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This video addresses the possibility for a future where humanity continuously expands
its reach away from the Earth and into the wider Cosmos.
It has been noted by smarter people than I, that great civilizational endeavors are motivated
by either military, economic or fundamental ideological drivers.
If we want space to receive much more funding than it currently does, one of these motivators
would need to be mobilized. I claim that this is unrealistic in the case of economic and
ideological drivers and that attempting to revive the existential high wire act which
underpinned the cold war, would be an unacceptably high risk to take.
In the event that I'm being overly pessimistic, and an economic or ideological motivator can
be made to drive space exploration, then the remainder of this video is nothing more than
an outline of an optional extra feature of future space activities. If however, the opposite
is true, then that optional extra becomes critical to supplying humanity with the space
program we deserve.
Even without a broad civilizational mobilization, some overall global funding boosts are to
be expected simply due to an expanding global economy and the emergence of newly industrialized
nations. This alone, however will likely not be enough to continuously advance a space
frontier.
I can't predict the future. I can however see certain trends emerging in the human space
Endeavour which seem to have added value - or - give more *** for your buck.
It makes sense to start by looking at the largest peaceful space project ever undertaken
- the International Space Station program. These are the ISS partner nations. The selection
isn't really surprising - we see the world's largest industrial powerhouse - the United
States, along with Canada, we notice the Russian Federation which inherited the crown juel
of the soviet union - its space program. To the east of Russia lies Japan, until recently
the worlds' second largest industrial producer. And, as always, there's a special case - Europe.
Now, given the industrial capacity of these countries, you'd expect Germany, France and
perhaps Italy to take part in the ISS effort, but there's more here: there's Spain and Sweden,
Norway and Denmark, there's Belgium and Holland - and Switzerland. Switzerland? So what gives?
These aren't individual ISS partner countries, they're ESA member states. It's important
to realize that a number of these countries have their own space agencies which work on
crucial national activities but simply don't have the resources to carry out world-class
missions individually. These big projects are carried out by ESA (often in cooperation
with members' space agencies). I suggest that this model could bring a great deal of benefit
were it to be replicated and globalized.
It could be argued that ESA is unique - an anomaly. That it couldn't be replicated or
expanded worldwide. The answer to such doubts must simply be: It already HAS been replicated.
ESA is only one of many international science based organizations. Some of the others include:
The European Southern Observatory, CERN, Institute Laue-Langevin (ILL), Facility for Antiproton
and Ion Research (FAIR), European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL).
Beyond simple replication, these formal cooperation frameworks are expanding to a more global
scale: India became a member of ILL in 2011 and is a member of FAIR along with Russia
and other European countries. Brazil is set to join ESO in 2012, EMBL admitted Australia
as an associate member in 2008, CERN has granted different levels of partnership to dozens
of nations, and ESA has an enlargement agenda of between 12 and 16 nations (depending on
who you ask).
Moreover, for the first time in history, there exists an International Space Exploration
Coordination Group, which includes Space agencies from Europe, the US, Canada, China, India,
Korea, Japan, Australia and Russia.
The point is that this can be done as evidenced by the fact that it is BEING done.
If you take anything away from this video, remember the following:
Paraphrasing the late great Christopher Hitchens; I don't like the cold war. Not really. Except
for one small aspect. When human civilization was hanging by a thread in the 1960s, there
was an entire interval when a determined portion of humanity continuously advanced the space
frontier. All I want to propose is that if the Human species is to rise to the full height
which is demanded by our dignity and by all the potential that our intelligence has to
offer, we must all Endeavour to move to a state of affairs where that condition IS PERMANENT!