At 19:50:00 UTC July 15, 1975, Soyuz-19 flew out of the Baikonur cosmodrome (Kazakhstan); Seven hours later, the Apolo-18 did the same from the space center of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (Florida). Inside, respectively, two astronauts and three astronauts were going to change – even briefly – international relations Cold War And the course of the then “Space Race”: Alexay Lenov, Valerie Kuvasov, Tom Stafford, Wence Brand and Delainton. Its goal, attach two ships in the first joint project of the USSR and the United States away from the Earth.
For this day it has passed in fifty years, many things have changed. The fall of the USSR had the consequences that we still suffer, because, despite the fact that socialism was not limited to Soviet experience, its disappearance collapsed the ideal of an alternative system for capitalism and, since this ideal was not reformulated (as Alain Badiu offers, for example, in, for example, in Observations of the disorientation of the world), Humanity ended where we are today: at dawn, cyberpunk -discord near the works of William Gibson (NeuromantIN Accelerated monalisetc.) or, saving the distance, Richard Morgan (Market laws), with megacorporations that control the policy and information and government in the service of megacorporations. There is not a single aspect of the social and political relations of our time, which is not subject to the dynamics of the destruction of the general good, which in the brightest plane is a massive transmission of income in favor of a handful of the rich. And, of course, space is also unsafe.
If the beneficiaries of this process expire the seriousness of the States every day, if their legs do not stop or in matters that are as important for the majority as housing and poverty, it is obvious that the seriousness of our planet will not accept any obstacles when they have technical means they need. Cases of SpaceX and Blue Origin are only the beginning of what will happen. International Cosmos Treaties (primarily 1967) is clearly against their privatization and national appropriation of celestial bodies, but with the usual value of fundamental rights in political constitutions: wet paper. As JG Ballard said (they start The immersed world) There is nothing so decisive as the “vast commercial empires” that move gigantic amounts of money throughout the balloon and “at the speed of light” (magazine Seconds1996). In fact, the only thing that still prevents them from imposing their law on the path of stars is that, so to speak, brick and speculation are more profitable than the development of power and vital service systems.
In an interview SecondsBallard said that the cosmic era did not last fifteen years, considering the “first flight of Gagarin.” The forecasts of science fiction were as successful in social networks as misleading with space travel. However, this was not a situation when in 1969 NASA members and the Academy of Sciences of Ursa came into contact to prepare a joint mission; Partly, because the first one wanted to prevent Richard Nixon to reduce the budget of the American agency. Three years later, Aleksai Kosigin and Nixon himself signed an agreement on cooperation for “research and use of ultra-resour space for peaceful purposes”, included in the Apolo-Union experimental program; Six years later, on July 17, 1975, two ships were connected without problems after Leonov reported to Stafford to say: “Tom, do not forget his engine, please”, referring to the front engines of Apollo, which could damage the union if he forgot to turn it off (PartnershipEdward Clinton and Linda Neumann).
“Instead of dealing with the Cold War, we care about cooperation – Valerie Kovasov will say. This cooperation will be suspended and not renewed until the end of the 1980s (with international missions of the world, the Soviet space station), is separate. Purchase TensionSings Meat Suple -spolles, which were mistakes that arose in the “protection” that were errors. The expensive and almost advertising program of ferries has stopped the evolution of the process, which at that time was fundamental – public, in the sense that it was strictly dependent on government agencies.
In principle, for those who are concerned about the true project, such as the growing complexity of survival in increasingly unfair societies, it may seem that external space is a story outside their interests; It was also necessary to conquer America to our analogues of the 16th century, although this conquest was originally not in the hands of the rich, but the poor. However, the problem of space is no less; Even in the direction criticized Kurt Vonnegut (Lean Five Matadero) When he said, referring to the mission of Apollo 11, that “with such an amount of money, the smallest he can make (NASA) is to open God” (CBS eventing News1969). There, Vonnegut was not in order, still in appearance: he forgot, almost like the USSR, that our species needs more than an improvement in material conditions; And he forgot how many people, that not investments in a spatial investigation, which damage the essential conditions of people, and that, in any case, the question is different: regardless of whether it is completely changed or not, and if these are governments or large companies that take the cat into the water.
When the Union-19 and Apolo-18 were connected, the majority of the population believed that the history of mankind is necessarily an ascending line. In fact, it was never once, and so much so that it begins to ask questions while the ban on placing weapons in our orbit, as if a “technical error” (Kuvasov. Soviet life1989) to call a disaster. Someone would say that we are destined to be Stupid donkeys (1957) from Isaac Asimov, but we are not at all. We must only restore the spirit of the 1975 mission and remember, as the 1967 International Treaty says in the preamble, that “the study and use of the ultra -open space should be carried out for the good of all peoples” and regardless of “degree of economic and scientific development”.