Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Space - the Final Frontier
I've just read that Indian plans on spending 100 billion rupees ($2 billion) in an effort to launch a man-carrying space capsule. That now makes two countries - China and India - who are reinventing the wheel. A two or three man space capsule isn't expanding the frontiers of space, it's only exploring the same place people went over 40 years ago.
Space exploration can't be a national process. It's too expensive and space is too big. Why spend billions redoing something that's already been done. That's kind of like Turkey sending a ship west across the Atlantic to see if there's land someplace out there.
How about getting together and making an international plan for manned space exploration. Three countries have already independently proven you can orbit a can with two or three folks sitting inside. Move on. What we need is a cheap and reuseable launch vehicle to launch either personnel or cargo into orbit and beyond.
Labels: government, tech
