Last week we asked about the future of international collaboration in space, with a fifth of respondents believing that individual nations will push for dominance beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
Two poll options were formed around collaboration, with 38 per cent taking the view that costs will encourage such endeavour, and 29 per cent agreeing that partnerships will help to maintain peace in space.
Of the remaining vote, 10 per cent thought expansion in space would be restricted by costs, and three per cent couldn’t find a fit with the options presented. What do you think? Let us know via Comments below.
Background:
Last week we received a notification outlining proposals for international collaboration on an “armed space platform to defend planet Earth”.
The idea, put forward by Russian engineer and businessman Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, would involve an off-planet unmanned platform to defend Earth from external threats such as asteroids and solar storms, as well as autonomously policing actions such as ballistic missile strikes between nations.
While it seems highly unlikely that the world’s major military powers would be willing to hand over such control, it did get us thinking about collaboration in space. The International Space Station has been a major success in this regard, with Tim Peake previously expressing support for the project’s consideration for the Nobel Peace Prize.
But with the ISS set for decommissioning in 2020, and the various space powers developing plans for their own stations, the future of international collaboration in space does not look so promising.
All I can hear in my head when I read this is a quote from Bernard Quatermass “We’re on the verge of a new dimension of discovery. It’s the great chance to leave our vices behind us, war, first of all. Not to go out there dragging our hatreds and our frontiers with us.”
Much as I would hope for further collaboration, I think it more likely that, say, the Chinese will go it alone…
You do have to wonder, certainly in the context of aircraft development, whether the cost of collaboration hasn’t been higher than going it alone.
unfortunately the answer is a multi-selection again, i.e.
Individual nations will push for dominance
Costs will encourage collaboration
Collaboration is vital to maintain peace
so I am unable to vote
We can only hope that some international agreement prohibits dominance
OK, what if this weapon in space sees Little Johnny hitting Ivan in the eye, will it vaporize Johnny?
Surely there will be strict limits on this, but I could see it being useful for civilized countries such as Israel, UK, USA, Canada, Australia, India, Japan, and maybe Russia to hold court against outcast nations as North Korea, Iran, and any other despotic regime that attempted to fire ballistic nuclear warheads toward any other country, for any supposed reason.
Have just spent some sad time watching the ‘celebrations’ of Jutland. “something wrong with our bl**dy ships this morning.” -the comment from Beattie, the gung-ho ‘Admiral’ involved just about sums up the whole outrage. The outrage of the continued domination of ‘them’ -those in fancy dress with the scrambled-egg on hat and elsewhere -over we Engineers and technologists: who actually have the ability to create the weapons ‘they’ need: and who could stop the entire farce at 0900 tomorrow by refusing to provide any more.
Pie in the sky? Better than egg on the faces of the entire ‘human’ race!
By “them”, you presumably mean those willing to die for our right to hold independent opinions?
I saw no one celebrating the battle, but it’s always worth celebrating that people are willing to fight for our freedom.
India has demonstrated that individual approaches can be the best: they learned from the low-cost success of the Russian sputniks in the 1960s. Collaboration obviously has an important place, but cannot dominate or it will sink in beaurocracy.
With rising nationalism everywhere we’d be happy to stay out of war.
Although international collaboration is important for peaceful exploration and experimentation, national interests will always override joint efforts when talking about defence. Perhaps there might be a ‘space NATO’ vying for influence against another such organisation, and several countries have developed Earth-launched anti-satellite missiles which surely point to the extension of military capability into space. If someone can destroy an orbiting satellite, they could also target a shuttle, space station or other vessel.
Reagan’s Star Wars programme failed but technology strides on; who, in the mid 80s, thought that we could be like Dick Tracy and speak to each other via our watches?
Ultimately, Man is not a docile, peaceful creature. He wants to conquer and prove his strength, and will eventually do that outside Earth’s atmosphere. We’ll probably destroy ourselves before we ever meet extra-terrestrials
Costs of collaboration seem to scale with around the square root of the number of collaborators, so a collaborative programme costs moe overall but less per participant.