Back in 1963, the Soviet Union and the US were going flat out in the space race. Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin had given the Soviet Union an impressive lead. But 快猫短视频 was not taking sides. We had long argued that cooperation in space, not confrontation, would lead to the greatest achievements. And no lesser individual than Bernard Lovell, director of the giant Jodrell Bank radio telescope near Manchester, UK, had just returned from the usually secretive Soviet Union with much the same message.
In our , he reported that M. V. Keldysh, president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, had told him 鈥渜uite explicitly that鈥� the right way to proceed鈥� was to have international agreement among world scientists about the desirability and value of a lunar landing鈥�.
That this failed to happen is now a matter of record and possibly of regret. Instead, the Soviets and Americans raced each other to the moon and, by 1971, everybody was bored with the whole affair. , we reported that Apollo 15 would soon deliver the fourth consignment of humans to the moon鈥檚 surface 鈥搕hough the first with a truly scientific mission. Nonetheless, we still held disdain for crewed landings, stating that the Soviet Union had come round even further to the view that 鈥渁utomatic craft show more potential鈥�.
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Having lost the race, they would have said that. 快猫短视频 was convinced, though, adding that automatic probes do 鈥渘ot have to cope with the restrictions and complexities of manned activity鈥�.
Neither Skylab, the space shuttle nor Mir could persuade us otherwise. As late as 21 July 1990, when we wrote about 鈥�Surviving radiation in space鈥�, we were concerned about the well-being of space hardware, not astronauts. 鈥淭he CRRES mission was crucial,鈥� we said, 鈥渋t will discover which type of electronic components are safe to use in orbit.鈥� That was more like it: protect the machines and leave the humans firmly on the ground.