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And fifty years later we still mope around in low earth orbit. Progress has slowed down a lot since the billionaires took over.
The reason why spaceflight stagnated for 50 years is because IT came in the middle of it.
All the smart people went to build computers instead of rockets, and now we have smartphones and the internet.
Now that IT is stagnating (enshittification), smart people will probably go back to spaceflight.
All the smart people went to build computers instead of rockets, and now we have smartphones and the internet.
I work in software, most of my peers are not spacefaring material. The issue is budget and ability/desire to do things that are bold instead of sending robots up there.
It’s easy to see why people thought we would be a lot more futuristic by now.
Orville Wright (of the Wright brothers) also only died 21 year prior and was able to fly on a jet before his death.
Imagine how much pressure that jet pilot was under. The guy who literally invented flying is your passenger
Eh, there were a dozen different guys that invented flight (or were close to it) around the same time. The Wright Brothers were just the ones to successfully defend their patent
The technology had just progressed to a point where fixed-wing flight was viable, so the invention became inevitable
Forget the moon. We’re all within a few generations of the first people who had access to indoor toilets on a mass scale.
India basically introduced toilets in a single generation.
According to this article, in 1993, 70.3% of the Indian population did not have access to toilets. By 2021, the number dropped to 17.8%. So literally more than half the population of India got access to toilets within 30 years.
And since then - We have found ways to make all travel worse for comfort, more expensive, and more necessary.
With internet, mobile phones, computers, travel seems to be way less necessary than before
