When it all went wrong

[james_davis_nicoll]

From a previous comment on my LJ:

I thought there was a significant contingent of politicians who feel most of the developments since [The development of agriculture/the Industrial Revolution/The Great Depression/Women's Lib/Etc (Pick one)] have been mistakes and that if only we could set the clock back, everything would be fine.

Or at least better than it is.

A Canadian example of a When It All Went Wrong (WIAWW) moment is the Avro Arrow, something that many Canadians are still bitching about (Mind you, Canada is a nation with a province whose motto is "Je me souviens," but none with the motto "No Use Crying Over Spilled Milk"). In fact, my father used to complain bitterly about the cancellation of the Arrow and not only was he not Canadian (until just before he died) but I don't think he was in Canada when the decision was made and he didn't work in aerospace. Complaining about the Arrow decision unites Canadians in one great mopey If Only.

Ken MacLeod chooses Sputnik as a moment when everything went wrong.

Is there any chance someone could offer up some links for Ken to use in his alt-history of space development that don't require him to cite a James P. Hogan essay? Yes, I saw the disclaimer in MacLeod's essay.

Comments

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

Thanks for linking to that James, I really really needed a laugh this morning.

Oh, wait - was that supposed to be serious?

>-----------<

Yah, the ongoing lovefest for Arrow is interesting - as an example how long a meme/myth can persist and how widely it can spread, while having only a loose connection with reality.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

The Arrow can never fail to meet our expectations. If it had been developed as planned, it almost certainly would have.

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

Ayup. And most people don't know that it wasn't 'developing as planned'. I wouldn't say the program was floundering - but there were significant problems.

Project Orion!

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

That's remarkably similar to the fate of every untried method of space propulsion.

[tsm-in-toronto.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that I agree that that's consistently the lament [insert suitable Scottish Ballad here]. From what I can tell, a considerable part of what is grieved about, is the loss of all the engineering talent (the bulk of whom, or so I have read, migrated off to the Benighted States of Murrica to put Apollo on the Moon, etc.), and, as important, the impression of being at the head of the aerospace pack. It's not the dumb jet, it's what it stood for.

It's sort of the way that Americans go scour the jungles of SEA looking for "MIAs" -- leaving aside the facts, whatever they may be, the semiotics of it is America looking around the jungles of the Mekong for an important part of Itself that it lost there, and has never been able to get back.

Well, I think essentially the same semiotics are at work in the Canadian collective psyche, when a bunch of us go dredge the bottom of Lake Ontario off Trenton in order to symbolically recapture What Might Have Been.

It's sort of like that moment in Riddley Walker (http://www.google.ca/search?q=ridley+walker), where they're wandering through the ruined power plant (I paraphrase):

Oh Wot We Was! Oh Wot We Mighta Bin!

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

If 'Americans' (as opposed to a small fringe subset thereof) did go scour the jungle, you'd have a point.

OTOH, I've had Canadians who weren't even born when Arrow was cancelled complain to me of what a great injustice it is. Most of the time without even prompting.