How did humans suddenly get this technology to travel to space?

Question

After all humans have been around for thousands and thousands of years, if not millions and in all that time had almost no technology. Where did this sudden burst in technological advances come from? I mean think about it. It wasn’t too long ago humans couldn't even fly and they didn't even have electricity. Where did this sudden surge of technology come from? And now there are trips to outer space like there are trips to the grocery store. Space travel has become routine. Sounds a little suspicious if you ask me.

Answer 1

Well, first of all you needed a metallurgy.

The progress with metals went through Bronze age, then an Iron age.

The industrial revolution in the late 18th century did not really get going until we learned how to make steel in a big way.

So, it's been an evolution in metals for which we owe a lot of things including cars, airplanes, trains and modern ships.

The thing is that once you had steel, for instance, you could build the machines that build the machines.

Steel is produced with ingredients that are not obvious and is not obtained simply my heating up ore and pouring off the molten metal. SO, once you have the secret, everything takes off.

Then once you had airplanes c1903, it is not a hard stretch to rockets, especially if you have a couple of world wars to get scientists motivated.

The fact is that you couldn't get to the moon with stone rockets, could you?

Answer 2

This sudden surge of technology came from the improvements in agriculture. After thousands of years of working on improving the farm, food production finally rose to the point where people could do other things besides try to find food. With more people that don't have to farm, there were more people that could spend their time and energy thinking and inventing. This led to the massive amount of technological advance that we have experienced in the past 200 years. Also, the population of the Earth has increased dramatically. This also leads to advancement as there are more people which means more ideas.
Space travel, by the way, is actually a pretty simple idea. It is basically a chunk of metal with a person inside strapped on top of a really big bomb. This leads to problems, but is the basic idea of today's rockets. The chemical reactions involved are nothing new, and explosions created by humans have been around for thousands of years.

Answer 3

The technology for space travel was seeded by the discovery of how to harness electricity, and an accurate understanding of aerodynamics and propulsion.

You can trace the path of the development step by step, there are no secrets, humans worked hard and put a lot of thought into getting into space.

"We all stand on the backs of giants"

This means that a few brilliant people will come along and think up things that no one else has, and the rest of us, while we didn't have the ability to think it up, we had the ability to quickly learn the concept. You see this with writing. Writing in some form or another is thought to have been around for at least 7000 years, possibly longer, yet there are cultures in which it didn't exist until recently, such as the Navajo culture. It wasn't that reading and writing were beyond them, someone just had to introduce them to the idea. They were well familiar with symbolism.

The same is true of Newton's kinematics equations, algebra, and just about anything else.

Humans have a very impressive brain, don't under estimate it.

Answer 4

Mathematical physics.

Newton. Maxwell. Ampere. Galileo. etc

Before them Archimides Pythagoras Euclid etc.

Mathematical physics has been in development for thousands of years, and we were pretty terrible at it until about 4/500 years ago. But once we got good at it, we really got good at it. It's like learning to walk. At first you're retarded and just flop around the ground, then you can move anywhere your will takes you. Before you know it you're running and the world is yours.

Newton realized that rockets could be used to travel space almost 400 years ago. That's a development that hardly took place overnight.

Lastly, I'll say that it only looks suspicious if you don't examine closely the intellectual history of the ideas that lead to the technologies. Once you do that you realize that all that we take for granted is the result of the arduous and continuous labor of many great men over millenia. And also you'll realize how much promise there is for future development.

Answer 5

It took a lot of hard work if you ask me. In the 1950's we were racing against the Russians to get to the moon first, so it was not man's desire to go, it was political I'm afraid. The budget that n.a.s.a received was in the hundreds of millions of dollars, so in today's money adjusting for inflation it would be in the billions of dollars. So the influx of money and the pressure to beat the Russians at any cost, we came up with some great innovations that we still use today in the world. Today n.a.s.a gets only millions of dollars to work with, it is underfunded for sure. But if your trying to say that some aliens gave use this technology, then your crazy. Man has only been around for 1.2 million years and has only recently modernized the world, if you look at the dinosaurs they were around for over 300 million years, so we are new on the block and have only begone to evolve.

Answer 6

We got the technology from war. The most important war that jump started our technology was WW2. It started space travels and the science of rockets. There were many other wars too like the Civil War, The Gulf War, and WW1. They all were bad but they were also good in a way. Canned foods, airplanes, computers, and much more were all invented by wars. Wars are bad in some ways, but also good in other ways.

Answer 7

The rise of computer power, namely processing power. Moores Law explains the limitations, primarily with heat sources - but the expodential increase is directly attributed to our technological advances. The next 25 years will be nothing like today, technologically speaking and considering the amount of money and people dedicated to technology today - the results are expected.

Answer 8

It was the Wizard of Oz. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.There have been several references to "The Fallen" and the "Watchers" "Shape shifters" and the like. "The wheel" was a representation of what they saw. A flying saucer or flying wheel. That is why the so called serpent tempted man with knowledge to teach about sciences and the laws of nature and "self" It would seem that there were some arguments between these people as to how to teach us and still respect them. I read this somewhere and just remembered it. Maybe it was a comic book.?

Answer 9

Well it came from good old American know how..... as provided by good old Americans like Dr. Werner Von Braun....he was Nazi Germany's best rocket guy. When the war started to go bad for Hitler in 1944 Werner packed up his stuff and headed for the American lines, figuring we would be more amenable than the Russkies. He was right! We put him in charge of building rockets for NASA. The surge in technology you referred to came from the same place it usually does, warfare! WWII was a boon to science and technology around the globe. People work harder when they think their way of life is at stake.

Answer 10

When germany started building rockets for ww2. After the ww2, USA and russia started using the same technology to shoot each other until some scientiist decided to send monkeys, rats and dogs into space to see if the idea of spacecraft works.

since then, humans been sent up.....the rest is history.