It seems that mankind has lost the motivation to go deep into space. This motivation could be seen and felt in the decades of 50’s, 60’s right up to the 90’s when people spoke about frontiers of space. Maybe we got complacent. Maybe we focused too much into the internet mobile phones etc. The fact that we do not have a replacement to the space shuttle is proof that the space race is over and we are content on living on our little home planet. All the visions that the Sci-Fi writers held dear for so long will all go to waste. The terroists have achived thier goal of enslaving the human spirt and the spirit of enterprise.
Re: Is the Space Race Over ?
by karthik sarath chandra on May 17, 2011 07:22 AM
Garauv, let me get some facts right, before you have any imagination of space voyages. We are already aware of solar system and many different small voyages (unmanned) were sent and photgraphed. Now if you are thinking beyond our solar system, then you are basically day dreaming. If we want to go to the nearest star to our sun which is Alpha Century it takes LIGHT 4 years to reach there travelling at the speed of 3 lakh Kms per second. We cannot in any imagination think of travelling even at 0.001% of these speeds. Now this means that we cannot go beyond our own solar system and we are basically trapped in space due to such vast distances.
Space shuttle program was the pinnacle of human achievement in the last 30 odd years. It was an example of what human beings as a species can achieve when we put our energies and brains to good use. We have gained so much knowledge about the universe from this program and also paid big price like Columbia.
It is sad day for science that this program is being stopped because of lack of funding when the world has all the money to fight so may wars. I really hope that we will go back and restart space exploration.
