Forecasting and Predictions

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 .