French plans for reform of ESA Options

[imipak]

Report on the BBC News site (which I've not heard mentioned on any other BBC news output today):

Ambitious plans for European missions to the Moon and Mars are being considered by the French government. It wants to kick-start a revolution in space by letting EU politicians not bureaucrats decide on priorities for the European Space Agency (Esa).

[ ...snip a lot of woolly stuff about manned missions to Mars and the need for politically defined objectives... ]

According to the French, the UK is their model partner in this endeavour.

*choke* well that's, uh, interesting...

Fairly long and interesting article - a little bit off-topic for UMSF perhaps, but some might be interested.

[dvandorn]

The current financial strains are only going to get worse, I fear. The world is facing a near-future resource crisis, which is going to create a *lot* of financial strains.

I'm firmly convinced that both msf and umsf can be powerful tools in overcoming this resource crisis, but we need to have the infrastructure for both a little more established before the crisis really starts to hit, or else these powerful tools may be lopped out of human endeavour as being "too wasteful" by those who just can't make themselves think longer-term than right now.

Now, while we can still make a good case for developing these tools, is when we should push for as much to be put into them as we can possibly manage.

IMHO.

So, I'm happy to see this move by France. And in the end, I think they have a point -- any costly human endeavour that requires planning and execution over years and decades becomes, ipso facto, a political decision. Put another way, when something very much needs to be done but will never generate a profit, that thing has to be done by a government. And anything a government does is, almost by definition, a political decision.

-the other Doug