Poll: Mankind's Progress in Outer Space

Rate Mankind's Progress in Space

  • Are we there yet?

    Votes: 27 21.8%
  • Somewhat Behind

    Votes: 79 63.7%
  • Right on Schedule

    Votes: 9 7.3%
  • Somewhat Ahead

    Votes: 6 4.8%
  • ASB: We should not be this far along

    Votes: 3 2.4%

  • Total voters
    124
Another question is "Ahead or behind" of what?

I assumed it meant of all possible histories, probably starting from PODs after 1900, say.

Nazis V2s in our TL really, REALLY pushed us forward, although we've slacked off hugely in the last 30 or so years.


If it meant 'from where we should have been', well then we're behind.

You assumed incorrectly. My very post stated that the poll was referring to our current state of progress in space. Not our current state based upon all possible histories.
 
I'm curious about those of you who voted for "Are we there yet?" as well as the ones who picked the ASB option. My take on the "Are we there yet?" option was that we are very under developed with are space faring capabilities. So what are those of you who picked that option thinking?
 
Well I didn't vote that, but I suspect it was due to the fact that it took less than a generation to go from some rather inaccurate NAZI missiles to landing a man on the moon. Then things went nowhere more-or-less. Instead of making better and better heavy lift vehicles, money was poured into a project (the shuttle) that was late, overly-complex, over-budget, and couldn't perform up to anything like its specification originally intended.
 
Nasa should have been funded equally with the military (which owuld make their current budgets 300 billion a piece). I'd love to see what we'd have achieved with that kind of funding - Mars bases, probably, multiple missions to every gas giant, A Europa lander and submersible, probably a nuclear fission rocket dramatically speediness up interplanetary travel. Spinoff benefits owuld have made space tourism a reality for over a decade now, with costs beginning to be affordable to the middle class.
 
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