Mars Race Heats up Further

anzha writes "It seems what was once the province of the superpowers is no longer so. ESA and the Japanese attempted their own Mars orbiters (successfully and not, respectively). The Brits fired off Beagle 2 and are talking of going for Beagle 3. Now the Canadians are talking about a probe for Mars in 2011. How long before we see the Japanese and Russians try again? Might India or China take a stab at it as well?"

Comments

Re:Why Not the UNSA?

[kippy]

Ths ISS is a scandal partly because it was built by a committee, not a group focused on one clear definable goal ("let's build a space station" doesn't count). The last thing humanity needs is to unite and therefore bind at the feet, the world's space agencies.

Almost everything great done in space was the result of competition. We need more of that, not less. If no one feels any pressure to work toward a goal harder, you will have engineers and administrators world-wide leaning on their shovels for decades to come as they we continue to be bound in low Earth orbit.