imagine the perspective of an average Russian person around 50 years old in 1971. They watched the country being mostly farmland, get rapidly industrialized, then go to space. Then people were walking on the moon. We have the gift of hindsight, but they didn’t. It all seemed like developments happening at a breakneck pace. Only 12 years separates the launch of sputnik and Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon. Extrapolate that out another 50 years and you could easily imagine going to Jupiter or whatever.
I get a certain degree of utopian optimism. But “oh man, if only the USSR were still around we’d have light speed human transit by the mid-90s” is a step removed from insisting we should have Time Travel by now.
I’m not saying it was realistic or that it would have happened if the USSR were still around. I’m saying what the perspective of an average person uninvolved in any of the processes would have been. Of course they would have been overly optimistic.
imagine the perspective of an average Russian person around 50 years old in 1971. They watched the country being mostly farmland, get rapidly industrialized, then go to space. Then people were walking on the moon. We have the gift of hindsight, but they didn’t. It all seemed like developments happening at a breakneck pace. Only 12 years separates the launch of sputnik and Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon. Extrapolate that out another 50 years and you could easily imagine going to Jupiter or whatever.
No you can’t, because speed of R&D isn’t the same thing as speed of travel.
You’re just doing this shit
I get a certain degree of utopian optimism. But “oh man, if only the USSR were still around we’d have light speed human transit by the mid-90s” is a step removed from insisting we should have Time Travel by now.
I’m not saying it was realistic or that it would have happened if the USSR were still around. I’m saying what the perspective of an average person uninvolved in any of the processes would have been. Of course they would have been overly optimistic.