I probably blow it out of proportion, but I do consider one of the big generation gaps for North Americans (and perhaps for Russians) today is what they think about the space race. Back when the Gap stores were founded in 1969, the name was based on the talk of the generation gap of that day: between the clean-cut good boys carrying the victors’ torch from WWII and the long-haired hippies hoping to end all wars. In that very year of 1969 though, the superpowers of the world, if not the whole TV and radio connected world, knew where they were when human beings finally set foot on the moon. I am too young to remember that historical event personally, but I still remember the space shuttle as the tail end of the cold war and the space race, and the uniting force behind one of the two scientific superpowers of the day.
22 years after the collapse of the nation that launched Sputnik, it is quite easy to say we already have a whole generation that seems to know and care very little about any country’s space program. Sure, they appreciate that satellites sent up in space deliver their TV signals, guide their budget flights, and may even aid in location services on their smartphones, but a time traveller from 1969 might be shocked to see the space race largely forgotten by today’s youth. The good news might be that today’s youth in Asia have also forgotten about the Indochina wars, the Khmer rouge, and India’s “emergency”, but space is the final frontier not just for science, but for investment, and we should continue pressing up not falling back. In the 1960s, NASA spent 2-5% of the US’s budget getting to the moon compared with less than 0.5% today, but I could not find similar statistics for China or the Soviet Union.
While few have been watching, China has been slowly but surely developing a space program, most notably Shenzhou (now on Shenzhou 10) which has been putting Chinese men and women into orbit, and the understandably less publicized mission of Yinghuo, which planned but failed to send an unmanned orbiter to Mars.
I actually find it hard to get good photos of China’s space program, especially ones with the Chinese flag as well displayed as in the Apollo program, but the below one from a German site was about the best I could find.
Happy Friday!
