I have a dream.

[AJ Rimmer]

You know, contrary to most people I actually don't think the Cold War had that much to do with it. Certainly the sense of competition egged people on, but in general I still think the pioneering and risk-taking that space travel entailed back then was what sparked people's imagination and interest. Yes it was a point of national pride that America got to the moon first, but I don't think that's what fascinated most people. And public interest started dying off before the cold war was over.

 

[Robbo]

You know, contrary to most people I actually don't think the Cold War had that much to do with it. Certainly the sense of competition egged people on, but in general I still think the pioneering and risk-taking that space travel entailed back then was what sparked people's imagination and interest. Yes it was a point of national pride that America got to the moon first, but I don't think that's what fascinated most people. And public interest started dying off before the cold war was over.

Yeah the main reasons for it were exploration and such but every time there was a cost blowout, things failed and peoples died there was the Russians continually getting closer to beating them which pushed them on. Neither side decided to go to the moon because the other was but it defiantly speed up the program. Just look at space exploration today, yes it died long before the cold war did but now that we have a plan to get to Mars there's no rush to get there.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

Yeah the main reasons for it were exploration and such but every time there was a cost blowout, things failed and peoples died there was the Russians continually getting closer to beating them which pushed them on. Neither side decided to go to the moon because the other was but it defiantly speed up the program. Just look at space exploration today, yes it died long before the cold war did but now that we have a plan to get to Mars there's no rush to get there.

Yes, the political reasons for launching the space program at such a speed was to beat the Russians, no doubt, but I'm talking about public opinion, which I think was less concerned about defeating the Russians in the space race. There wasn't so much a sense of "We beat them!" as there was a sense of "We did it!".

 

[Robbo]

Yes, the political reasons for launching the space program at such a speed was to beat the Russians, no doubt, but I'm talking about public opinion, which I think was less concerned about defeating the Russians in the space race. There wasn't so much a sense of "We beat them!" as there was a sense of "We did it!".

Still there was some competitiveness remaining from the sputnik launch which was only 12 years before hand, Sputnik_crisis. The US public would have to have thought about beating the Russians to the moon after being behind for the initial years of the space race. Though this was certainly less than it would have been if the Russians had even been close to getting to the moon at the same time as the US.

 

[VirusType2]

You know, contrary to most people I actually don't think the Cold War had that much to do with it. Certainly the sense of competition egged people on, but in general I still think the pioneering and risk-taking that space travel entailed back then was what sparked people's imagination and interest. Yes it was a point of national pride that America got to the moon first, but I don't think that's what fascinated most people. And public interest started dying off before the cold war was over.

I was talking with my brother (one of his first jobs out of college was a [rocket propulsion] engineer at NASA) about this very topic just the other day. I told him what I said, about it being cool back then to be an astronaut. He mentioned something about everyone pushing information technology right now. (I was drunk and it was a party so we didn't get too far into it.)

There is a super saturation of information as well, not like having 3 channel TV reception, with the moon landing likely on all 3 plus both radio stations.

I would be fascinated to watch high definition video feeds from outer space. It's just you have to put it in my face and I won't be able to turn it off. They don't really get much news coverage at all. A few minutes a year on the news is all it gets.

I remember once seeing on the news that we had American and Russian astronauts in a space station out there. I watched the news almost daily and I didn't even know we had one!

 

[G(ordon)-man]

Yeah, ISS is one of the greatest achievments in human history, a partly autonomous space colony, but i have seen it getting mentioned very rarely.