The space age has streaks of white and grey in its hair now. On October 4,this year, it turned 50.
It was on October 4, 1957, that the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 into orbit, and the space age was born. Like all infants it was not much to look at; sputnik 1 was an unimpressive ball and it communicated via simplistic radio beeps. But it opened a door to another world. Or, in actual fact, it opened the door to space.
So much has changed since then. The Soviet Union is no more. In the 1950’s, we, in the so called ‘free world’ were living under the shadow of Cold War, the fear of a possible nuclear conflict. There was no silver on the dark cloud of Soviet manipulations, if the ‘free’ West was to be believed. Then the Berlin wall fell, the Soviet Union disintegrated and disappeared. But we did not breathe relief. Oh no, we are still in the ‘free world’ living with fear.
So much has changed, and yet so little. What, then, do we make of this ageing of child of 1957: Space Age? Has it fulfilled our expectations? Has it disappointed us? Is it still hopeful, still looking with wide eyes into a better future? Or has it succumbed to a sour, secretive, bitter middle age?
SUCCESSFUL MISSIONS:
There is no doubt our baby has grown in bulk, put on weight. By now 80 successful missions have been launched to the moon, one to Mercury, 40 to Venus, 38 to Mars, 8 to Jupiter,4 to Saturn, one each to Uranus and Neptune, and a pioneering craft to Pluto. There have been missions to asteroids and comets, and hundreds of satellites of all sizes are circling the Earth. In terms of the total tonnage of satellites in orbit, there are about 1,200 buses circling the Earth right now.
Space Age was a baby of hope in 1957. It was seen in terms of possibilities to reach out across the globe and beyond. It was seen as marking a change that would finally unite humanity into a full realization of its own oneness and its oneness with life on Earth.
TO WHAT USE?
Most of the satellites orbiting us are being put to military uses, or superficial commercial ones. Apart from filling our immediate space junk (an increasing problem), the satellites have also led to a very real version of ‘big brother is watching’: the best U.S. military satellites are able to pick out individual figures on Earth, perhaps even identify them.
Moreover, not much has come out of these multi-billion trips into space and to other planets. As a single trip costs more than the combined annual budgets of the poorest nations of the world suffering from malnutrition, illiteracy and war.
The problem is not the expenses of maintaining a graying, polluting, secretive middle-aged “Space Age’ – funded officially or by private enterprise. Neither is it just the fact that our earliest hopes have not been fulfilled.
TO DERIVE BENEFITS:
The problem is that the kernel of expensive, expansive space is our Earth, a hugely neglected, over exploited place in which the human race survives amid conditions of increasing violence and inequality, in which many forms of life sometimes just about manage to evade extinction. To derive any real benefit from Space Age, we have to set our own house in order first. It is not the baby of Space Age that has let us down, but we have let ourselves down over the past 50 years.