Whatever happened to space?

On April 12, 50 years ago, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to journey in space. Vostok’s orbit was indeed one giant loop for mankind and one that firedthe imagination of a whole generation.

The flame went on to become a rage in 1969, when Neil Armstrong took his own first small step.

Half a century on, I’m not sure where all the excitement has gone. To say that the anniversary of Gagarin’s flight has gone by unnoticed would be to over-egg the pudding. The colonel was there somewhere, rubbing epaulettes with Prince William and Kate’s favoured confectioner.

Still, his exploit did not seem to excite people all that much. My gut feeling is that space and space exploration have quite lost the plot as far as public interest is concerned.

Gagarin and even Armstrong are no longer seen as the pioneers of a new age. Rather, they’ve slipped out of heart and mind as historical one-offs. I would actually be surprised if I met a teenager today who knew, let along cared, who Gagarin was.

Admittedly, I have little to go by except my intuition. I have not seen any systematic research or surveys, nor do I imagine that Malta – where space exploration has always come second to more important projects – is the ideal place to generalise about the matter in hand.

But I still would not resist the temptation to indulge in some time travel of my own. For want (not really) of an earlier standard of comparison I propose the late 1970s, which is where my childhood memories come from.

How, if at all, did space exploration (generously defined, as will soon become clear) figure in the imagination of a boy growing up in Malta at the time?

Fellow salt-and-peppers will remember the daily appointments with Space 1999 and the adventures of the inhabitantsof Moonbase Alpha as they toured alien civilisations and physics-bending phenomena.

Star Trek and Star Wars catered for a somewhat more discerning audience I suppose but the basic idea was the same throughout: space travel was the ultimate frontier and would produce endless and astonishing curiosities.

Earlier generations had read Verne and Wells and later played with fantastical tin toys in the 1950s and 1960s. On our part we spent obscene amounts of time drawing robots and ‘spaceships’.

It didn’t stop at childhood fiction. Every once in a while I used to write letters to NASA begging them for ‘material’ (posters, stickers, and such) for our ‘school projects’. I still havesome of that stuff boxed away somewhere.

The year 1999 seemed improbably distant back then but there was a real sense, at least among children, that space was the future and its exploration the next big thing. Put in adult wordiness I’d say space for us meant the pinnacle of technological progress. And we all wanted to be astronauts.

All of that is now a foreign land. I was intrigued the other day to overhear a four-year old tell his grandmother he wanted to be an astronaut when he was ‘big’ and she was dead. It turned out his reasoning had nothing to do with adventure and exploration, but rather with a cunning plan to bring her back to earth. Rather sad, I thought.

I can think of many reasons why space no longer matters very much. First, the heroic journeys and first small steps are a thing of the past. True, every once in a while India or some such nation comes up with a plan to put people on the moon by someoptimistic date.

That seems dated, laughable even. Scientists, it seems, have figured that space probes and so on work better than men and much better than dogs (with apologies to the memory of Laika). Except in the public imagination stakes, where nothing beats good old-fashioned boots on cosmic soil.

Second, it has been a while since space exploration (actual flight I mean, rather than telescopes and terrestrial instruments) last told us anything remotely exciting. It is usually some recycled yawn about the possibility of ice some kilometres beneath the surface of Mars. The general impression is, there really is nothing worth shaking hands (or is it claws?) with out there after all.

Third, space travel is no longer caught up in what we might call ‘civilisation politics’. The space race may have had its unpleasant sides but it also meant we could really identify with the Soviet Sputniks and their classically-named rivals. Civilisation politics and rhetoric are now downto burqas and beards, cheaperto procure but infinitely less exciting.

Fourth, we have learned to look for technological progress in places other than outer space. It’s right here under my fingers as I type. A 10-year old growing up in 2011 probably fantasises about 3D and terabytes, rather than crash landings on unknown planets.

This is where it gets nostalgic. I’ve just finished reading a biography of Humboldt, the 19th century hero-wizard who climbed mountains, sketched unexplored regions, and tracked down uncontacted peoples who ate strange things.

The combination of travel, discovery, and understanding I could well recognise from my own childhood sketching aliens and hitching rides on Captain Koenig’s craft.

I feel rather sorry for that four-year-old whose space extends to uploads and graphics. Put it this way: between Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey and James Cameron’s 2009 Avatar, I know which film better feeds our curiosity.

mafalzon@hotmail.com