Certainly they were – Willy Ley’s book on space travel was very popular. There was a wel-illustrated and famous article in, I think, Colliers’ magazine on the future of space travel (with illustrations by Chesley Bonestell), and Destination Moon came out with a script by Robert Heinlein. This was all before 1955, and was pretty mainstream, not SF-fan stuff.
On TV, Walt Disney’s TV show Disneyland devoted three episodes to the future of space flight, with models, animation, dramatizations, and lectures by Werner von Braun, Willy Ley, and others. This was all well before Sputnik.
The point of the excitement over Sputnik wasn’t that Americans weren’t interested in space – it was that they thought space travel was so high-tech (and the Russians technologically so backward) that they were flabbergasted that the Russians got there first.
Environmentalism in the sense of conservation and clean air was well underway in the 1950s but not the absurd ultra animal rights movement and the anti-scientific opposition to nuclear power plants and offshore drilling.
What is anti-scientific about opposition to offshore drilling? Offshore drilling itself may be relatively safe, but marine transport of oil is certainly not.
The concept of using graduated speeds for parallel moving walkways was first built at the 1893 Exposition Universelle in Paris.[sup]1[/sup] Its first appearance in science fiction was in A Story of the Days To Come (1897) and When The Sleeper Wakes (1899) by H.G. Wells.[sup]2[/sup]
Well we have to take risks don’t we. And I think a few fishes and/or sea mammals killed are worth the price of energy independence and several thousands of more jobs.
Repealing all offshore drilling bans would increase US production by about 7% over the next 20 years. That would account for approximately one third of the current gap between US production and consumption - though probably less than half of what the gap will be in 20 years.
Hardly “energy independence”.
In any case, it doesn’t matter what you think a few fishes and/or sea mammals are worth, does it? Gulf of Mexico drilling projects and shipping currently spill between 2,000 and 5,000 barrels of oil per year. That doesn’t include nearly 10 million gallons spilled as a result of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. If you think 2,000 barrels of oil kills “a few fishes”, I suggest you go and visit a drilling operation yourself.
Thousands of new oil jobs won’t look much good when fisheries are laying off thousands, you know.
We all thought we would get to the moon, but nobody predicted we would have it on TV.
I am sure we must have thought the Detroit Lions would win a championship. Wrong .
I don’t think anybody would think sports would become so big.
I am, to some degree. I grew up in the 50s. Where’s my personal helicopter? Where’s my jetpack or my flying car? Where’s the functional moonbase that acts as a hub to the other planets?
