International Space Station: Canada to the Rescue?

Apostata writes "The following story from the Globe and Mail outlines a proposal of the head of the Canadian Space Agency to seek renewed funding for the recently stripped-down NASA budget for the ISS. He makes an interesting point that - contrary to the belief that the ISS is a NASA brainchild/braintrust - many countries have poured $billions$ into it's development and should thus have a say in whether there should be any cutbacks. Read all about it here."

Comments

Noone to the rescue, yet

[kingdon]

I don't see this article as saying that Canada is going to rescue anything. Rather, they are lining up along with Europe to complain (with some justice, since NASA is not upholding the ISS agreements as they currently stand). Now, I suppose if a nation complains enough and is willing to use this as a bargaining chip (e.g. in trade talks or whatever kind of talks matter to the US), then complaining becomes a kind of action. But a much more direct sort of rescue, a more obviously effective one, would be to come up with some funding. Europe once built a half-scale prototype of (some portions of) a crew return vehicle, but in recent years that activity has changed to "well, maybe we could build a few components for the US crew return vehicle, that would be cheaper. Well, is Europe prepared to build their own crew return vehicle? Or pay Russia to supply more Soyuzes?

The other amusing aspect of this whole thing is the number of times that the US has cancelled its part of a project (shuttle, partially; some science satellite in the 80's the name of which is at home; even Spacelab in a sense), and the fact that Europe (and other partners) fail to learn. It is like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown time after time, and Europe seems to always line up for another kick. I guess Canada is now joining them.

Re:Noone to the rescue, yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Your second paragraph is dead right.

The probe, by the way, was to be a US equivalent to Ulysses, so that ESA and NASA would have a probe going over a different pole of the Sun at the same time. We've lost a lot of science to that decision.

There is a difference in attitude between the US and Europe/Canada/Japan. To the latter international treaties are binding documents; they are the *last* thing to go if you're having problems. (Look at the unsuccessful efforts the British made to get out of Concorde...)

The USA, on the other hand, is the centre of the universe, the new Middle Kingdom, and treaties with other, inferior, nations are the *first* thing to be broken if The Land of The Free is getting squeezed. Or even if they aren't and just don't feel like it (Kyoto, landmines, NMD...). Meanwhile everyone else is expected to dance to their tune.

Basically the Americans are a bunch of selfish, arrogant, isolationist pricks who are not to be trusted in any transnational agreement.

Hopefully this has now hit home with ESA. Two reasons:

1. the cost and high public profile of this FUBAR
2. Canada and Japan have been shafted as well.

I hope what we will see is these nations teaming up with Russia and China to build an alternate station to the brain-damaged political football of the ISS and become a new independent force in space exploration.

Funding cuts

[Stone Rhino]

(begin rant)
Funding cuts that make it impossible to do research should not be made, since this is a research platform, after all. If they cut funding to this, just like they did with DS1 (story earlier today), then the entire scientific commmunity is going to be pissed. What is the point of putting up a multi-billion dollar space station if not to do something more than have it just sit there, with no experiments being done? That ticking sound is the time before this thing plunges into the ocean years from now. the only question is "what do we do with it until then?"
(/rant)

Re:very true, but...

[s20451]

Let me suggest to you that useful but boring space research gets done because we also do exciting but expensive things. That is, it's hard to get the public interested in a fleet of Earth-orbiting atmospheric science satellites, but human spaceflight galvanizes the public interest enough that a few hundred million can sneak past for other, more scientifically interesting research.

I also think that the money spent on the ISS is worth it if the only thing it proves is that a massive international space project requiring detailed co-operation from former military adversaries is even possible. (PS: I'm all for letting the Chinese get on board too). The future of manned spaceflight depends on pan-national co-operation.

Cooperation?

[roystgnr]

The future of manned spaceflight depends on pan-national co-operation.

Have you seen the results of international cooperation? Everybody teaming up to try and put up a Low Earth Orbit space station, and finally getting hardware in orbit after 2 decades of redesigns, tens of billions of dollars of cost growth, United States delays that threatened European schedules, Russian delays that threatened American schedules... and the result just isn't that impressive, even for a space station.

What human spaceflight depends on, apparantly, is international competition. Russians orbiting the globe, "putting a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth before this decade is out", you know, that sort of thing?

We don't need Chinese astronauts on ISS, we need China building it's own space station in half the time... because apparantly there's nothing that motivates the American space program so well as being laughed at.