| ID | 135160 |
| Title Proper | Power of analogies for advancing space scientific knowledge |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Launius, Roger D |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | It is a truism that every person in every organization ever created uses history to make decisions on a daily basis. This is essentially accomplished through the use of analogy, suggesting that some issue under current scrutiny is like, may be compared to, or otherwise is related to some historical example. Understanding what happened in those past, analogous instances therefore serves a valuable purpose in considering what to do in the present. The difficulties of analogs, however, are that they are routinely poorly applied to considerations of policies, priorities, and decision making which might effectively be informed by careful analog studies. Unfortunately, most uses of historical understanding are implicit, relying on personal anecdotes and employing faulty logic in the comparison. We have certainly seen this in the context of issues concerning the exploration of the space frontier since virtually the beginning of the space age. These range from analogs comparing modern cruise ship vacations and future space tourism to using the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union of the 1960s as an analog to predict a similar space race between the United States and China. |
| `In' analytical Note | Astropolitics vol. 12, 2-3 (01/Aug/02014) |
| Journal Source | Astropolitics Vol: 12 No 2-3 |
| Standard Number | United States – US |