I love old sci-fi
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We went from the first flight, to the first spaceflight in 58 years. 8 years after that, we put humans on the moon. I don't think it was unreasonable for scifi writers in the 70s and early 80s to have glorious ideas about what we would accomplish in another 20-30 years.
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I just don't see any of that leading to a 'scifi' image. None of those steps would change the sheer time it takes to get to Mars in a practical way, and that's just a deal breaker for manned flight.
On the flip side, we have had great advances in technology that makes unmanned science better, which in a way even more reduces the chances of scifi vision of 'manned' space flight to far places, because it just doesn't make sense.
Depends what SciFi we're talking about. "2001: A Space Odyssey" plays like a total fairly tale now but I would say it was technically achievable to have lunar base in 2001 (but not going to Jupiter if I remember the plot correctly). Mars trilogy by Robinson starts in 2035 if I remember correctly and initial mission was based on cheap launch system to orbit. I think this was also feasible with sustained investment. A lot of other SciFi is based on FTL travel, AI or hibernation which we cannot place on some tech roadmap so we cannot say what does and doesn't "lead" to it.
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I think repeatedly hitting the moon would have had the world shrugging, none of the sci fi was 'hey we made it to the moon and... stayed there'.
A mission to the moon was a little under 2 weeks, a similar mission to mars would be well over two years. Sure, we could, but even the most adventurous human adventures in history have been measured in months, we've never displayed the will to commit to years for what would be a token mission.
Yes, the tech could be improved with more investment, but the sci-fi results of even settling mars is just unreasonably far out.
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Old sci-fi assumed progress in the physical world, of endless progress in speed or materials.
Instead we got near endless progress in the processing of information while we live in houses made of trees, drive cars on rubber tires, and eat animals. Much like before. Sure, we have jets, but even they work pretty much the same way as 50 years ago. Incremental progress, sure, but no warp drive, eh?
I wish our houses were made of trees, our tires made of rubber, our food made out of living things. Instead our houses and tires release micro plastics and our food is increasingly synthetic.
We've had amazing advances in material sciences that in hindsight have been harmful.
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The year is 2025
And humanity is once again trying to reinvent the wheel -
Meanwhile, Asimov: We'll have robots that will help us accomplish crazy shit but stupid zealots will keep whining about it and holding them back
This is in no way relevant to anything that's happening today.
... That's what you got from Asimov?
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Well, we have lots of building-sized computers out there right now.
For tasks your phone and 50 MB/s would be totally sufficient for.
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high praise, thank you.
I might have to steal it for a novel.
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... That's what you got from Asimov?
I mostly picked up on the incest, but I was like 12 when I read that series
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Cyberpunk like Blade Runner was a direct response to the optimism of the golden age of SF. They said there wasn't enough sin in those stories. So they had protagonists who were heavy drug users taking out assassination contracts on big corpo CEOs and banging a prostitute in a back alley after they're done. They have high technology compared to the time it was written, but it doesn't help the common people make their lives any better. The Earth is a polluted wasteland, and the cities are stuffed full of people with trash all over the place.
Guess which approach is closer to what actually happened?
Don't worry, they're banning the sins of the poor and cracking down on the dregs of society, just in time for you to be part of that
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In fairness to the Sci-Fi writers, we've launched so many probes into deep space since then.
We've sent satellites to Jupiter and diving bells below the clouds of Venus. We've retrieved soil from Mars and sent signals from beyond the Ort Cloud. We've recorded Gravity Waves and captured light off the edge of Black Holes and recorded the touch of Neutrinos.
We don't have six guys drinking coffee and staring out a window overlooking the moon of Titan. But that is largely because our signaling and robotics has made automated exploration more practical than manned missions.
And also because SciFi writers of the 1950s didn't understand how much radiation humans would need to shield themselves against once they left the Earth's magnetosphere.
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as a kid i was so convinced, near the end of 90s i thought "maybe there are huge advancements made but they're saving it for the year 2000 so it'll be bombastic like people have expected."
instead we got fucking segway lol
I would love to live in a world where every Hummer H2 was replaced by a Segway.
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People are confusing optimism with naiveté. The old sci-fi assumed the rate of progress with be constant or even accelerate. They saw people got to space and moon in what? 20 years? So they thought we will get to Mars by the end of century and beyond our solar system some time after that. They didn't predict the end of Cold War and massive disinvestment from space exploration. But there were plenty of pessimistic takes on the future. In Bladerunner all the animals are dead, in Alien everything is run by evil corporations, in Battlestar Galactica everyone dies, in Star Wars whole worlds are destroyed, apocalyptic visions are common. Getting the dates wrong is not the same as being optimistic.
Star Wars whole worlds are destroyed
Sure. But that happened a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
Folks make it sound like it was some kind of analogy to Vietnam, with the Vietcong being the good guys. Which is just absurd. Get your politics out of my SciFi!
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... That's what you got from Asimov?
Yep. You have something to add?
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now take that and replace "robots" with "shareholders". perspective of every single big shareholder today.
I'd rather replace zealots with shareholders.
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Alien nailed it
Their decision to trap the physical hardware in the 1980s is very evocative.
The whole setting feels like a crystalized moment in US history.
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Yep. You have something to add?
You are absolutely correct that is a major theme, especially in the Foundation books. To be fair, Asimov also buried that point in ponderous prose and scattered it across centuries of book-time.
I think Goyer did the best one could do in adapting Foundation to visual media. He had to invent and re-imagine a lot in order to give continuity and cohesion to a sprawling story. If he had stayed more true to the books, it would have flopped instantly.
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Nuclear rockets could have easily made space relatively cheap. The tech was actively tested by NASA, and it worked pretty well. Nixon canceled that program and saddled NASA with a mandate for a Shuttle without the proper funding.
The USSR's manned program, OTOH, was built mostly to hit a number of firsts (first dog in space, first man in space, first woman in space, first space walk, etc.), but do it as quickly as possible. This resulted in a series of "get it done right the fuck now" decisions. NASA did it the slow way, with each technical advancement building on the last, which is better in the long run (if you fund it, mind you). Russia did enough to build Soyuz and then ran that for decades.
The tech did not hit physical limits. The two major approaches to space flight hit different bureaucratic limits first.
Relevant article regarding NASA's current bureaucratic limits: https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm
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Dystopias on the other hand, were way too optimistic about how long it would take for everything to turn to shit.
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I saw Back to the Future 2 last night.
Ah, the distant future of 10 years ago!
