Why did literally every single non-dystopian sci-fi story dramatically overestimate the technological and scientific progress we'd achieve in the future?
ThankfulSnekFriend 
@ChristiJunior
It's hard to create all the backing infrastructure needed for space travel and human exploration with a non-White, immoral, and effeminate culture.
But beside that obvious answer, and besides the other hard science issues with much of space fantasy and softer sci-fi, there is the issue that most sci-fi authors severely underestimated how hostile space is to man. It was easier while the Space Race was in full swing to assume that artificial life lines would make any hospitable problems go away, but the results of the space race, plus latter long-term projects like Apollo-Soyuz, Mir, and the ISS, showed that it takes too much resources and financial costs per mission or project to seriously have people in space for the long periods of time needed for that older sci-fi vision. Micro-gravity sucks. Radiation sucks. Time of travel beyond Earth's orbit sucks. All the various astronomical objects, besides planet Earth, suck too in their own way. And again, those are in addition to the problems caused by an immoral people who let women and foreigners try to gain a glory that they cannot, let alone should not, try to attain.
The Moon is harsh mistress indeed.
It's hard to create all the backing infrastructure needed for space travel and human exploration with a non-White, immoral, and effeminate culture.
But beside that obvious answer, and besides the other hard science issues with much of space fantasy and softer sci-fi, there is the issue that most sci-fi authors severely underestimated how hostile space is to man. It was easier while the Space Race was in full swing to assume that artificial life lines would make any hospitable problems go away, but the results of the space race, plus latter long-term projects like Apollo-Soyuz, Mir, and the ISS, showed that it takes too much resources and financial costs per mission or project to seriously have people in space for the long periods of time needed for that older sci-fi vision. Micro-gravity sucks. Radiation sucks. Time of travel beyond Earth's orbit sucks. All the various astronomical objects, besides planet Earth, suck too in their own way. And again, those are in addition to the problems caused by an immoral people who let women and foreigners try to gain a glory that they cannot, let alone should not, try to attain.
The Moon is harsh mistress indeed.
@SuperSnekFriend @ChristiJunior Add in the Outer Space Treaty and there's not much incentive to do much in space besides science
@wgiwf @ChristiJunior
I guarantee you that within the next ten to twenty years, China, Russia, or India will attempt to "lawfully withdraw from" or outright break the treaty if only because they no longer see a point in letting a piece of paper restrict them from holding an very key advantage over other nations, especially against their enemies of the astronomically capable USA and Europe. Hell, Trump probably thought about brushing aside the treaty at certain points in the past eight years, thinking Reagan's failed SDI project was a good idea while creating a "Space Force" military branch and "rods from God" weapon project Trump is probably hoping will be expanded one day by a mix of Musk, other space-enthusiast businessmen, and his hopeful political successor.
That treaty was created and signed during a time when the main nations doing any serious space project was in the low single digits and nobody, not even those astronomical countries, wanted nukes flying overhead pointing downwards at the ready to blow everyone to Hell, a fear you could see in works like in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The USA and the Soviet Union saw themselves having some vague moral obligation to not escalate the build-up in a place nobody wanted either side to have hegemony over, and both having people that wanted space to be solely the venture of mankind's scientific and exploratory struggles, not militaristic. That time and world that created the treaty doesn't exist anymore.
That is one thing some of more sober sci-fi writers understood and got right is that unsanctified human nature won't deprive itself of violence when man thinks he can get away with violence, without any higher morality or higher spiritual motivation stopping his hostile desires. Pics semi-related.
I guarantee you that within the next ten to twenty years, China, Russia, or India will attempt to "lawfully withdraw from" or outright break the treaty if only because they no longer see a point in letting a piece of paper restrict them from holding an very key advantage over other nations, especially against their enemies of the astronomically capable USA and Europe. Hell, Trump probably thought about brushing aside the treaty at certain points in the past eight years, thinking Reagan's failed SDI project was a good idea while creating a "Space Force" military branch and "rods from God" weapon project Trump is probably hoping will be expanded one day by a mix of Musk, other space-enthusiast businessmen, and his hopeful political successor.
That treaty was created and signed during a time when the main nations doing any serious space project was in the low single digits and nobody, not even those astronomical countries, wanted nukes flying overhead pointing downwards at the ready to blow everyone to Hell, a fear you could see in works like in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The USA and the Soviet Union saw themselves having some vague moral obligation to not escalate the build-up in a place nobody wanted either side to have hegemony over, and both having people that wanted space to be solely the venture of mankind's scientific and exploratory struggles, not militaristic. That time and world that created the treaty doesn't exist anymore.
That is one thing some of more sober sci-fi writers understood and got right is that unsanctified human nature won't deprive itself of violence when man thinks he can get away with violence, without any higher morality or higher spiritual motivation stopping his hostile desires. Pics semi-related.
@SuperSnekFriend @wgiwf @ChristiJunior Weapons in space to attack land targets is fucking stupid unless you are trying to conquer an entire planet. Our missile systems are more than capable of delivering nuclear level payloads. Also a hell of a lot cheaper.
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@WhitestTemplar
Large fully reusable orbital rockets that can put 150 metric tons into orbit every day makes that assumption obsolete.
Earthbound hypersonic missiles have to wait for the aircraft carrier battle group to get within range, in order to easily pierce AEGIS. 10,000s of mass produced 7m Starlink-like busses with Rods-From-God can easily pierce AEGIS anywhere on Earth.
