The reason why spaceflight stagnated for 50 years is because IT can in the middle of it.
All the smart people went to build computers instead of rockets, and now we have smartphones and the internet.
Now that IT is stagnating (enshittification), smart people will probably go back to spaceflight.
StaticFalconar@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Fifty years later we have reached mars with drones and created space probes to expand our knowledge of space.
floo@retrolemmy.com 11 hours ago
Actually, we first reached Mars with the Viking series of probes in 1976. Then there was a whole lot of time where we didn’t do anything before we started again with Mars in the 90s.
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 11 hours ago
We have even figured out aviation on mars so thats kinda cool :D
Mirshe@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
No no, it’s cooler than that. We tried out aviation on Mars to make sure we figured out how to do aviation on Titan.
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 hours ago
Incidentally, that mission was one of those surprising successes. The drone they sent was really barebones so it could tag along on another mission. Nobody expected it to work all that well. It ended up working incredibly well and got used far beyond its planned mission until its rotor blades broke.
Now the team gets to build a real one.
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 6 hours ago
Yeah its a great story. I watched the Veritasium vid about it and its so much cooler when you hear the backstory. www.youtube.com/watch?v=20vUNgRdB4o
nuko147@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Actually the rate of major mission launches and new “firsts” was highest in the late 60s/70s, slowed significantly in the 80s/early 90s, and resumed at a moderate and consistent pace from the mid-90s until today (although today missions became far more complex and focused on detailed science rather than just achieving things).
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
We reached Mars with probes 50 years ago. I’m not in any way trying to denigrate the amazing achievements of the Mars rovers. But the fact remains that a human crew could have done all that and more (like drill a hole) in a few weeks at best.
anomnom@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
And 59 years after landing on the moon we’ve just been watching Space X rockets explode instead of going back on rockets NASA proved it could engineer with slide rules and drafting tables.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Relying on Starship as a moon lander is one of the most hare brained decisions of NASA in recent years. OTOH, it would be perfectly feasible to get a moon mission going using Falcon 9 as the launch vehicle.
rumba@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
We need some kind of automated workshop on Mars. Send a boatload of refined materials up there and a small autofactory that can craft marginally useful gear and replacement parts.