ith determination and a decade or two of funding, any nation with access to 1950s-era technology can put a satellite into orbit. Doing so gives more than a boost to national pride; it can reduce a country's dependence on foreign technology, invigorate its economy and, of course, scare the willies out of any would-be adversaries, who'll need to think twice—and move their goodies underground—before taking any overtly hostile action.
The international club of space powers now includes not only Russia and the United States, but China, Japan, India and Israel. Britain might have joined as well—its "Black Arrow" booster was technically sound, and succeeded in 1971 by hoisting the Prospero satellite. Unfortunately, a crisis of funding and national will had already tipped the whole project to history's rubbish bin; the flight was accomplished with surplus hardware after the program was officially terminated.
It's a story all too familiar to space enthusiasts: solid engineering smothered by money and politics. Still, when Britain's age-old rival France began building both a spaceport in French Guiana and the Ariane I booster to fly from it, Britain was quick to get in on the action by joining the nascent European Space Agency (ESA) in 1975. Eager to share the costs and risks, France immediately opened the project to ESA participation, culminating in the first Ariane launch in 1979 (seen at right).
And since ESA continues to handle about 60 percent of Ariane's planning and funding, arguably the entire European Union deserves membership in the 300-mile-high club, though its individual member countries probably don't. Meanwhile, despite a series of painful setbacks (including the August 2003 incineration of 21 top scientists, engineers and technicians in a launch-pad accident), Brazil has been trying to reach orbit since 1997, and will probably be the club's eighth member.
The final frontier is still a dream
Still, orbiting a human being is an achievement of an entirely different order. It's technically challenging—humans require food, water, oxygen, reliable two-way communications and greatly enhanced safety systems, including, of course, a heat shield to ensure their safe return. These things take time and money, and add tremendously to the weight of the spacecraft. Adding weight means you have to carry more fuel, and since the fuel itself has mass, the total liftoff weight of the rocket rises exponentially with the weight of the capsule on top. This is why even the briefest trips along the High Road require big, complex, expensive machines.
More importantly, though, the economic benefits of human spaceflight are largely hidden. Unlike, say, the Human Genome Project, which promises to cure cancer and extend human life sometime in the fairly immediate future. Funding that is a no-brainer for a Congress overly fond of no-brainers. Anyway, there are people in every society who for various reasons can't take care of themselves, and of course any government has long-term financial obligations like bonds and pensions, and must give fiscal priority to unfortunate necessities like law enforcement and defense. Whatever's left over—and people are never amused to see their hard-earned cash siphoned off by taxes—has to be divided among infrastructure projects that promise, in some obvious way, to improve the nation's quality of life.
But space isn't like that. Despite any number of treatises citing its economic benefits, the final frontier is a dream, a passion, a sort of manifest destiny that either you feel or you don't. And like any dream worth having, whether personal, professional, national or pan-galactic, it takes decades of sacrifice—time and money that could be spent elsewhere—to make it happen. That doesn't come easy.
Europe and Japan have had complete, credible, human-carrying space planes on their drawing boards since the early '80s, and while they certainly have the money and know-how to build and fly them ... well, it's always easier to retrench. Space is the future, right? Not the present. Not some pressing need like free health care or farm subsidy, language preservation or cronyism. Why dream when you can paint the garage instead, and charge the bill to future generations?
So let me take a moment to say, "Bravo, China! Bavissimo! With open arms we welcome thee as brothers and sisters of the spirit!" The stars don't care what language you speak, or what color you are, and neither do I. China has come a long way from the days of Long March, with its abysmal 20 percent failure rate and its habit of falling on civilian heads. But hey, if at first you don't succeed, redouble your efforts. Repeat as necessary. That's the American way, and the Chinese way—the way of everyone who's ever screwed the odds and made something important happen.
If we let it, technology will die
But let's drop this notion of peaceful cooperation, all right? Do we cooperate in the Olympics? Do we need another $100 billion space station? For crying out loud, with the money we've wasted playing nicey-poo with the rest of the world, we could've had a Skylab II, a fresh moon landing and a good running start at Mars. And they could have those space planes.
This should be America's wake-up call: Our Chinese brothers are at the top of their game, right when we've stumbled. Our shuttle fleet is grounded, and every possible follow-on vehicle has been murdered in its crib. Sadly, America's next space vehicle may be a cut-rate capsule even more primitive than Yang Liwei's Shenzou V. And we have only ourselves to blame, n'est ce pas?
In a recent essay for MIT Technology Review, science-fiction pundit Bruce Sterling listed manned spaceflight as one of "Ten Technologies That Deserve to Die." And although I disagree profoundly with his sentiments, I fear, nevertheless, that he may be right. Surveys consistently show Americans believing that space exploration should be about 10 percent of the federal budget, or around $200 billion per year. But in point of fact, we're spending only one-thirteenth that much: a paltry $15 billion. Even foreign affairs gets $20 billion, and we're constantly being told it's a pittance and an embarrassment and a threat to national security. If we can't explore the Earth for that sum, we're unlikely to explore the cosmos. But where's the hue and cry, the outrage, the screams of a nation whose very dreams are being starved out from under it?
If we, as citizens, haven't got the backbone to stand up—and pony up—for what we believe in, then we should stop pretending. We should surrender the high ground, paint the stars red and fill our science-fiction movies—our dreams of a future in space—with the Taikonauts who have rightfully earned it. Subtitles in English, please, for the meek shall inherit the Earth.
Wil McCarthy is a rocket guidance engineer, robot designer, science-fiction author and occasional aquanaut. He has contributed to three interplanetary spacecraft, five communication and weather satellites, a line of landmine-clearing robots and some other "really cool stuff" he can't tell us about. His short writings have graced the pages of Analog, Asimov's, Wired, Nature and other major publications, and his book-length works include the New York Times notable Bloom, The Collapsium and most recently The Wellstone and a related nonfiction book, Hacking Matter.
