Talk about old, the Russians still send up people in Soyuz capsules which date from the 1960's! They will not be taking over anytime soon. The Chinese send men up in Soyuz copies. India plans to send up men in 2013 using . . . Taa Daaa! . . . a Russian Soyuz. This is Gemini technology. We are light years ahead of these efforts and have moved past ending men up in capsules other than as an elevator to a space station. Development of future manned interplanetary craft has a lot more evolution ahead of it before it is practical. It needs to remain a developmental program until it is ready. Meanwhile let the competitors waste their resources trying to duplicate what America accomplished over 40 years ago, while we use our resources wisely in staying atop of 21st century spacecraft technology, most of which must be unmanned for practical technical reasons.
i like the move. we cant afford the luxury of staring into space at the moment. spend the money on practical r&d
A lot are already launching and/or have launch capability for satellites, probes and deep space vehicles. France, Iran, Japan, Ukraine, Israel, Euro Space Agency along with India and China are all at least capable with several launching regularly. It remains to be seen how many more rockets we will be launching but as of now we are not launching as many as Russia and the others are catching up. No it is not. It is ok if that spending is producing comparable results to the stimulus spending though and that is something I have not seen identified or studied. I think its worth the investment in time to determine the economic impact.
This does not mean that they are capable of or even trying to overtake the US in space. It is high time that other countries spend some of their own money to advance space exploration rather than just expecting us to do it all. It is not a threat to us. Other countries have Navies and Air Forces, but it has not kept the US from establishing air and sea superiority any time and anywhere we wish. Domination of space technology has nothing to do with the number of rockets launched. We launch enough to do what we need to do. We are far past the experimental stage in rocketry. China, India, France, Japan, and Israel are not. We have more reserve capacity than they have in active programs. Just because we have to capability to launch many more rockets doesn't mean that it is important to do so.
Domination of space commerce has everything to do with launching. If we arent going to have a manned program I would hope we are launching commercially. There will be over 125 launches this year and NASA will account for about 10 of those.
Domination of space commerce has everything to do with privatizing. Government must take the risk to get a technology proven and operational for the good of the country. Private industry must then take the risk to make profitable commerce for the good of the owners and the economy. Are you counting experimental launches and military training launches? SPACE.com -- The Complete 2010 Launch Forecast USA = 15 Russia = 8 European Space Agency = 2 Sweden = 1 Britain = 1 Japan = 1
No, not counting those at all. I took 5 off of Nasa's total because they are military. That list you posted does not include commercial launches. There are over 100 planned this year and most are being launched from Russia, French Guiana or the Cosmodrome in Borats home country. I use the following sites to track launches. Lyng Satellite Space Flight Now Satellite On The Net
This astronomy class is straight up kicking my tail. Maybe one of those out of work space monkeys can come and give me a hand. Angular size in arc minutes of mercury? Whatchutalkinbout willis?
I don't think this is necessarily a bad idea right now, politics aside. Manned space flights to the moon really achieve nothing more at this point than to say we can still do it. The next step,obviously, is a manned flight to Mars, but the technology and demands needed to make that a reality are still a long way off. Robotics are still where space technology need to be centered; there's still way too much we do not know.
