Happy half century NASA!
Wednesday 1 October 2008 at 00:01 UTC
The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration is 50 years old today. With an annual budget of some $17bn (€12bn), and a much higher public profile than its European cousin (which last year spent just €3bn), NASA is synonymous with space exploration.
Five decades in the business, many successes and relatively few failures to its name give NASA every reason to celebrate today. But when the cake crumbs are cleared up and the empties deposited in the bottle bank, the agency needs to sort out the almighty mess it is in.
The US has to date invested over €20bn in the International Space Station. Yet with the ageing Space Shuttle fleet due to retire in 2010, its replacement still on the drawing board, no European astronaut transport vehicle available, a new cold war brewing with Russia, and Chinese taikonauts strolling outside their orbiting capsule, NASA needs to pull its finger out in order to secure the free world’s leadership in space.
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Wednesday 1 October 2008 at 15:32 UTC
I would say both NASA and EU has to take their respective fingers out. It will be a shame to let the Space Station burn down in the atmosphere.
Wednesday 1 October 2008 at 15:42 UTC
Snoopy - NASA is the only space agency in the free world that has the wherewithal to initiate and lead such big projects. The problem with ESA is partly constitutional, and there is no way – in the short term at least – that Europe will radically expand its space activities.
ESA is not a space agency in the same way that NASA is. ESA is more a means of apportioning public money to private sector member states’ aerospace firms on a just-retour basis. ESA’s R&D activities are tiny in comparison with those of NASA.