"Bruce Sterling - Outer Cyberspace (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

space *because* the Soviets had gone into space, and because the
Soviets were using Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin to make a case that
their way of life was superior to capitalism.

The Space Race was a symbolic tournament for the newfangled
intercontinental rockets whose primary purpose (up to that point) had
been as instruments of war. The Space Race was the harmless,
symbolic, touch-football version of World War III. For this reason
alone: that it did no harm, and helped avert a worse clash -- in my
opinion, the Space Race was worth every cent. But the fact that it was
a political competition had certain strange implications.

Because of this political aspect, NASA's primary product was
never actual "space exploration." Instead, NASA produced public-
relations spectaculars. The Apollo project was the premiere example.
The astonishing feat of landing men on the moon was a tremendous
public-relations achievement, and it pretty much crushed the Soviet
opposition, at least as far as "space-racing" went.

On the other hand, like most "spectaculars," Apollo delivered
rather little in the way of permanent achievement. There was flag-
waving, speeches, and plaque-laying; a lot of wonderful TV coverage;
and then the works went into mothballs. We no longer have the
capacity to fly human beings to the moon. No one else seems
particularly interested in repeating this feat, either; even though the
Europeans, Indians, Chinese and Japanese all have their own space
programs today. (Even the Arabs, Canadians, Australians and
Indonesians have their own satellites now.)

In 1991, NASA remains firmly in the grip of the "Apollo
Paradigm." The assumption was (and is) that only large, spectacular
missions with human crews aboard can secure political support for
NASA, and deliver the necessary funding to support its eleven-billion-
dollar-a-year bureaucracy. "No Buck Rogers, no bucks."

The march of science -- the urge to actually find things out
about our solar system and our universe -- has never been the driving
force for NASA. NASA has been a very political animal; the space-
science community has fed on its scraps.

Unfortunately for NASA, a few historical home truths are
catching up with the high-tech white-knights.



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First and foremost, the Space Race is over. There is no more