History of the Future

1
History of the Future

• 10 Apollo Beyond

2
Space Flight in Literature

• Long history
• Early authors use metaphorically
• We already saw Verne, Wells in 19th Century
• Also in Stapledon Things to Come
• Rocket established by 1930s
• Space flight becomes central with Genre SF
• Hugo Gernsback, 1930
• Seizes imagination of readers

3
The Space Opera

• Stories of interstellar or intergalactic
  adventure
• Generally dealing with exciting wars
• Popular from 1930s
• E.E. Doc Smith the Skylak and Lensman series
• Fades somewhat by late 40s
• Authors seek more realistic/nuanced themes
• Used lightheartedly or for children
• Revived with Star Wars, 1977

4
Realistic Space Flight

• V2 Rocket Germany, WWII
• More realistic stories appear in Golden Age
• Heinlein, Clarke good at this
• Clarke invents geosynchronous comms satellite
• Heinlein, The Man Who Sold the Moon
• Moon landing by private enterprise
• Space as new frontier
• Readers learn about
• Moon bases Space Stations
• Space Suits
• Orbital mechanics, etc.

5
The Reality

• Space race as extension of cold war
• Soviets get first satellite (1957)
• First moon probe (1959)
• Gagarin becomes first man in space (1961)
• Unmanned moon landing (1966)
• First space station (1971)
• First Venus lander (1975)
• US response founders
• Rockets explode
• Political infighting

6
Apollo Program

• Moon drive launched by Kennedy, 1961
• Part of his aggressive challenge to Soviets
• Direct to moon strategy diverges from earlier
  ideas in search of quick results
• Apollo 11, July 1969
• Caps series of earlier flights tests
• Soviet rocket keeps exploding
• Interest drops off fast
• War, social unrest, urban riots are distracting
• Final 3 missions cancelled

7
Military Industrial Complex

• Term coined by Eisenhower in farewell speech
• Cold War gives government huge economic role
• New high-tech defense industry grows up
• Close ties between generals, firms, politicians
• Cutting edge science and technology
• Space program is extension of in
• Technologies involved
• Procurement and project management strategies
• Companies building components

8
Atlas Missiles

• First ICMB (mentioned previously)
• New concept Systems Engineering
• Rapid construction of futuristic technologies
• New project management techniques
• Organize huge teams from different firms on blue
  sky research
• Used as booster stage for early US flights
• Including John Glenn, 1962 First US orbit
• Over long time period descendents used today!

9
Systems Thinking

• Surged with Cold War
• Establishment of think tanks like RAND Corp
• Work includes strategy, first futurology
• Elements
• Game Theory
• Operations Research (use in industry)
• Computer models for prediction, forecasting
• Perceptions, hype exceed achievement

10
Application to Broader Issues

• Systems Engineering as Universal Expertise
• McNamara takes from Ford to DOD
• Tries to fight war by watching the numbers
• Application to social problems, late 1960s
• The techniques that are going to put man on the
  moon are exactly the techniques that we are going
  to need to clean up our cities Hubert Humphrey
  (VP), 1968
• Aerospace contracts, think tanks offer services
• Perceived crisis in urban areas
• Transportation, energy problems

11
Application to Environment

• World Systems Theory
• Computer model of entire ecosystem!
• Limits to Growth report, 1972
• Suggests crises of population, resources imminent
• Economic collapse within 100 years

? One of many later charts produced in response
to the 1972 report.
12
Manned Space Flight in 1970s

• NASA Proposes the SF future
• Cheap, reusable space truck
• to build space station and permanent moon base
• to fly to Mars
• Funding limited, political pressures
• We get space shuttle (years late, hugely over
  budget)
• And Sky Lab, made of Apollo leftovers
• Unmanned probes do best science
• Viking lands on Mars in 1976

13
Faced with this

• SF interest in realistic space flight diminishes
• Real space programs too big, bureaucratic
• Political dimensions too obvious
• Little useful results, frontier feeling lacking
• Some realistic treatments of Mars
• of which Man Plus is key example
• Kim Stanley Robinson Mars Trilogy, 1990s
• By 80s, some authors boosting SDI
• Will talk about this later
• Manned space flight becomes Republican issue!