Cold war and its impact on human exploration of Universe

After reading a wonderful book by one of most accomplished experimental Physicist Prof. Walter Lewin, I spent 2-3 days exploring our current knowledge about Universe. It was indeed a humbling experience. This pic of Hubble Ultra Deep Field is enough to make you feel how small and insignificant Earth, Sun and even Milky Way is  (Look I am not even talking about Me, My Family, Community and Country and we keep on fighting about these issues). While reading through wikipedia I noticed a thing which have started bothering me. I noticed that off late our investment in space exploration is declining. During cold war, both USA and USSR was in a race to explore the universe to gain an edge over the other. It helped the technology leepfrog to next level year after year, especially in space exploration. NASA invested billions of dollars to get man on Moon, sent missions to explore Jupiter, saturn and deep solar system. We are reaping the results even now in the form of Voyager missions which are still flying away from earth and are reaching to the limits of solar system (For those who do not know, this mission contained 2 spaceships launched in 1977 which are still active and have reached to the limits of solar system. One of the recent pics by Voyager 1). Hence many new techniques were invented which in turn gave birth to new fields of Science like X-Ray astronomy (Prof Lewine is one of most respected X Ray astronomer) and Gamma Ray Astronomy. These new fields were instrumental in extending our knowledge about some wonderful universal objects like Nebula, supernova and Black Holes.  

NASA consistently send so many unmanned and manned mission to increase knowledge of mankind about Universe. Even  academic astronomers were given easy money to explore. Most useful of the missions was Hubble telescope which enable us to see deep (as deep as 13 billion light year away) in to the universe. It was launched during fag end of cold war in 1990. Since end of cold war, space exploration has taken a backseat as there is no race to prove superiority. For decision makers (Politicians) political doles or unnecessary wars are more important than Space exploration. NASA is witnessing deep budget cuts and retiring its space vehicles as they are old and it is too expensive to replace them.

Indian Mission of Mars is a fresh air when most of other countries are cutting budgets or cancelling space missions. India’s frugal engineering is one of the reason behind it. But ISRO is at least 20 year behind NASA technically and India lag by 50 years in terms of availability of funds for space exploration. It may sound like a cynic but I wish to see another cold waresque race which may result in another golder period of technological advancement.

On a different note private organizations have pitched in to fill the hole created by lack of funding form Govt. side. Google is sponsoring a competition where participants have to send an unmanned mission on moon before 2015