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Arms Regulations Damaging US Space Industry
athe!st writes "International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) are a major headache for companies trying to put their satellites into space, so much so that some companies are using 'ITAR-free' (aka free of US technology) as a selling point. The European Space Agency is trying to reduce its dependence on ITAR components, and the regulations are also threatening the nascent space tourism industry."
Reminds me how the Arms Controls stifled innovation and adoption in the Crypto field back in the 1990s.
Some space technology company lobbying against ITAR as they would've otherwise made more money...
Sorry, I don't buy that.
There's a reason for why technology exports are regulated. If that comes at the cost of a bit less money to the aerospace companies then so be it.
However, if it's really a dumb regulation - then it should be rethought. I don't think this is the case though.
Sigs are for the weak.
But ITAR is responsible for keeping a lot more US jobs than it loses thanks to it's prohibitions. In a lot of places it's the only thing keeping engineering and manufacturing from being outsourced.
Well if you'd read the article, it's from the Institute of Engineering Technology (what Aerospace company is that?) and the article is about electronics components, computer chips made mostly by US based manufacturers.
Now foreign governments are backing competing companies outside the US to source the same type of components in what is a growing market. The first papagraph talks about how many more sats will be launched in the next decade over the previous one.
Since most of the folks mentioned are launching outside the US anyway, no US aerospace company is losing a dime.
In the article they also say the US based components are better, so we have a market that's growing, where US based companies have the best product and people are going somewhere else because of this regulation.
If I owned a big chip company I'd move my HQ outside the US immediately if staying meant I missed out on 10 years of growth.
Do you read the headlines, do you know what growth for businesses in the US is projected to be for the next 10 years, it's not 50% more like sat launches and their electronics components are.
You jest, but the fact that the entire civilized world is on pins and needles to see if Muslims will fly off the handle over a freaking book burning speaks volumes.
Unfortunately, for most of the world, that "someone" is the United States military.
Pretty much sums up the US government in general...useless regulations that make every-day life a PITA for law abiding citizens and don't really stop criminals from doing anything. Like the way we have to have drivers license, birth certificate, and a note from mom to buy an allergy tablet, yet you can go pretty much anywhere and still buy meth.
Engineering and manufacturing are being outsourced PRECISELY so they don't run afoul of iTAR!
We are LOSING sales and LOSING jobs and LOSING technology due to this stupidity.
"Again, you misunderstand. Having technology that makes your military more effective *does* make you safer, after a fashion. Look back at the interaction between the Spanish conquistadors and the Incas. The conquistadors had metal armor and guns. The Incas had wooden/hide armor, spears and arrows. A single conquistador was a more effective military weapon than a single Incan soldier."
Well, it was guns, *germs*, and steel (see the book with that title). And it was other things as well, like the Inca seeing the invaders as gods, and also being highly centralized and vulnerable to a centralized attack, otherwise millions of Inca would have wiped out a few hundred men with musketts, even on horseback. It's sort of like by the fourth airplane on 9/11 the strategy of the terrorists wasn't working anymore as the people began to fight back (and so that plane crashed in a field). Eventually, the Inca did fight back more, but by then the (mostly unintended) germs were wiping them out. There was also a civil war at the time the Spanish took advantage of, and other factors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Inca_Empire
"The situation went quickly downhill. As things began to fall apart, many parts of the Inca Empire revolted, some of them joining with the Spanish against their own rulers. Many kingdoms and tribes had been conquered or persuaded to join the Inca empire. They thought that by joining the Spaniards, they could gain their own freedom. But these native people never foresaw the massive waves of Spaniard immigrants coming to their land and the tragedy that they would bring upon their people."
So the Inca empire itself was unstable... If the Inca empire has been more stable, and had (unintentional) disease not been a major factor, I'd suggest the Inca would have easily kicked out the Conquistadors, despite guns and steel.
Columbus' destruction of the Arawaks on Haiti might be a better example of what you say... And a very sad one... They offered him gifts and friendship amd a better way of life, and he repaid them in death, justified in part by religion as well as his business obligations...
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html
But is that what you want to hold up as an ideal? Columbus only lived to age 54; might he have lived to age 100 if he and his men had just settled in Haiti and never gone back to Europe? All that violence must have been stressful for him, and what did that genocide for profit against the Arawaks get him? Beyond being remembered for it (plus being the last person to discover America)?
If you see my other reply, you'll see that all this military technology is ironic and, essentially, making us less secure in the 21st century because it is designed from the wrong paradigm of extrinisic unilateral security (not intrinsic mututal security). For example, having a loaded self-propelled Howitzer cannon in your suburban backyard does not make you safer from home intrusion in a small community (or cancer, heart disease, stroke, and diabestes, the real killers of most US Americans) -- it makes you seen as a nutcase and your neighbors start talking about how to deal with you and get rid of it in case it went off accidentally or kids took it for a "joyride". But if you insulate your house to keep it warm at low cost, use the savings to put solar panels of the roof to power a fridge full of cool beers for passerbys, and then grown an organic garden producing abundant veggies you share with your neighbors, then you are going to have a lot more security and health and prosperity for both yourself and your community for a lot less cost than buying and maintaining a Howitzer in your backyard.
And that's basically the previous poster's point.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.