![]() ![]() Had the rocket been developed sooner, the imperialist war could have been prolonged and the toll on human lives even greater. Having only been developed toward the end of the war, the V-2 killed over 9,000 people in strikes on London, Antwerp, and Liége. Rocket propulsion and space travel are no different, with roots in World War II and the development of the V-2 rocket by the German state. The Origins of Space TravelĪs has been the case throughout the history of class society, it is often war that spurs some of the most important technological advances. Their program experienced a major setback when their SpaceShipTwo exploded in midair, killing one of the pilots. Others attempting to gain a foothold in space travel are Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, which aims to offer space tourism for the world’s rich. Their attempt at cutting corners (and thereby raising profits) by using refurbished rockets from the 1970s seems to have backfired with the recent explosion of the Antares rocket. One example is Orbital Sciences Corporation, which has a $1.9 billion contract with NASA to transport equipment to the international space station. In an attempt to fill the growing void, various private companies have stepped in. It has resorted to fallback plans, and to fallbacks to the fallbacks.” Future plans included a mission to bring an asteroid into the moon’s orbit, not only to study the asteroid itself but to develop the technology to redirect objects that might threaten impacts with Earth.īut with the plug being pulled on NASA, these projects may just have to cease in the years to come, and we will have millions of dollars worth of technology “lost in space.” As explained by the Washington Post, “NASA currently lacks the money and the technology to do what it has long dreamed of doing, which is to send astronauts to Mars and bring them safely back to Earth. NASA is also responsible for the monitoring of global climate change and has a number of ongoing projects involving satellites launched into the solar system including Voyager, Pioneer, Mariner, Cassini, Dawn, and Magellan the Curiosity Mars rover the Spitzer Space Telescope and add the Hubble Telescope to that long list and you have a $17.6 billion agency employing nearly 18,000 workers-a surprisingly small number considering the enormity of NASA’s projects. ![]() From the algorithm of the Google search engine to the research and development of pharmaceuticals, the US Government funds nearly 60% of all research. There is a constant buzz in the capitalist media about the supposed “genius” of individuals like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, but a recent book by Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs Private Sector Myths, argues that state agencies and public funding have played the central role in the latest technological innovations. The memory foam mattress you sleep on, the cordless vacuum you clean with, the running shoes you exercise with, the scratch-resistant eyeglasses you read with, the satellite television you watch the game on, the bathing suit you swim in, and so much more, are spin-off technologies of state-funded NASA programs-not the result of individuals tinkering in a basement. So pervasive is this idea that even an article on the NASA website highlighting the benefits of the space program quotes Eisenhower’s lament in his farewell address: “the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields.” The American mythology speaks of all technological innovation as having come from the toil of a solitary inventor. This not only threatens future projects, but also the continuation of existing projects. ![]() Without competition in this field from the now-defunct USSR, and in this age of capitalist austerity and decline, more than $1 billion has been cut from the NASA budget in recent years. Since the last Apollo mission in 1973, funding for NASA has continually declined from 1.35% to less than 0.6% of the federal budget. But the recent explosion of Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Antares rocket on October 28, and the explosion of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo just a few days later seem to highlight the primary obstacle in the way of humanity’s development today: the private ownership of the means of production. Flight, and later space travel, were viewed as an indication of humanity’s progress and ability to overcome even the most enormous of obstacles, in this case, the Earth’s gravitational pull. Just 56 years later, in April 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space, when Vostok 1 made a successful orbit of the Earth. On June 23, 1905, Orville Wright became the first person to successfully fly a powered aircraft. ![]()
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