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‘U.S. needs international partnerships in space’

The United States must strive to retain its leadership in human spaceflight but should do so through international partnerships, including “with China, India and other aspiring space powers,” says an independent panel of specialists assembled by the Space, Policy, and Society Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Their report titled “The Future of Human Spaceflight,” which was released recently, noted that the incoming Obama administration in its first term in office “will make the most important decisions in a generation” concerning manned missions. The expert group wants the new administration and Congress to enunciate a clear human spaceflight policy so that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) would not face ambitious goals without the resources needed to achieve them, leading to situations that compromise safety.

The expert panel also emphasised the importance to the U.S. of strengthening existing partnerships and building new ones.

“The United States should reaffirm its longstanding policy of international leadership in human spaceflight and remain committed to its existing international partners,” their report stated. “In a significant shift from current policies, such leadership should not be defined only as ‘first, largest, and in charge.’ Leadership should also represent foresight in building new relationships and collaborations, and in setting an example for human spaceflight as a civilian enterprise. Given the public enthusiasm for human spaceflight around the globe, a clear perception of the United States as collaborating with other countries to accomplish goals in space would have far reaching benefits,” it added.

Competition in space had sometimes been beneficial during the Cold War, but “we don’t see it as serving the same kind of positive purpose now,” said David Mindell who directs MIT’s Space, Policy, and Society Research Group and is one of the authors of the report. It was much more productive for everybody involved for the U.S. “to aim at leadership but in some sense leadership by helping other countries accomplish their goals,” he told this correspondent.

“NASA should actively engage the Indian Space Research Organisation to explore possibilities for partnership in human spaceflight,” the report suggested. Russia had recently signed an agreement with India on joint human missions and development projects, and the U.S. should consider similar arrangements.

“Such partnerships could bear fruit in the long term, for example, if India chooses to embark on human lunar missions after 2020,” the report added. Besides, “were an Indian human spacecraft, especially one with rendezvous and docking capability, to become operational around 2015-2020 it could offer an option for crew transport to the [International Space Station].”

The space experts argued for a “radical revision” of the current U.S. policy of trying to isolate China and having little cooperation with that country in space activities. Instead, the U.S. “should begin engagement with China on human spaceflight in a series of small steps, gradually building up trust and cooperation,” they recommended in the report.

The U.S. goal must be to develop long-term collaboration, said Prof. Mindell. The Russian-NASA relationship had now got 20 years behind it, with day-to-day kind of encounters and “those things really add up over time,” he observed. “That is the sort of thing we are suggesting.”

“The United States should invite international and commercial partners to participate in its new exploration initiative to build a truly global exploration effort, with significant cost-sharing,” the report noted.

But it is more than a matter of sharing the cost, according to Prof. Mindell. He pointed out that historically the international relationships that the U.S. has had have not reduced the cost of space exploration. “So I think that actually the collaborations need to be worthwhile on their own terms, above and beyond cost-sharing.”

“It may well be that even something like going back to the Moon and certainly something like going to Mars is beyond the resources of any one nation,” he added. But, in addition, there was engineering talent and technology in lots of other places that could be tapped.

However, “every one of these relationships is complicated and we are not suggesting that the U.S. rush headlong into any of them,” Prof. Mindell remarked.

(The report, Future of Human Spaceflight, can be downloaded from http://web.mit.edu/mitsps/ )

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