UK Reconsiders 1986 Decision To Ban Astronauts

An anonymous reader writes "The British space agency, BNSC, is reconsidering its 1986 decision to reject all human space missions. The decision has dominated British space policy ever since, leaving Britain out of many American and European space projects. The UK is the only nation in the G8 group of leading economies that does not have a human space flight program. But space enthusiast groups like the British Interplanetary Society are trying to persuade the British government to participate in both manned and unmanned space activities."

Re:Pathetic....

[msauve]

If one takes the British position that 'man has no business in space' ...

No, their position is that government should play no role in sending men into space. Feel free to do it by private effort, if you want.

Re:Pathetic....

[QuantumG]

That's exactly right. And it kind of annoys me that every time there is a story like this they say "British Astronauts Banned".. like there's some law prohibiting citizens of the UK from going to space.

Re:The UK has never lived down Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the destruction of the Queen's English on Monday October 27, 1986 [wikipedia.org], noting the correlation with the UK's decision to ban manned space flight, they had to fill the void with something to try and save national unity. Beckham was the best they could come up with.

Re:G8

[kaos07]

Actually G7 is when the Finance Ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and the United States of America meet to discuss economic policy.

G8 is when the heads of government of those countries plus Russia meet to talk about a wide variety of things.

Re:Pathetic....

[Kristoph]

I am not sure which country you are in but over here in the US our next likely president (Barack Obama) would like to 'defer' manned space flight for 5 years to pay for additional education programs.

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/11/obama-pits-huma.html [wired.com]

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Re:ROTFLMAO LOL!!11!!One - Score 4, Insightful?

[Kaetemi]

HelLLLOOOO? I mean, it was funny - kudos and all that - but was modded Score 4, Insightful? Weird mods tonight on the Internets.

There's recently been a trend of modding funny things as informative etc ;)

Re:G8

[kaos07]

It has the 9th largest GDP in the world by volume, it's growth rate is 8.1% and the percentage of the population below the poverty line is 7%, less than in the United States.

So please forgive us for not understanding your joke since it made absolutely no sense.

Re:The problem is another entirely.

[Saint Fnordius]

I think you parsed his argument wrongly. As I understand it, the argument is that the NHS allows the UK to provide comparable care to the USA at approx. one-half to one-third the cost per capita.

This graph supports that interpretation... http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/images/figure-1.gif [kff.org]

I will not state that the argument is correct or not, only that you misinterpreted it. In my opinion, he is correct in that it is "measurable" as far as an elected official is concerned - he can provide metrics to bolster his claim. Other metrics might be longevity, time spent in hospitals, and so on. That is less the case with a space programme.

Re:The problem is another entirely.

[NotmyNick]

Yes, and we're also talking about the same agency that forgot that there is a difference between metres and feet.

Umm, no. That was the private sector. Lockheed-Martin to be precise.

The Mars Climate Orbiter [wikipedia.org] was intended to enter orbit at an altitude of 140-150 km above Mars. However, a navigation error caused the spacecraft to reach as low as 57 km. The spacecraft was destroyed by atmospheric stresses and friction at this low altitude. The navigation error arose because a NASA subcontractor (Lockheed Martin) used Imperial units (pound-seconds) instead of the metric units (newton-seconds) as specified by NASA.

Sadly, this is one of those fictions like "Al Gore claimed he invented the internet" that will never die because certain prejudices are stronger than reality in a significant portion of the populace.