Many of these changes were facilitated by improvements in transport and communications. Transport developments have for the most part continued those well established in the early 20th century. The automobile proceeded in its phenomenal growth in popularity, causing radical changes in many of the patterns of life, although the basic design of the motorcar has remained unchanged. The airplane, benefiting from jet propulsion and a number of lesser technical advances, made spectacular gains at the expense of both the ocean liner and the railroad. However, the growing popularity of air transport brought problems of crowded airspace, noise, and airfield siting.

World War II helped bring about a shift to air transport: direct passenger flights across the Atlantic were initiated immediately after the war. The first generation of transatlantic airliners were the aircraft developed by war experience from the Douglas DC-3 and the pioneering types of the 1930s incorporating all-metal construction with stressed skin, wing flaps and slots, retractable landing gear, and other advances. The coming of the big jet-powered civil airliner in the 1950s kept pace with the rising demand for air services but accentuated the social problems of air transport. The solution to these problems may lie partly in the development of vertical takeoff and landing techniques, a concept successfully pioneered by a British military aircraft, the Hawker Siddeley Harrier. Longer-term solutions may be provided by the development of air-cushion vehicles derived from the Hovercraft, in use in the English Channel and elsewhere, and one of the outstanding technological innovations of the period since 1945. The central feature of this machine is a down-blast of air, which creates an air cushion on which the craft rides without direct contact with the sea or ground below it. The remarkable versatility of the air-cushion machine is beyond doubt, but it has proved difficult to find very many transportation needs that it can fulfill better than any craft already available. Despite these difficulties, it seems likely that this type of vehicle will have an important future. It should be remembered, however, that all the machines mentioned so far, automobiles, airplanes, and Hovercraft, use oil fuels, and it is possible that the exhaustion of these will turn attention increasingly to alternative sources of power and particularly to electric traction (electric railroads and autos), in which field there have been promising developments such as the linear-induction motor. Supersonic flight, for nearly 30 years an exclusive capability of military and research aircraft, became a commercial reality in 1975 with the Soviet Tu-144 cargo plane; the Concorde supersonic transport (SST), built jointly by the British and French governments, entered regular passenger service early in 1976.

In communications also, the dominant lines of development continue to be those that were established before or during World War II. In particular, the rapid growth of television services, with their immense influence as media of mass communication, was built on foundations laid in the 1920s and 1930s, while the universal adoption of radar on ships and airplanes followed the invention of a device to give early warning of aerial attack. But in certain features the development of communications in the space age has produced important innovations. First, the transistor, so significant for computers and control engineering, made a large contribution to communications technology. Second, the establishment of space satellites, considered to be a remote theoretical possibility in the 1940s, became part of the accepted technological scene in the 1960s, and these have played a dramatic part in telephone and television communication as well as in relaying meteorological pictures and data. Third, the development of magnetic tape as a means of recording sound and, more recently, vision provided a highly flexible and useful mode of communication. Fourth, new printing techniques were developed. In phototypesetting, a photographic image is substituted for the conventional metal type. In xerography, a dry copying process, an ink powder is attracted to the image to be copied by static electricity and then fused by heating. Fifth, new optical devices such as zoom lenses increased the power of cameras and prompted corresponding improvements in the quality of film available to the cinema and television. Sixth, new physical techniques such as those that produced the laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) made available an immensely powerful means of communication over long distances, although these are still in their experimental stages. The laser also acquired significance as an important addition to surgical techniques and as an instrument of space weaponry. The seventh and final communications innovation is the use of electromagnetic waves other than light to explore the structure of the universe by means of the radio telescope and its derivative, the X-ray telescope. This technique was pioneered after World War II and has since become a vital instrument of satellite control and space research. Radio telescopes have also been directed toward the Sun’s closest neighbours in space in the hope of detecting electromagnetic signals from other intelligent species in the universe.

Military technology

Military technology in the space age has been concerned with the radical restructuring of strategy caused by the invention of nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them by intercontinental ballistic missiles. Apart from these major features and the elaborate electronic systems intended to give an early warning of missile attack, military reorganization has emphasized high maneuverability through helicopter transport and a variety of armed vehicles. Such forces were deployed in wars in Korea and Vietnam, the latter of which also saw the widespread use of napalm bombs and chemical defoliants to remove the cover provided by dense forests. World War II marked the end of the primacy of the heavily armoured battleship. Although the United States recommissioned several battleships in the 1980s, the aircraft carrier became the principal capital ship in the navies of the world. Emphasis now is placed on electronic detection and the support of nuclear-powered submarines equipped with missiles carrying nuclear warheads. The only major use of nuclear power since 1945, other than generating large-scale electric energy, has been the propulsion of ships, particularly missile-carrying submarines capable of cruising underwater for extended periods.

Space exploration

The rocket, which has played a crucial part in the revolution of military technology since the end of World War II, acquired a more constructive significance in the U.S. and Soviet space programs. The first spectacular step was Sputnik 1, a sphere with an instrument package weighing 184 pounds (83 kilograms), launched into space by the Soviets on October 4, 1957, to become the first artificial satellite. The feat precipitated the so-called space race, in which achievements followed each other in rapid succession. They may be conveniently grouped in four chronological although overlapping stages.

The first stage emphasized increasing the thrust of rockets capable of putting satellites into orbit and on exploring the uses of satellites in communications, in weather observation, in monitoring military information, and in topographical and geological surveying.

The second stage was that of the crewed space program. This began with the successful orbit of Earth by the Soviet cosmonaut Yury Gagarin on April 12, 1961, in Vostok 1. This flight demonstrated mastery of the problems of weightlessness and of safe reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. A series of Soviet and U.S. spaceflights followed in which the techniques of space rendezvous and docking were acquired, flights up to a fortnight were achieved, and astronauts “walked” in space outside their craft.

The third stage of space exploration was the lunar program, beginning with approaches to the Moon and going on through automatic surveys of its surface to crewed landings. Again, the first achievement was Soviet: Luna 1, launched on January 2, 1959, became the first artificial body to escape the gravitational field of Earth, fly past the Moon, and enter an orbit around the Sun as an artificial planet. Luna 2 crashed on the Moon on September 13, 1959; it was followed by Luna 3, launched on October 4, 1959, which went around the Moon and sent back the first photographs of the side turned permanently away from Earth. The first soft landing on the Moon was made by Luna 9 on February 3, 1966; this craft carried cameras that transmitted the first photographs taken on the surface of the Moon. By this time excellent close-range photographs had been secured by the United States Rangers 7, 8, and 9, which crashed into the Moon in the second half of 1964 and the first part of 1965; and between 1966 and 1967 the series of five Lunar Orbiters photographed almost the entire surface of the Moon from a low orbit in a search for suitable landing places. The U.S. spacecraft Surveyor 1 soft-landed on the Moon on June 2, 1966; this and following Surveyors acquired much useful information about the lunar surface. Meanwhile, the size and power of launching rockets climbed steadily, and by the late 1960s the enormous Saturn V rocket, standing 353 feet (108 metres) high and weighing 2,725 tons (2,472,000 kilograms) at lift-off, made possible the U.S. Apollo program, which climaxed on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin clambered out of the Lunar Module of their Apollo 11 spacecraft onto the surface of the Moon. The crewed lunar exploration thus begun continued with a widening range of experiments and achievements for a further five landings before the program was curtailed in 1972.

The fourth stage of space exploration looked out beyond Earth and the Moon to the possibilities of planetary exploration. The U.S. space probe Mariner 2 was launched on August 27, 1962, and passed by Venus the following December, relaying back information about that planet indicating that it was hotter and less hospitable than had been expected. These findings were confirmed by the Soviet Venera 3, which crash-landed on the planet on March 1, 1966, and by Venera 4, which made the first soft landing on October 18, 1967. Later probes of the Venera series gathered further atmospheric and surficial data. The U.S. probe Pioneer Venus 1 orbited the planet for eight months in 1978, and in December of that year four landing probes conducted quantitative and qualitative analyses of the Venusian atmosphere. Surface temperature of approximately 900 °F reduced the functional life of such probes to little more than one hour.

Research on Mars was conducted primarily through the U.S. Mariner and Viking probe series. During the late 1960s, photographs from Mariner orbiters demonstrated a close visual resemblance between the surface of Mars and that of the Moon. In July and August 1976, Vikings 1 and 2, respectively, made successful landings on the planet; experiments designed to detect the presence or remains of organic material on the Martian surface met with mechanical difficulty, but results were generally interpreted as negative. Photographs taken during the early 1980s by the U.S. probes Voyagers 1 and 2 permitted unprecedented study of the atmospheres and satellites of Jupiter and Saturn and revealed a previously unknown configuration of rings around Jupiter, analogous to those of Saturn.

In the mid-1980s the attention of the U.S. space program was focused primarily upon the potentials of the reusable space shuttle vehicle for extensive orbital research. The U.S. space shuttle Columbia completed its first mission in April 1981 and made several successive flights. It was followed by the Challenger, which made its first mission in April 1983. Both vehicles were used to conduct myriad scientific experiments and to deploy satellites into orbit. The space program suffered a tremendous setback in 1986 when, at the outset of a Challenger mission, the shuttle exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, killing the crew of seven. The early 1990s saw mixed results for NASA. The $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope occasioned some disappointment when scientists discovered problems with its primary mirror after launch. Interplanetary probes, to the delight of both professional and amateur stargazers, relayed beautiful, informative images of other planets.

At the dawn of the space age it is possible to perceive only dimly its scope and possibilities. But it is relevant to observe that the history of technology has brought the world to a point in time at which humankind, equipped with unprecedented powers of self-destruction, stands on the threshold of extraterrestrial exploration.