Here’s a thought provoking quote I saw recently:
“Commercially very little is to be expected from either balloons
or flying machines. For passenger traffic the number carried will
be so small and the cost so great that no competition is possible
with existing modes of transit.” — Willis L. Moore, chief US
Weather Bureau, opening the International Aeronautical Congress, 1907.
It’s interesting to remember that there was a time when serious people could doubt whether air transportation would ever be anything more than a flash in the pan. Moore was quite right regarding balloons, but couldn’t have been more wrong about airplanes. I really wonder if people are going to look back in 100 years at the progress of space transportation, and find similarly silly pronouncements to poke fun at.
Of course, just because somebody really got things that far wrong in the past doesn’t automatically mean that similar pronouncements today will turn out equally fallacious. They did laugh at Christopher Columbus, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. But it is an interesting thought.
Jonathan Goff
Latest posts by Jonathan Goff (see all)
- On Avoiding Some of the Mistakes of Apollo - July 21, 2019
- SBIR Proposaling Advice - March 8, 2019
- FISO Telecon Lecture on LEO Propellant Depots for Interplanetary Smallsat Launch - November 28, 2018
I think he was off on the balloons too.
JP
http://www.jpaerospace.com
John,
Well hopefully you can change that in the future. I was just saying that as of now, derigibles are used for almost no passenger traffic (if any) compared to the modes of transportation that Moore was comparing it to.
~Jon
Another interesting place to look for amusing futurology is the age of aeronautical romanticism between the world wars.
The biggest difference is that aviation offered “the same, only faster” — as of 1903 there were already vast proven markets for inter-city mail, then passenger transport, and eventually — when costs had been driven down — tourism and premium cargo. (Two huge bursts of military aircraft procurement helped, too.)
By contrast, transport to space must bootstrap itself from a very small existing cargo market and from tourism.
No reason to think that can’t happen… but equally, no reason to think it will happen as fast in space as it did in aviation.
I’m staking my future career on the hope that they’re wrong. They won’t laugh at me…
They called me mad… But I’ll show them… BWAHAHAha