[X] My Assistant

[GregM]

Several published reports today finally disclosed China’s much anticipated long-term human spaceflight aspirations. Audacious would be an understatement:

EVA in the next few years
A space station by 2010
Robotic exploration of the Moon
Human landing on the Moon by 2017
Helium-3 mining on the Moon
Observatories on the Moon

Bold? Yes. Difficult? Very. Expensive? Without a doubt.

Crazy? Maybe. Overambitious? Maybe. A ruse? Maybe.

Possible? Yes. If the national will to do so exists in the long-term.

Likely? Who really knows?

Very symbolically, the day before, the NASA administrator spoke before the relevant congressional subcommittee and told them flat-out that NASA simply does not have nearly enough money to carry out its mandate. They cannot fly the shuttle in any quantity, finish the ISS in whatever form, or get to the moon at all, with the monies currently available. Whether that needed extra money will ever come is still a very open question. Political support for human spaceflight in the United States is currently lukewarm at best, and outright hostile at worst. Essentially, if the United States as a nation and society does not recommit itself to human space exploration in the very near future, it will falter and possibly disappear from the endeavor over the next decade. This is not my prediction, but the prediction of many experts in the US.

Although predicting the future is foggy at the best of times, the general trend lines here are unmistakable: China is aiming to be a dominant, if not the dominant, player in human spaceflight. It may take time - but they will get there sooner or later. The United States on the other hand seems uncertain, or possibly unwilling, to remain a major player. It is currently in unmistakable decline, in spite of still being the current dominant space power. In 1985, the United States successfully flew 9 Space Shuttle missions in that year alone, including two just two weeks apart. Today, even if all the current shuttle technical problems did not exist, the US could not under any circumstances even come close to matching that ability. It is simply not physically able to do so any more, the institution has been allowed to atrophy and whither. It is in a state of not only negative growth, but negative development. If left on their current trends, those trend lines will meet and cross at some point in the future. The paradigm will have changed, probably permanently. When they will cross is open to debate, but the larger issue is the fact that if left unchecked, the trend lines will cross.

Does America have what it takes to reverse the trend? Does America care to? Will it become to human spaceflight what Portugal became to exploring the Americas 500 years ago? Or will it come back from its current state of decline?

Will we have to learn Mandarin to really get the most out of the next lunar landing by humans?