Neil DeGrasse Tyson Urges America To Challenge China To a Space Race

An anonymous reader writes: According to a Tuesday story in the UK edition of the International Business Times, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the celebrity astrophysicist and media personality, advocates a space race between the United States and China. The idea is that such a race would spur innovation and cause industry to grow. The Apollo race to the moon caused a similar explosive period of scientific research and engineering development. You might prefer the Sydney Morning Herald piece on which the IB Times article is based.

Comments

We Are Aleady in a Space Race

[painandgreed]

China asked to join in on the ISS and we vetoed it. China said that they would launch their own space station. This is scheduled for 2020. We have already started a space race and are quite simply, waiting for the Chinese to catch up. They just got to a person into space in 2003 and landed something on the moon in 2007. Their proposed time table has them returning moon rock to earth in 2017, launching a space station in 2020, and a moon walk in 2024. So arguably, in a little less than ten years from now, they will have caught up with where the US was around almost two decades ago. Still, China proposes lots of things and fails to come through on them. If they actually get a space station launched and the ISS is retired with no replacement in the works, then I expect that the US will pay attention and start running again rather than walking.

Personally, I expect Musk to have his own space station up sooner.

Re:astrophysicist?

[c0d3g33k]

You didn't look very hard, did you?

http://www.haydenplanetarium.o...

I count 13 papers.

Would you care to share your publication record for comparison? It might help your credibility since your level of troll is at grade schooler levels at the moment.

Re:And who's going to pay for it?

[CastrTroy]

This is what people don't seem to get. Even getting people to Mars is a much bigger task than just launching a single rocket. The round trip time for a Mars mission is around 2 years. You have to send everything you need along for the ride. All the food that the astronauts need to eat on the ride will need to be brought along with them. I've seen some numbers (can't find the link now), that even a single Mars mission would require 30 launches of supplies from the earth. There's also no ability to bail out like they did with Apollo 13. Once they are on their way there, there is no possibility of turning around. Even when you get there, you have to wait about 6 months for the planets to get into the right alignment for the trip home.