Seattle and the Space Age that fizzled
We ushered in the manned Space Age with Century 21. As the Space Shuttle programs end, its time to consider one failing: We made the New Frontier a place for experts and elites, not the people.
NASA
University of Washington
Funny that on the eve of the 50th anniversary of Century 21, devoted to the theme of "Man in the Space Age," America is ending the Space Shuttle program with the final flight of Atlantis.
If Seattle was supposed to be the launch pad to this century's conquest of space, who knew that our manned flight program would end with our astronauts reliant on a Russian space bus for trips to and from an orbiting space station? The fair's amusement zone, the Gayway, which morphed into the now defunct Fun Forest after the fair, featured a Flight to Mars ride. What baby boomer ever thought that's as close as we'd ever get?
It was the space race that was the genesis for Seattle's fair: Dwight Eisenhower and our twin senatorial vikings, Warren G. Magnuson backed by Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson, raided the public coffers to promote a science exhibit in the post-Sputnik years. Tensions were high, so were the stakes: Who was going to dominate earth orbit, the moon, the planets beyond?
In 1962, only one man appeared on more LIFE magazine covers (3) than the Space Needle (2): John Glenn. He also visited the fair where NASA displayed his Mercury space capsule, and the "enemy" Russian cosmonaut Gherman Titov also dropped in. There was competition, yes, but also a sense that science and space exploration could unite the planet, literally asking us to rise above ourselves once in awhile.
With the space shuttles gone to museums, that will be a little more difficult for Americans, though the international nature of the space stations offers some hope in that regard. If anyone pays attention.
Part of the problem with the actual Space Age is that since the Moon landing in the summer of '69, it has mostly been anti-climax, beginning with astronaut golfers and Boeing's dune buggy tearing up the moonscape — feats that suggested our move into space would be little different than colonizing suburban Phoenix. The hype of space, the power of film, television, and science fiction soon outstripped the reality. We wanted warp drive and got shuttles. We wanted Star Wars and got Tang. We wanted worlds to conquer and got a handful of moon rocks.
The early 1960s was also on the cusp of the era of becoming focussed on the downside of the upside of technology and "progress." Jane Jacobs railed against urban freeways, Rachel Carson warned us of toxins in Silent Spring, Ralph Nader scolded us for driving Corvairs which were "unsafe at any speed." We drove up space program costs by putting safety first. It was humane, but ponderous, and extremely expensive.
By the mid 1960s, the priorities shifted from a world in which risk and ambition were the solution to one in which they were always beside the point because there was so many chores at home to do. In 1967, the Puget Sound League of Women Voters worried that "Americans will soon be standing in waste up to their knees launching rockets to the moon." There was truth in that: a shift from weightlessness to more earth-bound concerns. The soaring rhetoric of the Kennedys that made us believe in something more youthful, adventurous, and high-spirited was being silenced.
The Seattle world's fair was also built by hands that helped make manned space flight possible. One example: The chief structural engineer for the Space Needle was a big man of Armenian descent from Southern California who had cut his teeth building radio and TV towers in the west. John K. Minasian had also built huge rocket gantries, those steel contraptions on wheels as high as 30-story buildings that held up Saturn rockets at Cape Canaveral. He was the man who took pencil and slide rule in hand and calculated what would keep the Space Needle standing. He was one of many who helped move man into actual space.
When the Seattle fair was in the planning stages, consultants looked at what would be popular and noted that the then relatively new experiment of Disneyland in southern California had a futuristic attraction in Tomorrowland, similar to the theme to the proposed Seattle expo. It featured the TWA Moonliner and the Monsanto "House of the Future."
But the consultants also noted that it wasn't very popular. What did kids at Disneyland really want to see? Frontierland. That was a blow to planners of a Seattle fair seeking to shed the old frontier image for a New Frontier future. Century 21 mostly skipped such old-fashioned things, though Roy Rogers got headlines when he visited the fair.
Still, it should have been a warning that the New Frontier of space might carry too high a price still. It remains a gated community to the common man because of its costs, distances, and because it is open mostly to military and science professionals and the occasional billionaire. How is the public supposed to stay engaged if space is simply for elites?
In the coming manned space program interregnum, one hopes that the private sector science buffs like Paul Allen will continue to break barriers and excite the public in ways the government sector will not.
Astronauts are facing a setback, but if we can democratize, even commercialize space a bit, we might be able to re-seed the New Frontier with some of the spirit of the old.
Editor's Note: Knute Berger has been commissioned to write the official history of the Space Needle for its 50th anniversary.
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Comments:
Posted Mon, Jul 11, 8:02 a.m. Inappropriate
Part of the problem with the future that never was, was that both the presidents who started and ended the moon program, Kennedy and Nixon, had cynical (or at least divided) reasons for supporting space exploration in the first place. Kennedy didn't care a whit for pushing mankind to the stars; he just wanted to beat the Soviets at something prestigious. Whether it was a moon rocket or a luxury ocean liner - whatever the Russians had in mind, we were going to beat them. Nixon liked the space program because he felt "America needs heros." When the networks stopped carrying the moon landings, the astronauts ceased to be heros, and Nixon's enthusiasm ended.
With that lack of support from the top (LBJ was really the only enthusiastic "space president", Reagan a distant second) 50 years of the navel-gazers' "We need to solve all our problems at home" chant slowly wore down the people in government with a vision for the future. This week, America's manned space program ends. It is truly a tragedy for all mankind.
If there is anything that mankind does on this planet that elevates us in practical terms above the other mammals, it's exploration. It's what we've always done. I hope it's what we continue to do. And there is an imperative for doing it. Earth's time is finite. Some day, a big chunk of rock, like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, will strike the Earth again. When that happens, we'd better have a beachhead on other planets, or our 100,000 years of existence will be for naught.
It might not happen for 10,000 years. It might happen in a few hundred. We don't know. But our destiny is to push out into the stars or perish in our own back yard. The fact that we're entering a period of turning in is troubling. We have an historical example of what such a move can do to a culture, and it's depressing.
Six hundred years ago, Chinese explorer Zheng He built the largest armada mankind had known and set out to explore the world. There is evidence he even made it to America. But when he returned to China, the Hongxi Emperor worried that China was overextending itself. There were pressing problems to solve at home. He had Zheng's fleet burned at the docks. And we all know what happened to China. It's still playing catch-up over half a millennium later.
This could be America's fate as well. Or, it could even be the world's. And if we are truly giving up on human exploration of space, on the destiny of mankind, the failure won't just be national. We will have failed as a species.
Posted Mon, Jul 11, 11:36 a.m. Inappropriate
The Space Age is not merely about space flight and space exploration: it also includes things like GPS and applying here on earth the knowledge gained from science done in space (everything from robotics and materials science to life science). Seattle has local companies (just not Boeing!) doing incredible and innovative work applying space-gained knowledge.
Then there are the unhumaned space probes we have deployed thorughout the solar system: the Voyager probes are both very nearly in true interstellar space; New Horizons is closer now to Pluto than to Earth; and we have new probes on or around Saturn, the Sun, asteroids, and Mars. To say nothing of Hubble. Our children will probably be alive for the first human missions to Mars, as well.
The Space Age is far, far from dead; America has merely stopped being a space-*faring* society, and then probably only for a decade at most.
Posted Mon, Jul 11, 2:20 p.m. Inappropriate
Don't forget Jeff Bezos and his Blue Origin space company. They are still cooking along under Jeff's money and government contracts.
"We will have failed as a species."
If we destroy the environment of the planet we live on. Never mind that we can't get off it to destroy other planets. Until we figure out how to live here sustainably without actively killing each other off as a means of population and resource allocation, we probably don't deserve to leave either.
Oh, and the Mars lander did far more exploration than any human we could have sent to mars. It ran for over 6 years. There is no way we could have gotten enough supplies up there for humans to generate food, oxygen etc and do any scientific work. Unmanned space probes are the way to go.
Posted Tue, Jul 12, 1:34 p.m. Inappropriate
"And we all know what happened to China. It's still playing catch-up over half a millennium later." -- Good point dbreneman. While it's unclear whether an exploration/colonization plan would have paid off for the Chinese, and it's hard to predict the future in our own case... the leading countries in coming generations will probably be the ones that win the innovation race, or occupy whatever space (literally and figuratively) is important at that time.
If the US instead invests in research, infrastructure, education, etc., it's easy to argue that it's a more promising investment, though I'd prefer to do all of the above. But instead, we're throwing our potential "investment" money away on consumer goods that typically contribute nothing to the country's future. I like consumer goods too, but we need a better balance to keep the country successful.
Posted Thu, Jul 14, 3:37 p.m. Inappropriate
The iconic 605-foot-high Space Needle is being retired from service.
"Launched" in 1962 as a symbol of America's space ambitions, the George Jetsonesque tower will be consigned to a new role more reflective of the country's current mood and desires. The change occurs during the very week the Shuttle program sputters to a stop, and, according to many former astronauts, as the U.S. makes a u-turn from its very being and destiny. . .
More details are at the whimsical Thinking Out Loud,
http://marperl.blogspot.com/2011/07/space-needle-retired.html
Posted Tue, Jul 26, 3:20 a.m. Inappropriate
Our space shuttle as well as our brave astronauts brought much pride and honor to the country and finally they are home now. The news about them coming home has been the talked of the town, they are all over the news these past few days. I even read an article saying that the last trip of the Space Shuttle has just ended, as the Shuttle Atlantis has just returned from a trip to the ISS. National Aeronautics and Space Administration will be without a space vehicle for some time, although it’s starting to work on a brand new one. Until an exclusive contractor comes up with a brand new one, or NASA does, astronauts must hitch a ride with the Russian space organization. The proof is here: Last shuttle flight ends as Atlantis lands
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