The Asia-centered Space Race is heating up, with both North and South Korea recently launching payloads to space for the first time. In the second part of my discussion with George Washington University space policy expert John Logsdon, he explains how a presence in space - manned or otherwise - is useful for countries across the spectrum of economic development.
Wired: What sorts of factors go into a country’s decision to start a manned spaceflight program?
Logsdon: Well, that’s been debated for years in Europe. They made a couple of false starts and decided to partner with the U.S. in the space station as a way of getting European astronauts in space. Canada did the same thing – the current commander of the space station is Canadian. Japan is engaged in a fairly intensive debate right now about whether it ought to go beyond its space station arrangement and develop its own human spaceflight capability.
I think the primary reason Russia in 1961 and China in 2003 developed the capability is national prestige and national pride. A human presence in space is a hallmark of being a leading country; you don’t do it for any practical reason.
Wired: How does competition between countries for things like national prestige play into manned spaceflight?
Logsdon: Competition was the driver of manned programs during the early parts of manned spaceflight. But I think that since the end of Apollo, it’s about being the leading partner in a collaborative undertaking, which is in a way a more subtle form of competition. The idea is to associate others with you and your objectives rather than having them directly compete with you. That was explicit in inviting other countries to join the space station, because then they would not have money to go compete.
Wired: Do you envision any countries in the next decade joining the manned spaceflight club?
Logsdon: Maybe, and that would be India, as a response to China. They may seem to be moving pretty fast, but don’t listen to what they say, look at their budgets.
Wired: Space exploration is often considered a luxury that only rich nations can or should afford. And yet dozens of countries – many of them developing nations – have space programs. What are Bangladesh and Turkmenistan, for example, doing with their space agencies?
Logsdon: Most of them are conducting communications or earth resources programs, things of practical benefits to their countries. They may have their own satellite, or they may be co-owners of a satellite.
It could be cheaper to buy data acquired from space by someone else, but even if you do that, you still need an agency to manage the use of that data. Having the space agency does not necessarily mean you have satellites, it means that you one way or another you use what space can provide.
Wired: So what can involvement in space do for the developing world?
Logsdon: It brings practical benefits, particularly for communications, when there’s no on-the-ground infrastructure. This is especially true for big countries like Brazil or Indonesia, so the ability to communicate into the countryside is important – things like educational television, telemedicine, or warnings of coming natural disasters. And many of these countries don’t know where their resources are, so remote sensing and disaster avoidance and mitigation are very useful.
Big space science and human spaceflight may be only for the rich world, but there are lots of tools involving space capabilities that could have more benefit for the poorer countries than for the rich ones, because wealthier nations have alternatives. We have fiber cable networks in this country and might not have to use satellites.
