US Space Policy Update Urges International Cooperation 66
eldavojohn writes "The recent shift in NASA's spaceflight goals has caused great stress in the space community and those related to efforts in space. A White House update to the policy is said to emphasize cooperation with the international community and looks to be a move away from individual nations competing in space. Instead, the document urges intense competition (PDF) in the commercial sector and reasons that 'The United States considers the sustainability, stability, and free access to, and use of, space vital to its national interests. It is the shared interest of all nations to act responsibly in ways that emphasize openness and transparency, and help prevent mishaps, misperceptions, and mistrust.' Space.com also notes that you can submit your comments and thoughts to the task force Obama appointed to determine new directions. No doubt this avoidance or departure from another Space Race will have a lot of people concerned that the US is out of the game."
WHAT game?!?!? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hate to break it to you, but NASA hasn't been "in the game" in almost 40 years now. You want a perfect illustration of the last time they were fielding a real team? Just look at their historical budget [wikipedia.org]. Notice a pattern after 1970? Yeah, that's when they stopped being the Yankees and started becoming the Mets.
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The Yankees spend LOTS of money and win on average every 4-5 years. The Mets spend slightly less money and have won 3 or 4 times since they joined the league in 1962. Not to say you're wrong... but the Mets throw LOTS of money down to drain to produce negligible results. I think you're trying to make the point that NASA doesn't have the budget to put up "Yankees" numbers in the "Championships Won" department.
Maybe you meant to compare NASA to the Pittsburgh Pirates [go.com] who spend about 20% of what the elite
Re:WHAT game?!?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, the old people. Send them into space. Shit blows up? Pfft. They're old and were going to die soon anyway.
It's a win/win! NASA gets funded. We have an unlimited supply of expendable astronauts. And, it takes care of all those old people burdening our system. And lastly, the old people get first dibs into going into space - it could even be a one way trip!
Yeah! What a gimmick! Hey old farts! Say good bye to your loved ones and go into space!
As far as the senile ones are concerned just say, here you Gramps! There's a Matlock marathon in that rocket and all the chocolate and banana pudding you can eat!
*The mods* Ooo! What to do...what to do... Moderation guide:
Like old people -> Flamebait
Don't like AnonymousClown->Troll
Some old guy pissed you off today-> Funny.
Seeing the budget deficit going horribly into the Red and all that Medicare money go out of your paycheck while you see the old farts in their Cadilacs, Land Yachts, and telling you to get a job and compete with the Asians because they had to work hard in the snow (with virtually no overseas competition) and you're just a slacker-> Insightful
Huh. Gramps always wanted to go into space and get away from Grandma-> Interesting
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To the moon, Alice! ... is where I'm going to go!
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that way you dont even have to worry about them getting all sterile from radiation. And the cancer doesnt matter either; they'll die sooner anyway.
Of course, this means you dont worry about getting them down again, but still, this is quite serious if you find a solution for that.
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Clearly, old people are just pissing eveyrone off...
Do we really want to hand them over the glory of space exploration in such case>
Re:WHAT game?!?!? (Score:5, Informative)
According to this [spacedaily.com] the Chinese were spending about 1/10th of NASA in 2007. Does that make them the Royals?
JAXA [wikipedia.org] comes in at around 2 billion dollars as well.
ISRO spends about half that ($1.23 billion). [wikipedia.org]
Oh, who could forget about Russia? The FRO has a declared budget of about $2.4 billion. [wikipedia.org]
Puny old NASA with it's $17.6 billion budget. The Mets indeed.
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Just comparing the labor costs that these institutions have to deal with. Assuming similar ratio for other costs. Tabulated average yearly income for mechanical engineers (used because aerospace doesn't have enough data on payscale).
US Engineer ~ $61000
Chinese Engineer ~ $17500
Japanese Engineer ~ $44500
Indian Engineer ~ $7500
Russian Engineer ~ $42000
If they then spent their budgets completely to hire engineers, they could each get:
US ~ 288
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You forgot the nearest competitor which is the ESA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esa) with an approx $4.5 billion budget.
But even including NASA's relatively large contribution, that's still a very small amount being spent overall by the world's governments. It makes sense to encourage more commercial involvement as well as commercial, rather than militaristic, competition between nations.
Good new direction (Score:1, Interesting)
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One more step towards the "global government" is not a step in the right direction. We need individual organizations held accountable for completing missions (getting to Mars, more probes to the outer planets, etc). Global "cooperation" leads to eternal delays, blame shifting, and inflated budgets. Let's not even get into the fact that everyone wants their approach to be everyone's approach.
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OR...
Global cooperation provides more hands, funds, and experience to work toward a common goal.
Your paranoia about a 'global government' is completely unfounded and the type of nonsense that only someone with no knowledge of the way the world works would shovel.
Anything to inspire cooperation, explore new areas, improve technology, and deteriorate war and its causes is a good step for our world.
If you think otherwise kindly get the fuck off of my planet and go pollute another.
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Anything to inspire cooperation, explore new areas, improve technology, and deteriorate war and its causes is a good step for our world.
If you think otherwise kindly get the fuck off of my planet and go pollute another.
What color is the sky on your planet? B/c here on Earth, you get to pick 2 of those things not all of them. Also love the irony of your if don't agree with me leave after looking to inspire cooperation. Quite nice tovarich.
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Competition got us Apollo. Cooperation got us ISS. You sure you don't want to rethink that?
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Competition got us Apollo.
It was also a cooperation. With Germans.
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You might want to check again with the Germans [wikipedia.org] to see how well that went. German engineers are pretty good at building rockets, but American politicians killed off (economically) an entire generation of German rocket developers that is only beginning to recover. It is a real pity too as this was a rather ambitious program that could have made a huge difference.
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Yeah, but that was competition people cared about, since people cared about the Cold War, and advanced rocket technology was seen as rather relevant to advanced missile technology. Do people in 2010 really care about competition with, say, the European Space Agency? If they don't, as I suspect they don't, might as well just cooperate with them and let them foot some of the bill.
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Apollo got 12 people on the moon, each for a few days, at the expense of three more lives, and only at the very end did anybody think to send up a lone geologist.
The ISS has had over six times as many people on orbit, for weeks and months at a time, doing actual science.
Spectacle != progress
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Apollo (and in general the push to the moon, including mercury and gemini) got us (well, you americans anyway) from barely being able to shoot a single guy in a can into orbit, to doing in-orbit rendevous, lunar transfer orbits, and landing on a frickin moon! (in ~10 years from the start of serious spacetravel to moon walking)
The ISS is mostly mir 2.0 combined with freedom (the us proposed space station), and while it is the pinacle of space-station design and operation, most knowledge regarding long term s
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Cooperation is good. Races are bad and cause accidents.
Since we're going for slogans that are easy on the old noggin, how about this one? "Competition is the best form of cooperation." I'd buy that over your thing about races. After all, doing anything risky causes accidents. And space activities are inherently risky no matter how many international partners you have.
Policy inclusions (Score:1, Redundant)
Two missing items from the Policy:
Those that can.... (Score:1, Troll)
Those that can't...watch the liftoff on TV.
Pfft (Score:1, Troll)
A White House update to the policy is said to emphasize cooperation with the international community and looks to be a move away from individual nations competing in space
In other words, the US has realized it is broke and now wants the rest of the world to foot the bill for space exploration.
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Until somebody figures out what the ????? is supposed to be between "1) Space Travel" and "3) PROFIT!", we aren't going anywhere.
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Until somebody figures out what the ????? is supposed to be between "1) Space Travel" and "3) PROFIT!", we aren't going anywhere.
I don't know, but I somehow get the impression that The Riddler is involved.
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So you're saying batman is standing between us and affordable spacetravel?
I find your ideas intruiging and wish to subscribe to your newsletter
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"In other words, the US has realized it is broke and now wants the rest of the world to foot the bill for space exploration."
China figured out you don't have to lead to make money and benefit from modern technology.
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Troll? I don't know about that.
What was the cost sharing on the "International" Space Station again?
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Hey, it was also the only thing to make Shuttle look useful (plus there's training with Mir, and I suspect prices for "Mir 2" part and "Alpha" part aren't exactly comparable)
Quest for Glory was wayyy better.. (Score:4, Funny)
Man I miss that game.
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Yea I'm not sure what happened there...
Re:Get your ass to mars (Score:4, Interesting)
China steals 5 pieces of tech for every 1 they build
This kind of thinking is why the US and other western countries are going to fail in the long term.
Just like Japan in the 50's, China right now is largely perceived as being a country that makes cheap knock offs of products that are invented in the US or Europe, with no real innovation of their own.
The reality of course, is that we mostly only see the cheap crappy products that importers are willing to import - China actually has some pretty good tech of their own that does not get exported.
They are already the main producers of our favorite tech toys - iPads, iPhones, etc etc.
When I lived in Japan I was always surprised to see how far behind the "latest and greatest" consumer goods were back in my own country (eg. video cameras) compared to what was available in Japan. I would be very surprised if this is not already the case with stuff coming out of China too - we only see the goods here that importers are willing to import, which seems to be mostly the cheap knockoff stuff.
China is now greatly out-pacing the rest of the world in terms of growth in scientific research [scidev.net], and it already massively exceeds Japan - 125,000 in 2009 vs 72,000 from Japan) it will only be 6 or 7 years before it passes the US too.
The we keep believing the myth that the only the US or Europe is capable of producing innovative products, the further behind we will slide in science and technology, until we wake up one day and wonder why it is that the only thing that we are producing is the very goods that we used to ascribe to third world countries - ie. agricultural and primary products like ore ore and coal, with perhaps a few Britney CDs thrown in too.
The amount of money that was spent to reach the moon during the space race was astronomical - and justifiable at the time due the the cold war. To really get back in the space business properly, there has to be a good commercial reason to get there, and it has to be private companies that do it. What we should really be doing is encouraging more private enterprises to get into the field by having more schemes like the X prizes, which has so far been very successful at helping drive private industry into the field. The problem with large publicly funded NASA driven projects is it just generates way too much pork barrel inefficiencies, with relatively little return for all that public spending compared to what can be achieved by private companies for the same money.
I would like to see someone actually start trying to do something like actually capture an asteroid (or use some of the existing hunks of rock) at one of the Lagrange points as the basis for industrial mining, processing and fabrication of stuff in space - as ultimately this is probably going to be the most affordable way to build substantial structures up there, as opposed to pushing up every single component on rockets at thousands of dollars per Kg. Perhaps it is time for an X prize type competition for the first company who can actually make something from stuff that is already out there in space, so we can finally start building real space based industries.
A new frontier will cause uncontrolable growth... (Score:1)
Bend over (Score:1)
"It is the shared interest of all nations to act responsibly in ways that emphasize openness and transparency, and help prevent mishaps, misperceptions, and mistrust."
Not if you are the only nation that has this policy.
Summary overly crude... (Score:4, Informative)
For such a thing we will have to wait till congress looks at budget proposals, and some real life testing. constellation is still doing some tests, but everyone knows that the Ares 1 will never launch a single human to orbit. Officially - and even this document changes nothing about that - it is still going on.
And please, dont attach too much meaning to rumors of a new "space race". The chinese have a launch rate of one mission every 2 years. They are currrently way below 1965 level of experience from the USA. Instead, look at the slow but significant progress:
ESA getting Soyuz acces: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Launchers_Home/SEMXN619Y8G_0.html [esa.int]
Russia upgrading its production facilities to build a 5th soyuz ( notably the upgrading of its thermal room so that 2 soyuz heatshields at the same time can be fitted to the spacecrafts: http://www.federalspace.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=9719&lang=en [federalspace.ru]
While its nothing flashy and I think there should be more money into spaceflight, spaceX and orbital and the likes are really going for it. Talk in the article about "losing the space race" is overly simplistic, certainly with an ISS that'll be around till atleast 2020, and very possibly 2030. It is international, dont forget that.
also, a rumor; ATK ( they manufacture the shuttle srbms) have finally caved in it seems, and are willing to build the old 4 segment boosters instead of continueing to lobby for a 5 segment version. Great news; they finally might get something moving now...
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"A joy ride simply isn't worth the money."
Which is why we should build generation after generation of superb robots, which humans will require anyway in the utterly hostile environment of space, and use THEM to actually "explore". Tourists don't explore shit, and no matter how horny people are for adventure that doesn't justify sending them first unless they personally foot the bill.
We need robots, we can get a much faster development cycle than for manned missions, and there is ZERO urgency to send people
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Also, ships back during the world exploring time period were not cheap, they were fucking expensive as hell. BUT because of the type of government available known as fucking over anyone not at the top you could afford to do huge works. Great wall of China type projects could not
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Hm, otoh - what happened with NASA funding just after first photographs of a man on the Moon?
BTW, we still seem to have a bit of "great wall of China type projects" [wikipedia.org], also in Europe (accidentally, the top one...)
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Good point.
"BTW, we still seem to have a bit of "great wall of China type projects", also in Europe (accidentally, the top one...)"
The great wall of China cost over 1 million lives. And its construction on and off spanned many generations. The comparison is silly.
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But also a changing way of quantifying resources, human ones too. One one hand it's probably a bit inneficient (overall) to allow direct human "sacrifices"; on the other - who knows how many were "claimed" by directing resources to such costly projects today. To complicate matters, the ultimate goal of both Great Wall and many projects from that list was to, at the least, maintain stability and prosperity of societies; so also "saving" lifes. And our infrastructure, even in this "faster" times, is also buil
Full National Space Policy document (Score:3, Informative)
First off, a full link to the document (instead of the short fact sheet linked in the original post) is here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/national_space_policy_6-28-10.pdf [whitehouse.gov]
It's useful to compare this to the 2006 National Space Policy document issued by the Bush administration:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/national-space-policy-2006.pdf [whitehouse.gov]
Space Politics has a pretty good comparison of the two:
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2010/06/28/the-new-national-space-policy-is-out/ [spacepolitics.com]
I think the revised section on commercial space is quite promising:
Commercial Space Guidelines .S . commercial or, as appropriate, foreign commercial service or system .S . commercial space activities, unless required by national security or public .S . industry;
The term "commercial," for the purposes of this policy, refers to space goods, services, or activities provided by private sector enterprises that bear a reasonable portion of the investment risk and responsibility for the activity, operate in accordance with typical market-based incentives for controlling cost
and optimizing return on investment, and have the legal capacity to offer these goods or services to
existing or potential nongovernmental customers . To promote a robust domestic commercial space
industry, departments and agencies shall:
Purchase and use commercial space capabilities and services to the maximum practical extent
when such capabilities and services are available in the marketplace and meet United States
Government requirements;
Modify commercial space capabilities and services to meet government requirements when
existing commercial capabilities and services do not fully meet these requirements and the
potential modification represents a more cost-effective and timely acquisition approach for
the government;
Actively explore the use of inventive, nontraditional arrangements for acquiring commercial
space goods and services to meet United States Government requirements, including measures
such as public-private partnerships, hosting government capabilities on commercial spacecraft,
and purchasing scientific or operational data products from commercial satellite operators in
support of government missions;
Develop governmental space systems only when it is in the national interest and there is no
suitable, cost-effective U
that is or will be available;
Refrain from conducting United States Government space activities that preclude, discourage,
or compete with U
safety;
Pursue potential opportunities for transferring routine, operational space functions to the
commercial space sector where beneficial and cost-effective, except where the government
has legal, security, or safety needs that would preclude commercialization;
Cultivate increased technological innovation and entrepreneurship in the commercial space
sector through the use of incentives such as prizes and competitions;
Ensure that United States Government space technology and infrastructure are made available
for commercial use on a reimbursable, noninterference, and equitable basis to the maximum
practical extent;
Minimize, as much as possible, the regulatory burden for commercial space activities and ensure
that the regulatory environment for licensing space activities is timely and responsive;
Foster fair and open global trade and commerce through the promotion of suitable standards
and regulations that have been developed with input from U
Encourage the purchase and us
How's that for timing? (Score:1)
I was going to add another post to the NASA poll pointing out that if we're going to get anywhere beyond the moon, we should do it with an international project, to spread the risks and improve technological and sociological cooperation generally.
Frankly, there's no more "space race". The job is too big for one country to pay for, and too important to humanity for one country to claim credit for.
Mistake (Score:3, Informative)
It's a mistake to depend too heavily on international ventures. Countries have different political and economic cycles - you tend to find yourself halfway through something ambitious when your partners decide they don't want to fund it any more. The ISS was a classic case of this kind of thing - we ended up bailing out the Russians as they went through problems after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Europeans were slow with their supply ships. The US stayed in the project when it would have made sense to cancel it, then we kept the shuttle fleet flying longer than we should have to service the ISS.
You may save money up front by penciling in partners, but you pay a big price in flexibility.
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The orbit of the ISS was also changed from a useful one we could have used as a staging post for further missions, to the mess it is now so it orbits over Russia and is in basically a useless orbit for anything else.
Also due to the Columbia accident some interesting parts were cancelled - centrifugal base artificial gravity, X-38 CRV (that project got passed to the Air Force to function as what seems to be a returnable spy satellite system.
International co-operation is good - ESA has shown it can be done. B
Internet (Score:1)