Greetings to all,
The concept of forecasting has to do with being able
to predict what will happen in the future with as much accuracy as possible;
this is a practice utilized heavily in the business sector. With the uncertain
and unforeseen future in business, it is
imperative that business owners have some visibility on the potential future
their business will face so that they will better be prepared for such a future (Gilliland,
2003) .
One infamous prediction concerning innovation that
eventually came true was that of mankind traveling to the moon. In 1865 an
author by the name of Jules Verne wrote a book titled, “From the Earth to the
Moon”; in this book Verne told the story of astronauts
that traveled to the moon and returned using a metallic spacecraft. In 1870
Verne followed up his book with a sequel titled, “Around the Moon.” What is
interesting about this correlation between fact and fiction are the details
Verne got right about the real lunar expedition nearly a century later. The
location of the launch, for example, Verne designated to be Florida because
they would be able to launch from there with the moon directly overhead. NASA would later choose Florida as its launch
for many of the same reasons. In Verne’s novel, animals were used in a practice
launch to determine if human passengers could survive the trip. Likewise, NASA
used mice and monkeys in its initial testing (Regas, 2015) .
It would seem from these similarities that even
though it was a work of fiction, Verne thought through the realities of a lunar
expedition and took into account the potential problems as well as ideal
conditions for such a launch. In essence, Verne was practicing a sort of
forecasting for his work of fiction by troubleshooting the same potential
factors NASA would later consider in a real launch.
Two forces that impacted the success of this
prediction coming true were that of the Cold War conflict as well as the
national pride of the time. In 1957, the Soviet Union launched a satellite
called Sputnik into space during the Cold War; at this time the United States
and the Soviet Union were not only in an arms race, but with the launching of
Sputnik the space race was also brought underway. In addition to the death of John F. Kennedy, who gave his
nation the goal of going to the moon by the end of the 1960’s, along with the
war in Vietnam happening at the time, the mission to the moon was a welcome
distraction for the United States at the time as well as a source of national
pride (Siddiqi, 2000) .
References
Gilliland, M. (2003). Fundamental issues in business
forecasting. Journal of Business Forecasting Methods & Systems,
22(2), 7-13.
Regas, D. (2015). The science of Jules Verne's fiction . Sky
& Telescope , 129(6), 32-37.
Siddiqi, A. A. (2000). Challenge to apollo: The soviet
union and the space race, 1945-1974. Washington DC: National Aeronautics
and Space Administration .