2001 is a very evocative year, for the ones who pay attention to the scientific and cultural progress of humanity. Infact we are at the appointment given, more than 30 years ago, by two great visionaries: Stanley Kubrick and Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Also the large media tuned themselves on this special anniversary, giving wide reports that could cotribute to open, within the large public opinion, the debate on space-themes for sure and, even if in a still hesitant way, about astronautics.
Technologies of Frontier appreciates very much such initiatives. Nevertheless we notice that, generally, they claim the rational west thought, alone, as parent and incubator of the future. Though we can most agree, in general terms, on this opinion, we owe to disagree about the method. If the western society doesn’t “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar”, we’ll run the risk to cut off all the ones (and surely they are not few) that in the industrial age were moved from genuine solidaristic ethic aims, from the great action of building the new-humanistic thought. Upon the subject, we owe to realize that the democratic West was not alone in the race to Space. Then, once failed the competitor, the free-trade West is taking too much time to realize that, in order to continue, ethic rationals are necessary, more than economic rationals. Among the founders fathers of astronautics a Russian name stands out: Konstantin Tsiolkovskij, author, in the first period of the last century, of the famous sentence: ”Earth is the cradle of Humanity, but a man cannot live the whole life in a cradle”. And on 12th April 2001 recurs the 40th anniversary of the first space flight, made by the soviet Yuri Gagarin.
The merits of people, that, though working under not democratic and authoritarian regimes – and we owe to include the German scientists which worked under Hitler too, transferred to USA at the end of second world war — gave humanity very important results, however shall not be hidden. It is not useless, furthermore, to remind to democracy, a widely imperfect government system (but up to nowadays the less worst one) of its many limits as a sponsor of scientific research and, even more, as impulse maker, to open the great frontiers.
Infact we attend more and more, in our post-industrial societies, to the union of research with short-terms profit, with often ruinous results (see mad cows, dioxin-milk, noxious waste, ecc..)
It is now time to aim for a fair longer–terms profit, opening real and lasting horizons of development, and the space frontier is one of this, perhaps the most important, to which we must give a real acceleration. In fact it’s a duty of the present generations to recover the lost time and to decide about wining the gravitational well. We shall do it by means of the current political and technological tools, also boosting the space activities more open to private investors.
TDF (http://www.tdf.it/) wants this year to remind and celebrate the 40th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight, with initiatives of outreach and public manifestations that we are working to.
[UdP TDF - TDF 1/2001 - 21/01/2001]