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

instead of space race

[rubycodez]

How about collaboration, a team can do more than single entity

Re:instead of space race

[Anonymous Coward]

And it creates a shit ton of overhead, bureaucracy and finger pointing. Look at ITER. If one country had the will to carry it out, it would actually be built by now. Instead a decade gets spent trying to agree on a site. And the main qualification of the guy running it is that he is able to deal well with the political bullshit, but even he is tired of it.

Bottom line, cooperation would be a royal detriment to progress.

Re: instead of space race

[rubycodez]

Yeah we sure helped employment in Iraq

The race is already on we're just not in it

[portwojc]

If he hasn't noticed China is already racing ahead. We've rested on our laurels for too long.

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.

Space race is not what it used to be

[avandesande]

I still find the Apollo Program amazing and audacious considering the technology of the time. Now a race would be just a question of political will and funding, not nearly as exciting.

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

[Lab Rat Jason]

Respectfully, I call complete and total bullshit on this.

Even if mankind had the capability to warp off to some other star system capable of supporting life, how many humans would make the journey? Hundreds? Thousands? Consider the energy requirements to lift a significant portion of humanity out of earths gravity well. How many rockets are required to lift just the people into low earth orbit? The reduced headcount of those people who would leave earth would do NOTHING to curb the current population growth! So the remainder of humanity on this planet would still suffer the same fate you predicted if we didn't find another planet. And while we're going through this mental exercise, here's another one for you: What type of person is going to be capable of chartering a flight off this rock? The wealthy, that's who. So in a way, earth will be renamed to "Detroit" where the rich can afford to move away and leave a rotting infrastructure for those unable to escape. Meanwhile New Earth will be populated only by the families and friends of the ultra wealthy, with no reason to look back. Ironically, for all the religious hate that goes on around /. religion has a better chance of saving all of humanity than science does... at least if we're talking about leaving this planet for a better place.

WE are the invading insectoid aliens who have depleted all of the resources of our planet and are invading other planets... there's a reason science fiction has written those kinds of invaders as the villain... because they're assholes.

This is the future that your scenario brings.