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China has a good chance of becoming the dominant space power in the 21st century, and it's not just looking to copy NASA on the way to the top. Instead, the country is paying close attention to what innovative US companies like SpaceX are doing as well. To get ahead in space, communism is learning from capitalism.

In the summer of 2019, a small Chinese rocket launched from an inland spaceport in the southern part of the country. Close-up photos, posted afterward on Chinese social media accounts, showed small grid fins affixed to the upper part of this Long March 2C rocket for the first time.…  Seguir leyendo »

Future of space travel belongs to the country that wants it most, and China leads the charge illustration by The Washington Times

On the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landings, Harris Poll asked young people in the United States and China what they wanted to be when they grew up. The results were strange. Most American youth surveyed — the young people who belonged to the only country to have ever placed astronauts on the lunar surface — admitted that they wanted to be professional “Vlogger/YouTubers” when they grew up. It was the Chinese youth who overwhelmingly aspired to be astronauts.

Speaking to Chinese state media in 2018, the head of China’s lunar program, Ye Peijian, outlined the Chinese view of their national space strategy in explicit geopolitical terms, specifically in naval terminology:

“The universe is an ocean, the moon is the Diaoyu Islands [sic], Mars is Huangyan Island.…  Seguir leyendo »

Not Everyone Wanted a Man on the Moon

Fifty years ago this week, more than a million Americans drove, flew and even boated to Florida’s Cape Canaveral to witness the launch of Apollo 11, which would culminate four days later on July 20, 1969, with America’s victory over the Soviet Union in the race to the moon.

Less than a month later, nearly 500,000 young people caravaned, hitchhiked and walked through standstill traffic to the Woodstock music festival in upstate New York, where they danced in rain and mud to songs critical of the country, especially for its involvement in the Vietnam War.

How could these two events, which seemed worlds apart, have taken place so close together?…  Seguir leyendo »

A NASA illustration depicts the New Horizons spacecraft encountering 2014 MU69, nicknamed Ultima Thule, a Kuiper Belt object that orbits one billion miles beyond Pluto

It sounds like science fiction, but it’s not. Overnight tonight, on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, an American spacecraft called New Horizons will fly by and explore the most distant place ever visited: a small world called Ultima Thule.

Twenty-five hundred men and women across the United States worked to design and build New Horizons, its rocket and its nuclear power supply, and to launch it into space and to fly it across the solar system. In 2015, New Horizons became the first spacecraft to explore Pluto. Now on Ultima’s doorstep, it is a mind-boggling four billion miles from Earth.…  Seguir leyendo »

Thirty years ago, as footage of the Challenger space shuttle explosion streamed across television screens, President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation to reassure citizens that the tragedy would not stop American space exploration.

“It’s all part of the process of exploration and discovery,” Reagan said. That sentiment — that the spirit of discovery is at the core of space exploration — remains central to NASA’s operating mission today, even as the agency’s budget flat-lines and the feasibility of future missions is questioned.

More recently, discussions of the future of space exploration have shifted. Last summer, as the New Horizons spacecraft sped past Pluto to observe the dwarf planet for the first time in history, President Obama lauded the achievement as “a great day for discovery and American leadership.”…  Seguir leyendo »

After the NASA rover Curiosity made its flawless landing on the Red Planet last weekend, scientists cheered and raised their hands in delirious triumph. It was a spontaneous reaction of the sort we have witnessed dozens of times at Olympic venues, and appropriately so — America had won the science gold, again.

The complexity of the rover’s landing was a quantum technological leap beyond anything NASA has attempted in planetary exploration. After traveling 354 million miles, the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity had to slow in just minutes from about 12,000 mph. It arrived at the thin Martian atmosphere with parachutes deployed, rockets firing and skycrane unwinding.…  Seguir leyendo »

NASA’s newest marvel, a one-ton rover named Curiosity, has been set down with all the delicacy of a carton of eggs on the surface of Mars. The perfect landing came after a complex series of automated maneuvers that had been tagged the “seven minutes of terror,” but that in the end were executed so flawlessly as to render the mission’s Earthly handlers speechless with relief. There wasn’t even a single error to report.

On such evidence it could easily seem that planetary exploration is in the full bloom of vigorous good health under American leadership, thank you very much. There’s little doubt that during the last decade the genre of robotic space exploration has reached an apex of achievement.…  Seguir leyendo »

America’s human spaceflight program is adrift. The space shuttle has made its final flight, and the Obama administration has no coherent plan what to do next. Instead, it has proposed that the United States waste the next decade spending $100 billion to support a goalless human spaceflight effort that goes nowhere and accomplishes nothing. In the face of a mounting imperative to find ways to cut the federal deficit, this has set up the nation’s space program for the ax.

In order for NASA’s human-exploration effort to be defensible, it needs a concrete goal and one that is truly worth pursuing.…  Seguir leyendo »

With the final space shuttle mission scheduled to end this morning when Atlantis glides to earth, and with only uncertainty to follow for NASA’s manned spaceflight program, this may seem like the moment to weep for the lost promise of the space age.

It is not. I have shed tears of wonder and awe at the scale and achievement of NASA’s manned spaceflight program, but not for its inexorable end. The close of this phase of space exploration is long overdue. And what appears to be an epic conclusion is, like much of NASA’s history, an elegant mirage.

In 2005 and 2006, I regularly took a long, slow bus ride from the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.,…  Seguir leyendo »

Hace más de 50 años (1957), los soviéticos lanzaron el primer satélite en órbita del mundo, superando a EE.UU. en el espacio. Para los estadounidenses, el "momento Sputnik" fue un llamado de atención que empujó a Estados Unidos a aumentar la inversión en tecnología y educación científica. Meses más tarde, EE.UU. lanzó el satélite Explorer 1, con lo que la carrera entró en movimiento. Se animó a los niños a estudiar matemáticas y ciencias, y los conocimientos estadounidenses ayudaron al país ante el desafío.

Pero el ritmo ha disminuido drásticamente desde entonces, y la NASA ha estado tratando desde principios de noviembre de aprestar su último transbordador para el lanzamiento.…  Seguir leyendo »

Our space program, once the envy of every nation on Earth, has been showing its age of late. Its ambitions, though laudable, are starting to appear a little outdated. Technologies that once dazzled the masses now seem almost everyday and routine. Visions of new planetary terrain, once the fodder of science fiction, seem somewhat commonplace in light of the discoveries made by robotic spacecraft and the capabilities of other countries. And while the moon remains a fascinating destination, an entire galaxy of other regions - and countless possibilities - is just waiting to be explored.

With a renewed sense of energy and vision, NASA is well-positioned to reinvent itself.…  Seguir leyendo »

Le 2 février 2010, l’administration Obama a annoncé une nouvelle politique spatiale. Elle comporte trois décisions essentielles: le subventionnement par la NASA du développement de systèmes privés pour acheminer les astronautes jusqu’à la Station spatiale internationale; l’annulation du programme Constellation consacré au développement des équipements nécessaires aux vols habités vers la Lune; l’abandon du concept de fixation d’objectif de mission pour les vols habités, au profit d’une approche basée sur le financement d’une recherche technologique ayant pour but de permettre une mission qui sera éventuellement choisie plus tard.

La première de ces trois décisions est positive et attendue depuis longtemps. La seconde, considérée en soi, est néfaste mais elle pourrait être bonne si quelque chose de mieux que le programme Constellation était proposé.…  Seguir leyendo »

What do rockets burn for fuel? Money. Money that is contributed by working families who have mortgages and children who need braces. And why do the American people support our efforts in space? Because they still believe, to some extent or another, in that shining dream of exploring other worlds. So it could be said that rockets really run on dreams.

The exploration of space is the grandest adventure challenging the human race. As a filmmaker I have celebrated this greatest of dreams in my movies and documentaries, and I remain as passionate about the discoveries ahead as I was when I was a kid.…  Seguir leyendo »

Our planet has just enjoyed a weekend of rare company. The “wolf Moon”, as it is known to native Americans, has hung huge and full at its nearest point to Earth. Mars, meanwhile, has made its closest approach in six years, its red glow almost as bright as any star. Yet at this moment of tantalising proximity to our celestial neighbours, Barack Obama stands accused of pushing them farther away.

The Nasa budget that he presented yesterday cancels the new rockets that might return astronauts to the Moon and the plans for a manned lunar base as a stepping-stone to Mars.…  Seguir leyendo »

In Silicon Valley we have a saying: launch early, launch often. It’s an acknowledgment that successful, innovative companies are the ones that rapidly try new ideas, see what works, improve their products and repeat. Businesses that launch frequently are also able to take advantage of economies of scale to make launchings faster and easier. In many ways, the key to innovation is speed of execution.

NASA, an agency that depends on innovation, could benefit from the same mindset. To meet its new goals for human spaceflight, NASA must be able to be creative and take risks, or else it will be unable to adapt to new technology and changing political realities.…  Seguir leyendo »

Now that the hype surrounding the 40th anniversary of the Moon landings has come and gone, we are faced with the grim reality that if we want to send humans back to the Moon the investment is likely to run in excess of $150 billion. The cost to get to Mars could easily be two to four times that, if it is possible at all.

This is the issue being wrestled with by a NASA panel, convened this year and led by Norman Augustine, a former chief executive of Lockheed Martin, that will in the coming weeks present President Obama with options for the near-term future of human spaceflight.…  Seguir leyendo »

The public meetings and media reports about the Human Space Flight Plans Committee, a 10-member advisory panel appointed at the request of President Obama, indicate that NASA's mission is about to change. It needs to.

For the past five decades, NASA has concentrated on exploration of our solar system. It has done a marvelous job. We have tremendous knowledge about virtually all the nearby planets and satellites, and great detail on the moon and Mars. While much has been learned from the manned space program, the scientific return from robotic spacecraft has yielded much more information about our solar system.

NASA officials believe the manned space program, which is allocated the great majority of the agency's funding, is what attracts public interest and helps support the agency overall.…  Seguir leyendo »

Well, let’s see now ... That was a small step for Neil Armstrong, a giant leap for mankind and a real knee in the groin for NASA.

The American space program, the greatest, grandest, most Promethean — O.K. if I add “godlike”? — quest in the history of the world, died in infancy at 10:56 p.m. New York time on July 20, 1969, the moment the foot of Apollo 11’s Commander Armstrong touched the surface of the Moon.

It was no ordinary dead-and-be-done-with-it death. It was full-blown purgatory, purgatory being the holding pen for recently deceased but still restless souls awaiting judgment by a Higher Authority.…  Seguir leyendo »

Among the many tough decisions facing the next president is the future of our civilian space program. There are conflicts over how long to fly the space shuttle, which are linked to questions about continued American access to the international space station -- built at the cost of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars -- and whether U.S. astronauts will return to the moon before 2020.

The premiere this week of the PBS "Nova" documentary "Space Shuttle Disaster" brings many of these questions to the fore. The 2003 Columbia Accident Investigation Board, of which I was a member, concluded that the United States should "replace the shuttle as soon as possible as the primary means for transporting humans to and from Earth orbit."…  Seguir leyendo »

After years of spending our nation’s space budget building an orbiting space station of questionable utility, serviced by an operationally expensive space shuttle of unsafe design, NASA has set a new direction for the future of human spaceflight. Once again, we have our sights on the Moon ... and beyond. We are finally, bodily, going to make our way into space, this time to stay.

It is an opinion long and widely held within the space-exploration community that the Nixon administration’s termination of the program that built the Saturn V Moon rocket was a gargantuan mistake.

One of the biggest challenges in exploring space is propulsion — that is, getting from point A to B efficiently, safely and quickly.…  Seguir leyendo »