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When contemplating participation in space exploration and development we might like to consider how to answer the question; 'How did Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the moon?'
We could answer this question by dealing with the specific technical details of the Apollo-Saturn V launch vehicle that they rode upon and the Newtownian physics that plotted their trajectory. Alternatively we could answer it by acknowledging the social conditions that enabled Armstrong and Aldrin to be the first humans on the lunar surface. Both were men, both were United States citizens, both were white, both were university educated aeronautical engineers and both had served as test-pilots for military aircraft.
When these two men landed on the moon however it was stated over and over again that they were merely representatives of humanity. "We come in peace for all mankind" was the declaration on the plaque that they unveiled upon the moon. Somehow we had all gone with them, whether we were black factory workers from Minneapolis, illiterate peasants from Mongolia or unemployed high-school drop-outs from Melbourne. Despite the fact that the moon landing enterprise had an inbuilt socio-structural bias for placing humans of Armstrong and Aldrin's ilk upon the moon it was claimed that everybody on the Earth participated in this great human feat.
This is how the space programme is sold: all participate in space exploration because its pursuit can be seen by all. Such participation is quite shallow of course. It is nothing but the one-way dispersal of the results of already determined plans. Most members of the human race have no way of being a part of the space effort.
Let's look at another example, this time in the future. Emanating from NASA's department of Advanced Concept Studies is a description by John Mankins about humanity's future in space. After an elucidation of the resource and energy potential laying in wait within the Solar System and after an elaboration about the possible technological spinoffs from future spaceflight, Mankins devotes a section of his article to 'Global Participation'. He says:
Perhaps as exciting from a public standpoint as all of the other technical innovations described above is the concept that in the future, the adventure and the thrill of discovery will be shared directly among millions of individuals across the globe. Combined advances in extremely high speed communications, high quality data compression and processing, virtual reality systems will enable global participation.
Again participation here is only one way. NASA does the exploring, you sit around watching the results trickle through on your TV or VDU - if you've got one. As inspiring as these discoveries may be, they are hardly the result of any significant participatory scheme.
There are a number of ways that space development may claim to be participatory in more than just the shallow, one-way sense. Space development is enacted by policies made by elected officials. Through the democracy of the ballot box you may make some choice about varying space policy plans. Apart from the fact that it is nigh on impossible to find in any particular nation a political party with any commitment to enunciating its space policy there is contained within this avenue a myriad of issues that may deflate its claims to deep participation. Do elected officials necessarily enact what they promise? Having found a political party that makes a policy statement on space issues that might significantly differ from competing parties it often the exception to the rule to see it fully implement its policies once elected. Similarly; can governments really claim a mandate for the implementation of all their policies on the basis of election wins? Governments ubiquitously claim the right to implement a huge variety of unrelated policies that were never subjected to specific democratic choice. Thus, if the electorate mainly base their votes on reasons to do with tax policy it hardly warrants the government to pursue a particular space policy. Thus governments may implement space policies with which very few that very few agree.
Another way space development might claim to be participatory is related to the ideals of meritocracy. If you want direct input into space development plans then you must educate and train yourself so as to be a capable player in the aerospace field. Whether you want to design rockets, formulate space law or conduct space experiments it is just a matter of studying hard and working well. Again this avenue is hardly a deep way for encouraging any great degree of participation. Even if all the members of the world's community were able to go to college to study engineering, law or science it is hardly practicable that they all get jobs in the space business. For this to be a real claim to participation there would have to be equal access to education for all humanity and then there would have to be some way for non-space people to interact directly with space people when policy decisions are made.
A third avenue for participation - and the one which is most visible when examining the space programme - is that of advocacy and activism. There are a considerable number of organizations dedicated to the task of campaigning for more state effort to be spent on national space programmes. However, one thing that may be noted here is that despite their continual efforts to galvanize the public towards pro-space plans in an effort to influence government policy, space advocacy groups consistently come up against a barrier of public indifference. It seems that not enough members of the general public actually care strongly about space to actually want to participate in making decisions about it. The existence of this non-participatory feeling within the public might be interpreted as a predictable consequence of the powerlessness that citzens feel with regard to any aspect of national policy-making. Or it may actually be regarded as a form of participation in itself, a negative participation whose existence might be linked to tacit disapproval of the space programme.
Sometimes allied to the advocacy avenue for participation is that of amateur astronautics groups. The people within amateur astronautics do not wish to just sit around waiting for their respective governments to implement space development they are interested in doing it for themselves. Some amateur astronautics groups are gradually building up to orbital rocket potential and are proposing Solar System colonization schemes already. Of course, one may wonder if these plans will ever come about. Even with the help of a few eccentric millionaires it seems unlikely that the resources will be near what a nation state can muster. Much of the time, though, it seems as though capital accumulation is only a minor programme for space advocates and amateur rocketeers. What they (as well as many professional space-workers) really like dealing in is ideology: the ideology of frontierism.
Frontiersmen never die, they just drift off into space. So may the bumpersticker of space expansionists read since for them space development is classed as the final frontier. It is the next and ultimate step in an expansionist saga that has seen Europeans sail to the shores of New World and then drift relentlessly and purposefully westward across continental North America. According to many space frontierists, just as the western frontier opened up new land, new resources, new ideas, new freedoms and new and better technologies during the first centuries of European presence in America, so the coming centuries of space expansion will do the same.
It is debatable that these people are basing their ideology upon sound premises. It can be argued, for instance, that at best intellectual, humanitarian and technological progress was quite independent of expansion across the Atlantic and across the West and that at worst such expansion only gave rise to and reflected the oppressiveness of European ideas and technology. An entrenched ethnocentrism is contained within the frontierist attitude to space expansion. There are two great modern stories of westward expansion. One is of glorious and civilised Euro-American discovery and settlement and the other is of imperialist victimisation of colonised peoples. It is questionable whether either of these two stories is adequate when dealing with the many local and enormously heterogeneous histories of North American people, but the point is that space frontierists only ever adopt one of these two great stories: that of grand and glorious European expansion.
In the many writings of space frontierists there is hardly a sentence acknowledging the plight of colonised peoples in the face of such expansion, except when it comes to rebutting the legitimacy of the alternative story. Space frontierists feel safe in reinvigorating the ideas of frontierism because there are no indigenes on the other planets. Thus imperialism can forever more be excised from the final frontier because there will be no victims in its pursuit. In this last point, however, they may be grossly mistaken.
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When contemplating participation in space exploration and development we might like to consider how to answer the question; 'How did Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the moon?'
In the mother of all rocket races.
We could answer this question by dealing with the specific technical details of the Apollo-Saturn V launch vehicle that they rode upon and the Newtownian physics that plotted their trajectory.
We could, but then that would answer your question, wouldn't it.
Alternatively we could answer it by acknowledging the social conditions that enabled Armstrong and Aldrin to be the first humans on the lunar surface.
Would that be the War in Vietnam, Kent State massacare, Kennedy assinated, or the Cuban missle crisis? Perhaps we should look to the ramifications of th Civil Rights movement on the lunar landing as well? Which social conditions should we acknoledge here? The tension of the Cold War? The growth of atomic weapons? I wonder WHAT social conditions we should use....
Both were men, both were United States citizens, both were white, both were university
educated aeronautical engineers and both had served as test-pilots for military aircraft.
OHHHH! [slaps my forehead] I see, THOOOSE social conditions. America was an elitist, racist, arrogant, presupposing superpower where the ruling elite was predominatly made up of WASPS. It is arrogance and intellectual absurdity to apply modern day values on our historical past- it is the equivelent of condeming our forefathers for owning slaves. Different times, different values- doesn't exscuse any particualr acts, but it does serve to put actions into perspective so we can understand them today.
Both were men by vertiue of the fact that there were no female canadites qualified at the time. Both were united State Citizens by virtue of the fact that this was primarily an American lead endevour. Both were white by virtue of the fact that a racist and segregated America exsisted at the time. Both were university educated engineers by virtue of the NECCESSITY of that skill set. And both were military test piolts by virtue of the fact in how NASA was created.
When these two men landed on the moon however it was stated over and over again that they were merely representatives of humanity. "We come in peace for all mankind" was the declaration on the plaque that they unveiled upon the moon.
It is called a metaphor. You do a diservice to the event by trying to twist the words literally. Just an FYI "bad" can sometimes mean "good", but then again, this might be lost on the literalist out there.
Somehow we had all gone with them, whether we were black factory workers from Minneapolis, illiterate peasants from Mongolia or unemployed high-school drop-outs from
Melbourne.
Becuase the METAPHOR is about the human species getting to the technological point of being capable of the achievement which could not have been done without time and HUMANITY. When the first man set down on the moon, the species as a whole succeeded in doing something we have never done before. It was a metaphor for what ANY human can achieve
twit
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