Space exploration isn't a big vote winner, unless we're talking about Cape Canaveral and Houston. And on this occasion Biden is projected so far ahead of Trump in Florida that comparatively few votes around the margins won't matter. It's not a close-run thing. Yet, in 2000, it could have mattered. Ditto for 2004 and, yegads, 2016. For the Republicans, even if candidates give zero hoots about "the science" (as per a certain someone), they are not blind to how space plays to their base and the GOP-curious. For the American right, US technological prowess is inseparable from the selling of its global dominance to domestic audiences. Superiority in all areas is what makes America great and triumphant, and the suspicion among millions of voters, assiduously cultivated by the right and the Trump campaign, was the Democrats allowed this might to be frittered away - a perspective with enough truthiness for those in the mid-west to swallow it in significant enough numbers. Space also has particular resonances in American nationalism, and not just because NASA "won" the space race by popping 12 astronauts on the Moon. The idea of the manifest destiny, of expanding into the frontier and cementing America from sea to shining sea is deeply embedded in national mythology. It justified the near extermination of its native peoples, endows the US with a global civilising mission (always handy when certain interests require military reinforcement), and is also responsible for the romantic allure of the frontier and the popular cultural celebration of rugged individualism and lawlessness. Zombie culture and survivalist video games are not unrelated to this mythologising.
Space exploration is inseparable from the manifest destiny. The frontier becomes the final frontier, and the old goal of opening up the West and colonising the continent is projected upwards and outwards to the bodies beyond the Earth. It's writ backwards in the past too - the essentialist hoohah of the human urge to explore is NASA's rewriting of our species' story, with back edits of our a priori natures with jarring inserts of Americana consciousness. To stay on top and assert power, America's got to be the first back to the Moon, the first to set up a permanent presence, the first to Mars and, well, anywhere else you care to mention. It's a matter of national pride, a matter of America embodying the primordial urge to expand and settle, and also of securing markets of the future.
While the American right happily annex space exploration to their national project, it's bizarre the Democrats are sanguine witht his state of affairs. They're not the "B Team" of American capitalism in the same way social democrats and labour parties are (or were) almost everywhere else. Thanks to the peculiar character of US politics and its two main political parties, the Democrats occasionally reflect popular politics around progressive issues and can, under certain circumstances, be forced to run leftist candidates - theoretically all the way to presidential level. Simultanouesly, the party bigwigs are as establishment as they come. The Democrats are as invested in American dominance as the GOP are, and many of their foreign policy criticisms of Trump - particularly during the North Korea detente - attack him from the right.
Here then is the great dilemma. From a vote point of view, there is nothing to be lost from talking up space. Indeed, from the perspective of winning votes, leaving ceding the field to the Republicans helps cement their authenticity as custodians of national pride and ultimately America's mission itself. Nor are the Democrats squeamish about projecting US power, and invoking the idiotics of patriotism when deemed necessary. It was their martyred hero, John F Kennedy who was responsible for the Moon shot while the GOP under Nixon wound the Apollo programme down, and if protecting American assets mean militarising space, Trump's Space Force will be given the teeth it asks for. Why then do the Democrats de-prioritise space exploration and, to all intents and purposes, gift it to the GOP as one of their wedge issues? It's not often glaring enigmas can be found in politics, but here's one of them.
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" On the one hand we have Trump looking forward to new crewed Moon landings in 2024, while all Biden has said ... "We support NASA's work to return Americans to the Moon and go beyond to Mars, taking the next step in exploring our solar system." The space programme doesn't even merit a mention in the Democrats' manifesto documents."
ReplyDeleteI'm old enough to have watched the first Moon landing. In the next few years, the Sunday papers were full of stories about how Moon colonies were going to be established, and how the newly emerging joint ventures between Russia and the US in space were going to lead to manned journeys to Mars in the 1980's.
Well the joint US-Russian activity did lead to the development of the ISS, but far from creating Moon colonies even the existing Moon landings were abandoned, whilst 40 years on, there is less expectation of an imminent Manned mission to Mars than there was in the 1970's.
It will not happen, nor the Moon colonies, because the problems of overcoming cosmic radiation are too great, and even for state's the financial benefits from doing so too small, and too distant. JFK's speech was simply a response to the fact that in almost every sphere the US was falling behind the USSR, especially in space. Its only today that the financial benefits of space technology, in near Earth orbit are being achieved, a 60 year turnover time, for the capital invested, in the shape of profits from satellites, and the systems attached to them.
For Trump speeches about Moon landings fulfil the same role as his comments about a COVID vaccine being imminent. Its all bullshit.
" It was their martyred hero, John F Kennedy who was responsible for the Moon shot while the GOP under Nixon wound the Apollo programme down"
ReplyDeleteIts worth considering why, in relation to your overall thesis. After the first moon landing, TV audiences for the next landings dropped successively. Interest in them had virtually disappeared amongst the US public, as concern over their costs, as economic crisis loomed took its place. Audiences only returned with the drama of Apollo 13. But other than for the subsequent movie, that drama also had a short-term effect, and interest again quickly dissipated.
Attention shifted to other more lucrative ventures.
I must admit I always thought that space exploration was a liberal cause celebre, something smart people just had to be seen endorsing, I mean it positively reeks the civilising mission. I never knew they were so down on it and that the right were so up on it. I can't imagine a British rightist being so enthustiastic of space travel, for example jon gaunt saying we must reach Mars by 2050. Though the right may say that to contrast with 'backward' Muslim countries for example.
ReplyDeleteI personally don't know what the rush is, we have a few million years before the Sun heats the Earth up right? If so that gives us plenty of time to develop the necessary technology, if such technology is even possible of course. I was reading one cosmologist who doubted humanity would ever leave the solar system, let alone set up home on the nearest habitable star, wherever that might be.
We need to get our shit together down here before we can head off into the stars!
Who knows maybe China might prove to be more reliable in this regard, ask Mystic Boffy to get his crystal ball out and tell us when we will settle on Mars.
"For Trump speeches about Moon landings fulfil the same role as his comments about a COVID vaccine being imminent. Its all bullshit."
This made me chuckle!
Is Boffy still proposing herd immunity for Covid, is he still proposing that Covid is just like seasonal flu? Is he still proposing the NHS were advising lazy people to phone their helplines?
Compared to Boffy Trump has been the very picture of reason when it comes to Covid!
Maybe one day Mystic Boffy will tell us why he thought, before the army of data scientists and virologists and other specialists had a chance to look, that Covid antibodies did not decrease over time.
of course we now know Boffy was wrong and that antibodies decrease alarmingly quickly and that Herd Immunity, to quote, "has been blown out of the water".
is this just a Mystic Boffy prediction that went wrong or did his neo liberalism get the better of him? Is this how Mystic Boffy is coming up with his genocidal Covid plans, were the tea leaves telling him antibodies did not decrease over time?
Finally, any time Mystic Boffy wants to provide carty with that ip answer feel free.
There's an interesting 2018 thread on Twitter from David Fickling, about how the history of the Austronesian expansion – they were the most widespread cultural group on the planet prior to Europe's Age of Discovery, stretching from Madagascar to Rapa Nui – and of the Soviet colonization of Siberia, suggest that space colonization is unlikely to be in our future.
ReplyDelete