There’s a long piece over at Gizmodo, mostly about the NRC report. Sadly, the reporter didn’t seem to talk to anyone except Ariel Waldman:
The US has a plan for Americans to live in space. In 2012, the National Research Council was commissioned by Congress to roadmap the future of human space exploration. Last June, the team published its findings in a massive report, which called for several action steps to be taken immediately.
No, actually, the NRC report was not really a plan. It was a set of fairly vague and broad recommendations. There is no plan.
Statistically, China’s space program is a few decades behind the US, but consider these facts: Just in the last two years the country has sent ten people into space.
Really? No, not really. In the last two years, China has sent three people into space. Go back three years, and they’ve sent six.
The agency is currently working on a mission to Mars and a proposal for its own space station, which is planned for sometime in the 2020s. Soon, China will undoubtably surpass the US in its efforts for space colonization.
That’s ridiculous. China is using legacy Soviet-type hardware. No one is going to colonize space that way.
Thanks to a 2011 Congressional act that bars the US from collaborating with China’s space program, NASA is not allowed to work directly with the most quickly accelerating efforts to get humans into space. Thanks to a 2011 Congressional act that bars the US from collaborating with China’s space program, NASA is not allowed to work directly with the most quickly accelerating efforts to get humans into space. This is a huge problem. “There are only two places that are going into space,” says Waldman, referring to current crewed missions by Russia and China. “We’re not one of them, and we’re not in collaboration with the other one of them.”
This is delusional. China is not the place with the “most quickly accelerating efforts to get humans into space.” That is happening in Hawthorne and Mojave, California, and Seattle. We do not need to work with China or Russia to get into space, and we are not in a race with them.
So much of what seems to motivate any space exploration is the concept of flag planting, which the US pretty much invented: I HEREBY CLAIM THIS MOON FOR AMERICA. Take away these imperialistic aspirations and the goals of human spaceflight become unmeshed with these ideas of nation-building—and a lot more pragmatic.
Ummmmmm…no. We did not CLAIM THIS MOON FOR AMERICA. We “came in peace for all mankind.”
Anyway, you get the idea.
As an Australian, you should have claimed the moon for America.
It would have provided an incentive to HOLD ON TO IT.
i.e. colonise it.
Agreed. The space race ended in 1967 with the signing of the outer space treaty. Everything after was merely inertia.
What you are saying, and I believe it to be absolutely true, is the only thing holding us back is ideology.
Had we claimed the moon other would have fought that claim which would have been a good and healthy thing. It would not have been fought by military confrontation because the moon wasn’t (and still isn’t) valuable enough. It would have been fought in two ways. Legal arguments would be made, not resolving much. Second, other nation would have made their own claims by planting flags and not just on the moon.
Not being imperialists made space worthless. It’s always been about ideology… but going forward nothing stops people from making individual claims by possession which would have greater force of law than all the debates here on earth. Making space valuable is a fight for the future of humanity. It is THE good fight.
Waldman is one of those folks who’s not shy about going out there and blustering on things she knows little or nothing about – then moving on to the next item, unencumbered by any embarrassment. I saw signs of it at NewSpace last year, and this multiplies my conviction about her a hundred-fold.
Bleh.
We won’t have cities in space until we start having babies in space. That means staying there one hell of a lot longer than we are now, and going up there not for a single mission but for a lifetime.
If a community similar to McMurdo Station were created in space, you might call it a city, even if there is a zero birth rate just as there is in McMurdo. (Vatican City is an alternative vision of a city without births…) Aircraft carriers have no children aboard at all, and carry up to 6,000 – I wonder if you’d call an carrier-sized space station a city?
Generally, I would think that cheap fast transportation and an economic rationale for a city would make even a very large childless city possible, on Earth or in space.
Apparently Florida hosts the world’s largest retirement community – the Villages – with 100,000 people, which sounds rather city-sized, and it is fun to imagine a space-based version.
“Gizmodo: come for the GIFs, stay for the inaccurate articles!”
I don’t know how anyone could look at the current state of the industry and then say we are not in a space race. Maybe there are some pedantic hang ups over word choice but we are taking part in a global competition.
Are we ahead? Sure but what puts us in the lead isn’t time, certainly not that we did something half a century ago. What we can do doesn’t put us ahead either. What we are doing puts us in the front.
When judging status based on current activities, our lead is incredibly small and could change unexpectedly. There is no room for complacency or resting on laurels earned by people long retired.
And if anyone thinks we are not competing with China and that they pose no threat, may I direct you to the OPM hack and dozens of other like it. China is competing with us on the most important terms, ignoring it doesn’t take us out of the game.
And if anyone thinks we are not competing with China and that they pose no threat
I didn’t say they pose no threat. I just see no threat that they are going to have cities in space any time soon.