julies verne
From the very small to something rather bigger. The Automated-transfer vehicle, ATV, was launched on an Ariane 5 rocket at 403GMT yesterday from French Guiana to resupply the International Space Station. Called Julies Verne, it is the largest and most complex craft every fielded by the European Space Agency, ESA. It will undertake the first fully automatic docking, supply three times as much cargo as the Progress modules used to date.
As with CERN, the ATV and ESA in general represents the pooling of resources of a number of predominantly European nations. While not as exciting or glamorous as the USA's NASA and Russia's RKA, ESA, and the European space industry in general, has developed over the last 40 years to become a global player.
Unlike NASA, RKA and the Chinese space programme, manned flight has been less of a priority. European astronauts have been trained but have taken lifts on American and Russian crafts. There have been a number of attempts to develop a fully independent manned space programme but these have generally come to nothing. This is not actually a bad thing.
Manned space flight ties up a significant amount of resources. The ESA developed out of a number of separate European programmes. In the case of the UK and France, these where the development of ballistic missiles for nuclear warheads. However, by the 1970s, the UK, France, Germany, Italy and host of other nations had decided to cooperate on providing Europe with independent access to space. Given that European nations have been more supporting players during the Cold War era, the lack of prestige from not having a manned space programme did not really factor to the ESA.
There are a wide range of ESA projects being undertaken besides ATV and the ISS. Aurora Exploration Programme is a long term exploration programme which will ultimately aim to have a human on Mars by 2030. The Darwin Programme will be a cluster of space telescopes which will seek to detect directly Earth-like planets around other stars. The Galileo navigation system is finally starting to get under way as well. There are multitude of other projects. The ESA has generally had a rather low profile, but from a spend point of view, it is second only to NASA.
I very much have a soft spot for space stuff. Growing up as a geek, I was very much into sci-fi and space. Going into adulthood, while other believe that the money should be spent on Earth, I have always believed that space research is not a waste of money.
From a purely financial point of view, the sums being spent on space research is tiny compared to weapons. Even if the money was saved, it would not be spent on 'worth while' activities...more likely a nice tax cut of something.
From an economic point of view, space has gone from being a rather obscure area to a vital part of the modern industrial economy. Putting aside the revenue developed within the hi-tech aerospace industry and associated spin-offs, we rely on a range of space based services. GPS, communications and entertainment, and remote sensing are just three examples.
From a scientific point of view, the research undertaken has been central in understanding this planet and how it works. From a wider perspective, we are gaining greater insight in the universe.
However, for me, its the social aspects that is just as important.......I am going to right about that later.
