Over the past several months, the United Kingdom has been engaged in a fascinating debate over the costs and benefits of manned space travel. (Check out thought-provoking articles both for and against the notion.) Ever since the 1980s, the UK has restricted its space-faring activities only to those projects with an immediate benefit to British industry. This policy has restricted the UK to launching communication satellites and participating tentatively in ESA missions. As of 2006, France contributed almost 4 times as much to the 11-member ESA as the UK, and Germany roughly 3 times as much.
But slightly more dramatic events halfway around the world likely provoked this latest hard look at UK space policy. China recently became the third nation to send humans into space, and their ambitions match or surpass those of established space powers such as Russia and the US. Other nations such as Japan, India, Turkey, Iran, and multinational organizations like the EU all plan to follow suit within the next 10 to 15 years. Is the UK being left behind?
The answer to that question really depends on the answer to a different question: is manned space flight a crucial component of our future as a species, or is it merely a fashionable method du jour to demonstrate technological proficiency?
There are pretty compelling arguments both for and against British astronauts. On the one hand, manned space flight seems a little stagnant – more of a political exercise than anything else. Some argue that rather than spend the necessary billions to re-tread old ground, the UK should strategically integrate into American and Russian human space flight programs as necessary.
I think in the end, I tentatively come down on the “pro” side of the fence. For one thing, depending on current geopolitics is a bit risky: spots on Russian or American flights might not always be so easily attainable. Even the economic arguments against the idea seem a bit shaky. NASA’s manned program has contributed to countless spin-off products (from artifical hearts to infrared cameras to a number of medical instruments) that have fueled the economy and improved lives.
But most alarming is the policy of conservative investment initiated by the Thatcher government and continued to this day. Only funding projects that produce clear and predictable immediate benefits is not a particularly forward-thinking approach. The spinoffs that have made American manned space flight sustainable were neither planned nor expected. History is littered with cases of unexpected discovery, and space flight is no different. It’s a hard sell to be sure, trading on unknown “future profits” and an amorphous sense of potential, but a little bit of risk-taking can go a long way. Would the economic and political risk of British astronauts be worth it?
In terms of space spin-offs and even scientific returns, is it not the case that the US and Russia have already been-there-done-that to such an extent that any UK/ESA efforts in manned flight would struggle to add anything new for a very long time?
The first five or ten years would be spent perfecting the spacecraft technology, by which time the ISS will be coming to the end of its projected life, so new facilities would be needed to do any science.
I support European manned space flight for other reasons, but I’m sceptical that unexpected spinoffs would be forthcoming, unless we could do something truly novel.
Beautiful image, by the way – presumably a shuttle liftoff judging by the size of the smoke stack. I’ll miss such eyecandy when the shuttle retires in two years.
I’m very much against UK manned space flight. Mrs Thatcher was right about manned space flight as she was about a lot of things, and if one were to criticise UK politicians, it would be the Labour administration of Harold Wilson who promised ‘the white heat of technology’ back when Britain could still have had a credible manned space program(or, really, any space program) but then fluffed it.
I tend to view manned space flight in the same way as I view climbing Mt Everest, or crossing Antarctica, or discovering New Zealand.
Ultimately pointless, but by damn it’s a cool thing to be able to do. We’re human Henry; pushing back frontiers and climbing mountains to gaze upon virgin vistas is what we do.
The more the merrier.
Lots of things are cool. Many of these things are also extremely expensive and utterly pointless.
... and another thing:
We’re human Henry; pushing back frontiers and climbing mountains to gaze upon virgin vistas is what we do.
The problem is that the vista is no longer virginal. At the risk of boldly going further than any analogy has gone before, to coin a phrase, she’s a well-used bike. What’s the point of spending £££ to send someone to do what everyone else has done, just because he or she is British? The Daily Mail would love it, but who apart from the sentimentally patriotic gives a damn about that?
Curmudgeon.
And proud of it.
Spending £££? That’s really pushing the analogy too far.