excerpts
- Space flight has very little in common with aviation; it is much closer in spirit to ocean voyaging – Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible, Harper and Row, New York, 1963.
- From the beginning of the Space Age in 1957, spaceflight and rocket development has had a strong association with aviation, particularly the military variety.
- The analogy of manned spaceflight to aviation (at least in the first fifty years of spaceflight) is not altogether inappropriate.
- The template for aviation has some resonating parallels in manned spaceflight. The pilot’s objective is to complete the assigned mission and return to base.
- A navy has a different operational style. Sea voyages can last many weeks or months, even years. Navies can travel to any distant land, anchor off shore and explore it at length
- In contrast to its parallels with aviation, space has yet to show much correspondence with seafaring. But we should begin to think in such terms
- John F. Kennedy (a former naval officer) did call space “this new ocean.”
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