One of the great unforeseen consequences of the demise of the Soviet Union was that the so-called “peace dividend” didn’t pay off the way people thought it would.
Sure, we had incredible technological advances, but it was always in weird ways that no one thought of. For example, our cell phone and Internet technology has exploded — changing the world in umpteen ways.
But I miss the dream of space travel.
Sure, we still launch rockets into space, but it’s just low-Earth orbit or robot probes — there’s no moon base, or far-out-there human exploration (hmm, okay, robot probes are pretty cool).
It just seems like the glamour and the glory of the early days of space exploration has gone away. Why? I think it has to do with cooperation. Now that it’s everybody-working-together, there’s no national pride or urgency in exploring space. There’s nothing to gain or lose by waiting a day — or a month, or a decade — to launch that Mars mission.
Frankly, China is my great hope to rekindle this spirit of international competition. But just to whet your appetite, here’s a collection of scans from a magazine back in the day.
They were collected by the Modern Mechanix blog, which is a wonderful resource if you’ve got too much time on your hands and a hankering for something vintage.
Check out the text from the magazine article:
Later the Soviet rockets to the moon will be manned. Finally, Soviet men will stay on the moon, either for definite periods of time or permanently. Such is the Kremlin’s announced agenda.
The Russians say they will build special lunar cities with unique atmospheric pressures so arranged as to enable humans to survive and thrive on the moon. We have this on the authority of Prof. N. A. Varvarov, chairman of the Astronautics Section of DOSAAF, the initials standing for the Russian name of the Volunteer Organization of Aiding the Army, the Air Force, and the Navy of the Soviet Union, the civil-defense apparatus of that country.
It will be, the Russian professor points out, a pressure one-third less than now present on the earth at sea level, but it will contain more oxygen than we now have at sea level, and so the earth’s man when transported to the moon will be “able to breathe without any unpleasantness for his health.”
The Red city will be constructed in one of the lunar craters, under a tremendous dome of glass and furnished with aluminum doors which Prof. Varvarov calls “air-locks.” Inside, at every half-mile or so, the city will be partitioned by glass walls with double doors. These will minimize the damage that may result from falling meteorites or other accidents. The walls will play a role similar to that now served by an ocean-liner’s water-tight compartments.
“We will find it expensive to transport food from the earth to the moon,” declares Varvarov. “A loaf of bread on being carried to the moon will be worth its weight in gold. Therefore our future lunar settlements will have to be self-sufficient insofar as food is concerned.”
Because of the difference in gravity, all plants will grow fantastically big when transplanted to the moon: “A radish will be as tall as a date palm grows on earth. Onions will send forth sprouts 33 feet long.”
If someone offered to trade me the Internet for a string of moon bases, I don’t know what I would do.
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