Getting Off the Planet

This post is about getting up into space, rather than just staying here and admiring the view. I remember being a kid in the 70s, enjoying the afterglow of the Apollo missions. Then we waited for the Shuttle in the early 80s. The program just didn't know what it wanted to do beyond getting to orbit reliably. Interest in astronauts waned big-time into the 90s.

These days it seems like there is a greater impetus to our exploring space with humans - even Stephen Hawking is on board with this one. The uncertainties of global warming, peak oil, and international security loom large in our minds. And in the budgets of our governmental agencies.

It shouldn't be a big surprise that there are some who think that we shouldn't have "all our eggs in one basketcase" planet-arily speaking. Those folks argue we need to return to space ASAP in order to be sure that we can avoid getting wiped out in one fell swoop (asteroid? global warming? epileptic Japanese TV shows?).

Today the Russians are pretty much out of the space race... their rocket program involves ICBM and submarine-based leftovers from the Cold War (and those have not been that reliable). The US still maintains an astronaut corps, but with the Shuttle going offline in 2010 and its replacement, the Ares Rocket, CEV and Orion, won't come online until 2015 at the earliest. Those astronauts will spend a lot of time with simulators for those five years.

There is some argument that the private sector will make it up before the US CEV and the Chinese. I am not sure - the Virgin/Rutan collaboration seems like it has the most steam behind it, but the payloads will really have to ramp up to make it possible to get orbital structures up there. Really not rocket technology for that and NASA's Ares and the Chinese Chang'e seem like the only ones that will do it.

So, our other major competitor is... the next country with an astronaut corps... they are actually taikonauts... is China. The US and the Chinese space agencies have set the same goal - back to the Moon starting in 2020. Same schedule.

Who wins bragging rights?