US control of space - the end. Fourth and final article following the "Threats to Science and Reason" event

Tal Inbar, head of the Center for Space Research at the Fisher Institute, says that "we are in a new space age, the control and leadership of the USA is not taken for granted, new countries are entering the field, without major collaborations it will be difficult to survive with major space programs"

The US manned space program is in retreat as a result of various factors, some of which are political such as a changing American administration and a misconception that has gained traction in various places - 'Why invest in space when there are diseases, poverty, hunger and other worldly problems', as if one comes at the expense of the other. Contrary to what they claim, billions are not "poured" into space, but are invested in the earth for the development of laboratories, some of whose activity is expressed in many products in the daily lives of all of us, from medicine to a digital camera."
But the public is probably not interested in this and many people do not understand the importance of the activity in space on our daily lives. Some time ago I was going to a TV interview, and the taxi driver asked me what I was going to talk about. I explained to him that the subject was a collision between satellites. His answer was: "Who does it even matter?" I am not referring to the satellites. I travel from place to place clicking on GPS....”
We are in an interesting period of space programs in the world. On the one hand, we see the entry of new and non-traditional players, the very limited space club of countries that build satellites and launch them themselves has eight countries, when after Israel, which entered the club in 1988, the next in line to join was Iran, which in 2009 launched the first satellite of its own production."
"I manage a surveillance program on the Iranian space programs and the connections to one or another Iranian security programs, I discovered that many scientists and engineers were sent to the West to study in England, France, Russia, and even in the United States when the Americans probably allowed it out of belief or naivety that when an Iranian student is in the United States Somehow democratic principles will permeate him and be applied when he returns to Iran. They do return to Iran, but spread other things."
What is not in doubt is that the current president of the USA is causing extremely heavy damage to the space program.
This year marked the 50th anniversary of the first manned space flight on April 12, 1961 by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Fifty years after the US achieved the ability to launch people into space, it is giving up this ability and relying on Russian launch vehicles. One might think "so what, what does it matter if today they don't launch a person into space?"
"We all know that the number of scientific discoveries in space that required and justified an astronaut in the field is zero. Since all the scientific discoveries of space exploration - astronomy, astrophysics, geology of the moon are made much better, accurate, cheap and without risking lives by robots, why is it still so important to send people into space? Maybe it really doesn't matter. There is of course a great deal of apologetics that can be heard in many settings. How important it is to promote human knowledge and curiosity in people, you don't need a space. I got to hear the current head of NASA. Every time he quotes the mountaineer Mallory, who climbed Everest, "because it exists", I understand that there is a problem here and then NASA starts justifying itself. The Americans and the Russians flew into space in the beginning because of politics. A week after Gagarin's flight in April 1961, Kennedy sends a note to his vice president, and later the president who replaced him, Lyndon Johnson, in which he writes - Section 1 What can we do to beat the Soviets in space 2. Maybe we'll send a man to the moon 3. Maybe we'll build a space station 4. How many It will cost, are working 24 hours a day on the plans that already exist. I want a report within two weeks.
"There are people who remember the moon landing better than I do, it ended in an American victory and you can see that the retreat began even then. In the middle of the plan, his flights to the moon were canceled, and why is this similar - to the return of Columbus's fleet of ships to Spain and Portugal, the delivery of the report and then the kings decide, thank you, we have seen and heard, there are no more expeditions and the continuation of human development to new regions would have been postponed for hundreds of years.

Recently, a new space program was announced in the USA, SLS - acronym for the Space Launch System, and I think NASA was somewhat ashamed of the program. They announced it on Saturday, not the head of NASA announced it but the deputy head of the Marshall Space Center in Alabama. This is the plan that should return humanity to space, after the end of the 30 years of the shuttle.
At the same time, a year and a half ago, President Obama canceled the Constellation program - the plan to return to the moon by 2017, in which approximately 7 billion dollars were invested between 2004 and 2010. Although it was not the best plan but at least something, but the president decided that it was not innovative enough and he comes to visit the Kennedy Space Center, and he promises to invest big money and there will be no layoffs. The main problem with the Constellation program is that President Bush started it, and he, as you know, was from the wrong party...
And what is the answer a year and a half after the cancellation? Space shuttle technology in accelerators, the heart of the system are engines from the Apollo era. When they have powerful missiles in hand, all that needs to be done is a small investment of time and money to adapt them to carry a manned spacecraft and not to develop something based on the outdated technologies
Now NASA is throwing Yahava on the private market. SpaceX, a private company founded by the founders of PayPal. Elon Musk had more than a billion dollars to "waste" and he founded a company that was met with ridicule and contempt, but in the end it won a contract of 450 million dollars from NASA to finish the development of a rocket and a spacecraft. And now it has an operational spacecraft that can carry seven people into space, and a $1.4 billion contract from NASA to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. The company is even planning a landing on Mars.
Europe is planning manned spacecraft based on the HTV spacecraft. Japan has also developed an unmanned transport vehicle that with a little effort can be turned into a vehicle that can launch people.
If I mentioned the Chinese - the Tiangong spacecraft is operating in space and is expected to have a lifespan of two and a half years. It met with the unmanned spacecraft Shenzhou 8. In 2012, a crew will reach it and for the first time China will have the ability to stay in space for an extended period of time, and thus it will equal the ability of the United States and Russia, operators of the International Space Station, which, as it operates today, is a waste of money in my view. When there is no destination, for example a mission to Mars or a long-term mission to the moon or an asteroid, the astronauts continue to walk around at an altitude of 400 kilometers and do experiments and blood tests.

China's operational space station is supposed to be perfect by 2020. It is almost identical to "Mir", China is not interested in the money - there is a statement here that 'we are self-sufficient'. Whoever is able to maintain a manned space program is considered a technological and scientific leader, and certainly an economic leader, and whoever maintains the manned activities for long periods and can maintain a manned presence in space for years has a statement about the strength of the body that stands behind it."
"Russia has experienced difficulties and is starting to recover. We see the planning of more such and other space components, with the not entirely hidden intention being to connect them at its expense to the International Space Station, which is currently budgeted until 2015 and will probably be budgeted beyond that until 2020. When its role is finished, Roba will be dismantled and sent to orbits that will bring its components to a controlled burn in the atmosphere, and then destroyed "winners from the destitute" and will stay with the space station.
International collaborations
"The world is turning more and more to collaborations, there aren't many net national space programs, the Chinese work with the Europeans, the US cooperates with all kinds of bodies, on the other hand there is a big threat in the US also to net scientific projects, the most prominent of which is the Space Telescope C James Webb - Hubble's replacement, and there is an initial recommendation by the Science and Technology Committee in Congress to close the project, when we are already reporting a delay of almost two years in the launch date. And there are other tasks that have been canceled. There are no budgets to restore and rebuild lost spaceships such as OCO - which is supposed to check the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, (_Orbital Carbon Observer OCO) and other spaceships designed to monitor the KDA ice sheet. Deeper space plans were also affected, when the missions to Mars were spaced out. Not only because of the economic situation but also because of the waste of money on the International Space Station and of course on the space shuttle which in the last decade has been a bottomless pit. Launching a shuttle in the first decade of the 750s cost an average of $XNUMX million.
In conclusion - we are in a new space age, the control and leadership of the USA is not taken for granted, new countries are entering the field, without major collaborations it will be difficult to survive with major space programs. The next decade will see a space race in Asia between China and India and the West of Japan and Korea. And on the other hand, even in the Middle East we see more countries, there are satellites for Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran.
That's it for Tal Inbar's lecture

Website editor's note: I would like to thank all the lecturers who participated in the event: Prof. Yoav Yair,Roey Tsezana, Gilad Diamant and Tal Inbar, and of course the people of Hamed - Eitan Krain who organized the entire event and assisted in directing it, the members of the logistics team who worked on the organization of the infrastructure, the manager of Hamed To Tahila Ben-Gai, to all the volunteers of the science site who helped, and to all the writers who make it possible to build such an important site for the public benefit. And on this occasion to the tens of thousands of readers, and in particular to the teachers who use the site for the needs of the students' learning in the field of science.