The Push to Space

Abstract

By the second half of the twentieth century the steady advance in the accuracy of stellar positions was running headlong into a number of essentially insurmountable barriers. Progress in telescopes and their instruments seen over the previous two or three centuries was running out of steam. Limited improvement in measuring star positions, in turn, obstructed further progress in fixing star distances and studying their space motions. For once, telescope size or optical quality were no longer the limiting factors. After two millennia of hard-won improvements, human ingenuity appeared to be finally barred by Nature’s innate complexity.

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.

Thomas Jefferson, Letters (1743–1826)