Saturday, April 28, 2012

Analogy for Space: Aviation or Seafaring?

Airspacemag

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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