this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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Space travel is not guaranteed in the history of humanity. The capitalists had little interest in conquering the space. In fact, space programs would have been extensively delayed or even neglected had it not for the Russians and the Soviet space program.
Human space travel had its roots in the philosophy of Russian cosmism of the 19th century (e.g. N. Fyodorov), who believed that at the rate of technological advancements they had experienced at the turn of the century, human livelihoods would soon be improved to such an extent that Earth’s resources would be depleted and the planet itself would become over-populated.
Fyodorov’s disciple K. Tsiolkovsky envisioned that a solution to the problem would be for humanity to leave Earth and colonize the stars, and started to research the feasibility of space rockets that would allow humanity to travel through the stars.
Rather surprisingly, the roots of human space travel had little to do with colonization, imperialism or resource extraction.
An ardent supporter of the Bolshevik Revolution, Tsiolkovsky believed that the inevitability of socialism would soon make such advancements become reality, and if that were to be the case, humanity would really need to explore the outer spaces for new homes to live.
His work on rocketry would influence the pioneers of the 20th century space programs: Robert Goddard and Hermann Oberth, the American and German pioneers in rocketry, respectively, as well as an entire generation of Soviet rocket scientists (S. Korolev and V. Glushko, for example). The Soviet space program would make Tsiokovsky’s dream become a reality.
Suffice to say, if it weren’t for the Sputnik moment in 1957, NASA would likely never be formed and space rocketry gained such momentum and received such generous funding by the government. Despite the fact that they had obtained the entire German V-2 rocket team, the development of space rocketry/intercontinental ballistic missiles wasn’t that much prioritized until the Soviets raced ahead of them.