When the Soviets put up Sputnik and Gargarin, it was a tremendous blow to the American
ego. We developed an inferiority complex and we felt we had to prove ourselves. We
reacted by putting humans on the room. Then comfortable in our superiority, we slipped
back into complacency. If the Soviet Union had put humans on Mars, it would again be a
tremendous blow to the American ego. We would again have a need to prove ourselves
and we would have responded with the same vigor and passion that gave rise to the
Apollo program. The first half of the next century would have seen an explosion of
activity and construction throughout the inner solar system. There would have been
dozens of spacestations and spaceports orbiting the Earth, the Moon, and Mars. Ships
would continually be traveling between Earth and Mars. There would be established
dozens of lunar bases and a base on Mars. Humans would be living permanently on the
Moon and Mars. Probably, about half of this stuff would be American and half would be
Soviet. The Cold War, meaning the space race, would be the driving force behind this.
Just a few decades from now, in our life time, people would think it was normal for
humans to live on Mars. By 2050, those at the lunar and Martian bases would be
analogous to the settlers at Jamestown. We would have fulfilled our manifest destiny to
colonize the inner solar system. The inner solar system would have become the expanded
home of Humanity. Your children would think that civilization that's confined to its native
planet is primitive. Humanity has been delt a catastrophic blow. I believe in my heart that
as of now humans will not walk on Mars during the next one hundred years.
There has also been loss to the fields of physics, astrophysics, and cosmology.
Former Soviet physicists are been fired for lack of money. Are children in the new Russia
going to be motivated to pursue physics as a career? Who knows how our view of the
Universe would different in the future if we had access to the discoveries and theories they
would have made. We will never know how great the loss to physics has been. If Einstein
or Newton hadn't been born, people wouldn't be conscious of what they had lost.
I feel that in many ways, the Fall of the Soviet Union is analogous to the Fall of
Rome. The Romans conquered a vast territory and many peoples. They achieved a high
level of civilization. They accomplished monumental feats in areas of science, engineering,
architecture, and medicine. There was a great cultural Renaissance in literature and art. It
was a period of enlightenment and they were the driving force of civilization. Eventually,
however, the Roman Empire succumbed to political turmoil and chaos. Eventually, it
fractured into dozens of states populated and ruled by barbarians. There ensued a great
age of darkness. This is similar to what has happened in the Soviet Union. People that
express happiness over the end of the Soviet Union are unaware of the achievements of
the Soviet Union and that these achievements will not continue in the bankruptcy and
chaos of the new Russia or the post-Cold War world.
