Are We On The Verge Of A New Space Race?

NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson is seen during a spacewalk during Expedition 50 aboard the International Space Station. Whitson and fellow NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough successfully installed three new adapter plates and hooked up electrical connections for three of the six new lithium-ion batteries on the International Space Station in this undated photo. NASA/Handout

Martand Jha, National Interest: A New Space Race?

After a long time, the issue of outer space affairs is assuming a central position in the discourse of both national and international security.

On December 11, Donald Trump signed a new space policy directive which instructs NASA to focus on sending humans to the moon. The last time the United States sent its astronauts to the moon was way back in December 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission. After a gap of forty-five years, the United States is looking forward to a manned lunar mission.

Speaking at the signing ceremony of this this new space policy directive, President Trump said that this policy was the first step taken “to restore American leadership in space.”

While reflecting how long it has been since a U.S. astronaut has been on the moon, Trump thanked his guest Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, one of the last Americans to be on the moon, and announced that he will not be the last one to be there.

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WNU Editor: I grew up when the "Space Race" meant something. Today .... the excitement is not there.

Will The U.S. Dominate Space?

X-37B “space plane”. Air Force

U.S. In Space: Superiority, Not Dominance -- Travis C. Stalcup, The Diplomat

Trying for dominance in space is counterproductive. The U.S. should settle for a more modest goal.

Director Alfonso Cuarón’s latest film, Gravity is a sci-fi thriller about a lone astronaut fighting to live where “life is impossible.” Following a Russian missile strike against an aging spy satellite that shreds the American space shuttle and its crew, protagonist and mission scientist Sandra Bullock struggles to evade a predictable but lethal field of orbiting debris. Cuarón’s story dramatizes a stark future – one in which nations vie to control the cosmos and in doing so make life on earth as we know it considerably harder. Gravity makes an implicit argument about the folly of space dominance: operating in space is hard enough so why make it harder by testing and using kinetic kill anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons?

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My Comment: Funding to NASA has been cut to the bone .... and the Pentagon's space program is becoming to expensive to maintain. Faced with this reality .... I have trouble visualizing any possibility of U.S. "superiority" in space .... let alone dominance.

Update: Pentagon’s Top Space Contractor Recognizes Imperative To Change -- Space News

Russia Has Won The Space Race

Russians Win the Space Race -- Owen Matthews, The Daily Beast

The last space-shuttle mission marks the end of an era for NASA. Russia, with its old but reliable methods, will now be the sole nation capable of sending people into space.

When the space shuttle Atlantis blasts off from the Kennedy Space Center today on its final mission, it won’t just be the 30-year history of the world’s only reusable space shuttle that is coming to an end—it will be a whole chapter of the space race. After the shuttle returns to earth in a twelve days’ time, the United States will no longer have a manned space flight program for the first time in five decades. More, for the foreseeable future it will be Russia, the U.S.’s old space rival, which will be the only country in the world regularly putting men and women into space.

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My Comment: What a difference 50 years makes .... from President Kennedy's speech above to President Obama's silence today. This is a sad day for the U.S. of A.