Neil Degrasse Tyson & Avis Lang [Tyson, Neil Degrasse & Lang, Avis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780393082104
Amazon: 0393082105
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2012-02-27T05:00:00+00:00

• • • CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

SPACE TRAVEL TROUBLES*

Listening to space enthusiasts talk about space travel or watching blockbuster science-fiction movies might make you think that sending people to the stars is inevitable and will happen soon. Reality check: it’s not and it won’t—the fantasy far outstrips the facts.

A line of reasoning within the ranks of the wishful might be: “We invented flight when most people thought it was impossible. A mere sixty-five years later, we went to the Moon. It’s high time we journeyed among the stars. People who say it isn’t possible are ignoring history.”

My rebuttal is borrowed from a legal disclaimer of the investment industry: “Past performance is not an indicator of future returns.” When it comes to extracting really big money from an electorate, pure science—in this case, exploration for its own sake—doesn’t rate. Yet during the 1960s, a prevailing rationale for space travel was that space was the next frontier, that we were going to the Moon because humans are innate explorers. In President Kennedy’s address to a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961, he waxed eloquent on the need for Americans to reach the next frontier. The speech included these oft-quoted lines:

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