Today, a rocket blasted off from a site in West Texas, carrying a capsule with six passengers over the official marking line between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. It attracted widespread publicity, despite only being a suborbital flight that lasted less than half an hour. This is not because the launch itself was unprecedented.
The company involved, Blue Origins, has been carrying out flights like this for some time on a fairly regular basis. The reason for all the media attention was that all six passengers on this trip to the edge of space were women – the first time there has been an all-female spaceflight since a Soviet mission in 1963. In addition, one of the six women involved was the singer Katy Perry. Her celebrity and high media profile are what brought the media fascination.
We should not however dismiss this as simply an example of the media’s fascination with pop-culture celebrities. This event is actually significant in various ways, as an indication that something is shifting, in both technology and the zeitgeist. Partly this is because of a growing scientific and economic phenomenon, of which this flight is an example. The other is of a cultural shift. Katy Perry exemplifies this, not only in what she has said about this particular flight and her part in it but in her comments about and vocal support for space exploration over a long period.
For many, space exploration, is the quintessential achievement of Big Government, a task of such scale and complexity that it could only be achieved by the state. As such, it is for many an example of what coordinated action through politics can achieve.
The reality is less rosy. In fact, there is a strong argument that the Apollo Project was a disaster for space exploration. By focusing entirely on one goal (the Moon) and a single and inflexible technology (step rockets), NASA crowded out a range of possible alternatives and led space technology down an unproductive blind alley. What we are seeing now, with Blue Horizon (owned by Jeff Bezos) and Space X (owned by Elon Musk) and many other companies is a sudden eruption of the private sector into space travel on a commercial basis. Capitalism and the market are now working their usual magic, exploring all kinds of systems and options, discarding what does not work and developing new systems and, above all, steadily turning space travel into something more accessible (and hence profitable).
All this goes with a major cultural shift. When he announced the Apollo Project, in a speech at Rice University in 1961, John F Kennedy struck a note that has faded in politics and public discussion. In his powerful and moving peroration, he went through the course of fifty thousand years of human history as it would seem if compressed into fifty years. What he described was a process of increasingly rapid and transformative innovation and improvement, scientific, technological, and cultural.
This was a process that in his account, had not happened at all in the first forty “years” had then started slowly but had then accelerated and was continuing to do so. This was a vision of human history and the future that was upbeat and optimistic, confident in human capacity, and looking forward to the future with hope and anticipation. Space exploration had a central place in this vision, as the new frontier for human progress. At the time this was a widely shared vision, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, if seldom delivered with such power.
How different things are now! The hope and optimism of the 1960s have faded. People, and particularly the educated and those who see themselves as being on the Left or liberal side of politics, now regard the future with fear and dread. The threat of catastrophe or of decay and decline haunt our discussions. The kind of optimism that Kennedy expressed and that found expression in the Apollo Project has passed.
And yet, maybe things are stirring once again, in no small part because of the way the private sector has now moved into space. Katy Perry has spoken repeatedly of how going into space was a lifelong ambition of or dream of hers, not just for personal reasons, but as an example of how dreams can be realised and of a wider story of progress. She is a vocal supporter and advocate of Elon Musk’s idea of colonising Mars and of developing space and, more generally, of the benefits of scientific discovery and new technology. She is a representative of a younger generation who are perhaps rediscovering the enthusiasm for the future that jaded Boomers have abandoned. Her outlook is also in contrast to the dark and nihilistic outlook that is apparently widespread on social media and among the young.
The publicity given to this flight and the reception Katy Perry’s remarks have had are perhaps just one indication that the Promethean vision that Kennedy articulated has started to once again catch the imagination of the young of all ages, and not only billionaires like Musk and Bezos. Optimism and hope in the future are slowly reviving beneath the snow of disillusionment and fear.