Let us, for a moment, assume that all intelligent species follow the same developmental rules are we do. "Extraordinary benefits accrue to the tiny minority of [intelligent species] who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most" (Godin 4). The infancy of a civilization's space age is filled with pain. There are deaths, there are inefficiencies, there are politics. An infant space age is highlighted by walking on a path with a blurry goal in mind and allowing progress on that path to make the destination clearer. No one, since humanity is in this stage of space development, can claim that know where progress in space will lead us, we can guess, but we can not know how space will benefit us until we become spacefaring.
It will, because the path to Ithaca, the path to the space age, is more important then the space age. This is what I feel created the dip we are in. Space's applications are slowly becoming clearer. We are slowly developing real reasons to go into space other then beat the communists/capitalists. We are reinventing the space movement as we learn lessons on this path. But, it's hard to push through obstacles on the path to Ithaca when Ithaca's existence is unconfirmed. This is what troubles the space movement now, we want to go to Ithaca, but we don't know what it is and the only way we will learn is traveling on the path to Ithaca. As soon as we have a reason to advance to the space age, it will be easy once again.
Now, the spot we are in on the intelligent species development chart, is where all others give up on space. We have to walk a path with no reasons to walk it, but, if we push past the point where we want to shut NASA down and burn down the shuttle, we will be an extraordinary species. This is also where species try to cheat at space and fail. One can not walk the path to Ithaca tentatively. One can not walk to path to Ithaca without investing the time to learn lessons and the common to acquire the items that enhance to path to Ithaca. They cheat with the space program which has less funds then what its people spend on beer. They cheat with a education system that fails at science, technology, engineering and math while expecting to enter the space age. This is why species fail to get past the space dip, this is why species fail to become spacefaring.
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This post is an idea that I couldn't really fit into my next post which will be Seth Godin's The Dip applied to the space movement and space habitation. But, this post has some of the same concepts. Is it appropriate to compare the poem Ithaca to humanity's path to becoming a spacefaring species?
Sources
Godin, Seth. The Dip. New York, Penguin Group, 2007.
Photo by Tambako the Jaguar
