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Global Space Agencies Gather For Collaboration
UltimaGuy handed us a link to a story on the Register site, covering NASA's plan to create a collaborative space effort across the globe. Agencies from 'Italy, Japan, China, Britain, France, America, India, Korea, Ukraine, Russia, Canada, Germany, Australia and the ESA' got together for the first time since the formation of the Global Explorations Strategy team last year. "This year, they met in Kyoto to discuss a draft Framework for Collaboration, which will set out how the various agencies will work together. The team has agreed that its main focus should be robotic exploration of the solar system, particularly of the moon, Mars and the near-Earth asteroids. It has also proposed a non-binding collaboration mechanism which would allow all agencies to share their plans, and look for opportunities to work together. This would also provide a route for agencies to share the data from their own missions with scientists from other agencies."
Somehow I don't think the free market concept of competition applies when there are no clear customers (government pays for exploration, and scientific community reaps the rewards), and the only apparent commodity is information (not even services!).
If you were talking about, say, satellite launches, then I agree competition is a good idea. But space exploration? Cooperation works much better. To put it another way, if the people who initially conquered Everest had cooperated with each other, would they have gotten to the top quicker?
Competition has its uses. But not in something like this, where there are no apparent paying customers. Feel free to correct me if there are.