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.

idk how rich you are
But I will need to live this life in my dreams at night for the rest of my life

The rapid progress and then stalling is not caused by lack of investment, it's the harsh reality of physics.

We cracked how to have machines fly like birds and then it's low hanging fruit to achieve amazing things in atmosphere.

While exploring that, rocketry makes nearby space possible, and the moon is "right there".

But then things are exponentially farther away, and many of them bigger gravity wells, making the trips too long and difficult to make two way trips.

In a very very short time we got heavier than air flight, rocketry, fission, mass production, and all sorts of robotics and computing. But reach breakthrough has a point where we scratch our heads trying to do better. A ton has been spent and will continue to be spent trying to crack controlled fusion. Someone that lived through us managing to split an atom for the first time to fairly widespread deployment naturally assumed fusion would be next and maybe not too long after something that would extract energy directly according to Einstein's most famous formula.

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.

The rapid progress and then stalling is not caused by lack of investment, it's the harsh reality of physics.

We cracked how to have machines fly like birds and then it's low hanging fruit to achieve amazing things in atmosphere.

While exploring that, rocketry makes nearby space possible, and the moon is "right there".

But then things are exponentially farther away, and many of them bigger gravity wells, making the trips too long and difficult to make two way trips.

In a very very short time we got heavier than air flight, rocketry, fission, mass production, and all sorts of robotics and computing. But reach breakthrough has a point where we scratch our heads trying to do better. A ton has been spent and will continue to be spent trying to crack controlled fusion. Someone that lived through us managing to split an atom for the first time to fairly widespread deployment naturally assumed fusion would be next and maybe not too long after something that would extract energy directly according to Einstein's most famous formula.

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.

The rapid progress and then stalling is not caused by lack of investment, it's the harsh reality of physics.

We cracked how to have machines fly like birds and then it's low hanging fruit to achieve amazing things in atmosphere.

While exploring that, rocketry makes nearby space possible, and the moon is "right there".

But then things are exponentially farther away, and many of them bigger gravity wells, making the trips too long and difficult to make two way trips.

In a very very short time we got heavier than air flight, rocketry, fission, mass production, and all sorts of robotics and computing. But reach breakthrough has a point where we scratch our heads trying to do better. A ton has been spent and will continue to be spent trying to crack controlled fusion. Someone that lived through us managing to split an atom for the first time to fairly widespread deployment naturally assumed fusion would be next and maybe not too long after something that would extract energy directly according to Einstein's most famous formula.

If there is anything about the 90s that I always found fun is just how everyone and everything anticipated the year 2000.

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.

It is. It's about people fighting a war in space. Saying that it happened "long time ago" in a different galaxy or in alternative reality doesn't make it a historical drama.

The night is 2000. I am walking around central london with my dad and his friends, drinking champagne from a bottle despite being underage. We are not near the place we are meant to be to see the fireworks display. The sky fills with coloured lights as giant fireworks are being let off and illuminating the entire heavens with one artificial colour at a time.

this reads like the beginning of neuromancer

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.

I don’t think that’s what they’re saying, that we’d already be exploring Andromeda or something by now. We haven’t even sent a crewed mission to the Moon, let alone Mars.

There has been no investment in space travel or any attempt to establish a research outpost on the moon. Nor a research station above the atmosphere on Venus. Nothing.

Plenty of things could have been done with proper investment even before going to Mars. Reusable rockets, cheaper launch systems, more flights to the moon, moon bases, space stations. Yes, Mars is difficult but it would be easier with well established presence in the orbit and on the moon. All of this happened way too late (or never) because no one wanted to invest in it.

Foundation is also a sort of techno feudal society.

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.

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.