[FPSPACE] The problems with MIT's "The Future of Human Spaceflight"

[Keith Gottschalk]

Dear JimO,

    Although as a foreigner I've slightly different lobbies to root for
than US citizens, I think that your tough-minded approach to these
issues in international space cooperation has more pros than cons.
Self-delusions only hurt oneself.

    It is good to start by making it clear that international
cooperation may cost more, so the proponents should argue for it
primarily on political or diplomatic grounds, not on cost. This prevents
space lobbyists later facing recriminations from the Treasury and
legislature, and losing credibility. The exception is when it is on a
customer-contractor-subcontractor basis. ESA's modus operandi falls
somewhere between these two modes.

    On foreign policy, space lobbyists do need to realize the other
side of the coin of hoping that space cooperation will deter your
partner from foreign policy on the ground against your interests. That
is, your space programme may become repeatedly hostage to foreign policy
demands for cancellation, every time there is sharp conflict of
interests on the ground. This is not desirable.

    ESA are partners with foreign policies partly aligned via the EU. A
US-ESA-JAXA-ISRO alliance could also probably avoid major diplomatic
disagreements.

     Thanks for the space station article that you so kindly provided a
link to. (A curse on our bandwidth costing ten times the US cost, so we
have to be very patient with eight minute download times!)  Both the USA
& Russia each have a century of experience with submarine design. That
is, the need for redundancy, built-in with airtight compartments.
Russia's biggest, 24000 tonne subs sensibly had two propellers, two
engines, two or four nuclear reactors, all in separate airtight
compartments for the just-in-case scenario. 

     No one should need to spell out the analogy between that and all
future space stations, and crewed spacecraft for propulsion, for other
power, aircon & CO2 removal , and these days, also for computers. When
we built permanent human bases on the Moon; when human spaceflight
finally begins to Mars, the advantages in having at least two
side-by-side bases or halves; of having formation flying to Mars by a
US, Chinese, Russian, Indian spacecraft in one fleet, are compelling.

 & a happy 2009 to all of you!
Keith

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