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It's a good effort by ISRO and it's scientist. Just can't understand why so many countries reinventing the wheels. Space missions should be multi-country effort

It's a good effort by ISRO and it's scientist. Just can't understand why so many countries reinventing the wheels. Space missions should be multi-country efforts continuously as it belongs to all. We should not extend our tribal nationalistic thinking to space. Best scientist can be in any nation and more diverse the group and experience the better chances of success. I know I am just dreaming, but hopefully we can come to consensus and try challenges of space as a new frontier as a single human race, originating from Africa.

rayiner 7y ago
No. We’re different groups of people with different interests, different values, different ideas principles cultures histories views of the world. It’s good for us to be competing to explore space (and in trying to develop technological advantages in general). For countries like India it’s critical to develop their own technologies on this front. Otherwise they’ll remain eternally dependent on America, etc., for access to space. A “single human race” would be a deeply dysfunctional, unworkable mega-society. Our societies are already too big to be governable. (Ever notice how in Star Trek, aside from token, curated, differences, trillions of people are somehow almost completely culturally homogenous? That’s what makes the federation governable. But it would never work that way in real life. There would be intense conflict. The idea of a society that big being governable is part of the science fiction.)
- nafey 7y ago
  Well let's revisit this statement in 500 years. Every decade has brought the world closer. Even the recent developments (brexit, trump) are reactions to increased pace of integration. You can find kfc, coca cola in socities as diverse as Mongolia and Madagascar. It will be extremely difficult to turn the clock back on this and this will only keep on intensifying in my opinion.
  - lenkite 7y ago
    Of-course you are right: there are likely to be several major wars in 500 years where smaller and poorer nations get annexed or more likely - simply subjugated by sheer economic dominance. The winners who perform this 'integration' will definitely be in charge of the space missions.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    " A 1910 best-selling book, The Great Illusion, used economic arguments to demonstrate that territorial conquest had become unprofitable, and therefore global capitalism had removed the risk of major wars. " [0] If you assume that the world order should look like America in charge, everyone else playing quietly in their own garden then everything is fine. If you assume that the Asian, African and European powers might see the world differently, there is a lot of potential that the last 60 years are not the inevitable tide of history but a happy anomaly while everyone stood back up from WWII. [0] http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-kaletsky/2014/06/27/world-war-one-first-war-was-impossible-then-inevitable/ http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-kaletsky/2014/06/27/world-w...
    - rayiner 7y ago
      > If you assume that the Asian, African and European powers might see the world differently And if you’re an American, the prospect of that single national government being say Bangladesh (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/world/asia/bangladesh-statue-justice-supreme-court-islam.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/world/asia/bangladesh-sta...) should be pretty scary! Star Trek style global government seems attractive to many people because they assume it’ll be “America in Space.”
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        More like Europe in space (more socialist/democratic) and I wouldn't mind it - but then I guess I'm biased, as a European (and I half-seriously fly the flag of United Federation of Planets). Still, I don't think we can face planetary-scale challenges much longer as a bunch of competing nations; some form of global governance will be necessary for humanity to move forward. As for culture difference, this may be unpopular opinion, but I do hope things will homogenize further over time. The driving aspect towards cultural unification even today is that people copy what works.
        rayiner 7y ago
        Europe is not socialist. The government does not own the means of production.
  - Barrin92 7y ago
    It's certainly odd to measure the closeness of human societies by the proximity of coca cola dispensers. Humanity is scientifically and materialistically closer and that will certainly continue, but the world is not closer in terms of modes of governance or ideas of how society ought to be organised. On the contrary, 30 years ago after the fall of the Soviet Union that sentiment peaked and Fukuyama's end of history seemed plausible. Today with the nationalisation of cyberspace, we can see countless of new divides. The US is rapidly withdrawing from global affairs, China is emerging with a competitive, alternative mode of organisation, a distinct European identity is beginning to form as a response to this particular in France, India is slowly emerging (see the very thread we're in), and Africa is a whole other matter. But by no means does it look like the world is converging, as it did in the 90s and early 00s when we were all listening to corporate world music and cheering for Blair.
    - JohnStrangeII 7y ago
      The convergence is massive and even faster than in the 90s. Languages die nearly daily (a language dies when its last speaker dies) and with them their culture, and people consume the same media and news all of the world. I'm not going to dig up some links on the net, you can do that yourself, but these are measurable phenomena. You're thinking in short, next twenty years or so. A resurgence of nationalism is a response to globalization, but unless we give up our ways of living entirely (no capitalism, no markets, no growth) these movements will have practically no effect. Mass media alone ensure that, let alone the nature of global trading and social mobility. Think about the next two hundred years and there is no way culture on earth will not be vastly homogeneous. Whether that's good or bad I will leave open, my personal view is that all massive shifts in human development are accompanied by positive and negative effects.
      - balt_s 7y ago
        > You're thinking in short, next twenty years or so I suspect the drawdown of easily-accessible, dense, cheap fossil fuels will spell the end of global integration; consider a very low-energy future where most communication takes place via radio and travel for 99% takes place at a fraction of today's rate. We would expect regional differences to increase as groups adapt to local areas, ideally while carrying out extensive sharing of e.g. practices and techniques.
  - emanreus 7y ago
    Trash food and beverage franchises brought us together? I don't think so.
  - Mountain_Skies 7y ago
    Sounds like proof that cultural imperialism is a valid complaint for much of the world. Is it a bad thing that some of the previous worst offenders are starting to pull back?
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >Every decade has brought the world closer. Well, (1) there are more sovereign nations now than ever, (2) all the big empires (from Babylonian, to Alexander's, to Roman, to Byzantium, to Persian, to Incas, all the way to the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, British and French colonial empires, USSR, and more) -aside from the Chinese and Indian who are more homogenous racially/culturally - have collapsed (3) there is way more infighting that on any time in the previous 40 years (4) nations that were held together for half a century as a single country have nonetheless split at the first chance, often under fierce wars (e.g. Yugoslavia), and even centuries old countries like Canada, Belgium, UK, Spain, etc, still have infighting, and even votes to break up... (5) a worsening of climate change and economy will more than likely see every-nation-for-itself than some unity, even if there's a coordinated effort to reduce emissions and so on, there will also be huge pressure to ascertain certain resources, safety, etc at a country by country level (sharing is only good for those that need it. For those that have the power to avoid it, or even grab from others, it just gives you moral points) >You can find kfc, coca cola in societies as diverse as Mongolia and Madagascar. Yeah, that's a huge cultural (and dietary) destruction...
    - Razengan 7y ago
      > aside from the Chinese and India Do you know how many different empires, rulers, internal wars and government systems China and India have gone through in 2000 years, and how many "races" and "cultures" they have?
      - coldtea 7y ago
        >Do you know how many different empires, rulers, internal wars and government systems China and India have gone through in 2000 years, and how many "races" and "cultures" they have? Yes. Still more homogeneous and stable than most other empires...
        Der_Einzige 7y ago
        Oh you mean like that time when the Mongol conquered and ruled china for like, 100+ years, ushering in the largest case of minority rule the world had ever seen to that point. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_dynasty https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_dynasty
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    I love the fact that people always bring stuff like: > hey you can find McDonalds and Starbucks even when you don't expect it, so it means the world is closer than it has ever been right? You could find pottery exported in multiple places even in antiquity, that did not mean they had a single culture or single belief system in place. Do not equal exchange of goods with the assumption of a mono-culture.
    - rjf72 7y ago
      Tea is also a phenomenal example here since it's been so globally traded that it no longer even has a cultural identity. And then when you get into the age of sail you suddenly see a massive intercontinental trade of sugar/cotton/tobacco/coffee/etc. I also never understood why people seem to think that a multinational corporation selling stuff to different cultures is somehow doing anything but increasing the corporation's profit margins.
      - ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
        Interesting fact: if tea arrived via land, it's nomenclature is rhyming with chai. If it arrived via the seas, it rhymes with tea.
        lovemenot 7y ago
        Japan, an island nation, seems to be an exception. Ocha rhymes with chai.
  - rjf72 7y ago
    Integration is such an interesting term. Before we got to see what the internet actually became, it was a realm of endless idealism. It was going to be something that would finally unite people across cultures and any sort of boundaries. People would be able to share ideas, communicate instantly, and effectively turn humanity from a disparate group of people separated by arbitrary lines into simple a group of diverse and interesting people all sharing and communicating among one another. Instead we used its filtering ability to break down into even smaller groups than before. Before the internet Americans were mostly unified by an American identity. Now instead we've splintered off into a whole host of little subculture identities driven by the great ability of the internet to unite niches and expel the nonbelievers. But this isn't about the internet. It's about people. Birmingham is one of the most "integrated" cities in England. This [1] page has heat maps showing the various religions there. There's basically no overlap. Instead of integration you have the Muslim section, the Christian section, the Jew section, etc. Even the Sikhs have there own little section, though granted they do share it a bit with the Hindus. Now instead of having one mostly unified city you now have a half dozen cities that have some very sharp cultural conflicts. The irony that literally bringing people closer together can, figuratively, do the exact opposite. Even the notion that we're becoming more integrated is something I'd question. This [2] is a video showing the borders of the world over time. The surprising thing you'll notice is that, over time, divisions between society have actually been accelerating. Check out the mid 1200s. The Mongols created a single unified empire than stretched from western europe to eastern asia. Very near the entire known world at the time. No need for borders when there's one world government, and one that was also extremely tolerant of foreign cultures. Can you imagine living in this time and then somebody saying that within a couple of centuries the entire empire would be scattered like ashes in the wind? And like nearly all the empire collapses you can see in that video, it was caused by internal culture clashes. Should the Mongol empire adopt western traditions and become a sedentary settled empire, or should it remain a putative Mongol empire? One side said x, the other said y, lots of people died, the empire broke up. A story told a million times on various scales. Of course even if they had chosen one direction or another, it likely would have had the same ending because once one side or another reached a critical mass - you'd see the emergence of internal insurrections. Of course we've had a pause in open war since 1945 but nuclear deterrence isn't going to last forever. Imagine there were no nuclear weapons today. Do you think China, the Mideast, the United States, China, Russia, Europe, etc would still be maintaining the already tenuous peace we have? Without nuclear weapons the Cold War would not have been the Cold War, it would have been World War 3. And as soon as nuclear deterrence can be nullified by technological means, I expect we'll be quite quick to pick right back up. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Birmingham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Birmingham [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6Wu0Q7x5D0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6Wu0Q7x5D0
- inopinatus 7y ago
  Just because we’re separable into groups doesn’t mean we have to be in competition. That’s exactly the false equivalence of petty tribal nationalism that GP is calling out.
- jddj 7y ago
  If tribe was (I hope you'll agree) too small, and nations "too big", what in your view is the optimal scale for governance? Personally, the most logical conclusion for me is that national governance being the highest level is a local maxima, and I think I'd take a long bet that if humans are around in another 1000 years, there would be a necessary requirement for at least some form of planet-scale government.
- dragonsh 7y ago
  I will disagree with your views, scientifically we are same race and our genetic differences are insignificant. Our ancestors originated in Africa. Indeed today most nation's are a hotpot of multi-culture, language, colors, food etc. All these difference you talk about came from our tribal nationalistic mentality. Indeed the reason USA and many other countries succeeded is due to openness to embrace diversity. Single human race does not mean everyone is same, I am not sure if you heard "Unity in diversity". All the boundaries we talk about today hopefully do not extend to space.
  - neoplatonian 7y ago
    " the reason USA and many other countries succeeded is due to openness to embrace diversity." - I'd say it was due to a combination colonialism of Asia, subjugation of Africa by the slave trade and world wars recking Europe. By 1950s, USA was already ahead of the rest of the world. Because it was in that position that it was able to attract immigrants which then helped to sustain its position. There are many countries which are open to diversity - India would probably lead that list historically followed by modern Canada. But none is close to USA. On the other hand, Japan, South Korea, China and Asian tigers have done well without being open and diverse.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - dear 7y ago
      >On the other hand, Japan, South Korea, China and Asian tigers have done well without being open and diverse. They all make money by selling to the USA.
    - SamReidHughes 7y ago
      The USA just had a lot of land and a low population. America already had a better quality of life than Europe in the 1700's.
      - ever1 7y ago
- JohnStrangeII 7y ago
  Your post has "false dichotomy" written all over it. Of course, space exploration is an international endeavor and most space missions are highly international. Planning international space exploration missions doesn't force anyone to give up their nation, just as global trade does not imply that. Moreover, if mankind ever expands into space, it would be rather naive to think that earth's nations would play a role there in the long run. Earth's nations change all the time, they are mere human constructs, and of course the same would happen in outer space. It would take maybe a hundred years or so for space colonies to declare their independence. And afterwards, they form larger unions again, just like on earth, because forming unions is in their interests. > The idea of a society that big being governable is part of the science fiction. That's far off topic, but to reply to this aspect of your post: Claiming that you can govern countries like Australia, the US, and Russia, but not the world as a whole draws some pretty arbitrary boundaries. With a federal structure, it would be no problem. People said about every country before it was united that it will never be united. Before Germany was united, people said that it's absolutely impossible to govern such a big country and that the cultures of Prussia and Bavaria are just too different. Before the EU was funded, people said that certain European countries could never closely work together or even form a trade union and that there would always be war between some of them. Heck, probably settlers in the US also were convinced that the South and the North could never live together or be governed as one nation, because it's just too big. And so on, and so forth, you get the gist.
  - gandutraveler 7y ago
    It's easy to say that it's an international initiative and ignore how we failed at others like global warming.
    - Sharlin 7y ago
      Like Antarctica, exploiting off-world resources is not economically viable and thus remains mostly unaffected by the tragedy of the commons, for now anyway. Cooperation is easy when there’s little incentive for individual agents to defect.
  - rayiner 7y ago
- ineedasername 7y ago
  Collaborating on scientific endeavors is not the same as a single world government. It also doesn't account for way we and other countries do collaborate on large scientific projects, such as the LHC. Then there are the technologies that India and other countries have not developed themselves, but instead acquire or license and avoid having to reinvent the wheel, and come to understand themselves much faster than starting from zero. India would not be dependent on the US if we used some of our expertise to teach them. It doesn't have to a black box that "just works" without any understanding of it. There's also no reason knowledge sharing couldn't take in the context of market economics. The experts that helped India wouldn't be working for free. It also doesn't have to contradict different interests, values, etc.: Vastly different groups can still have some areas of collective self-interest that coincide. India for example is the world's largest Democracy. That alone is a good reason for the US to want to help make them successful and provide to them scientific help that advances their society and thereby assists in their long term stability. Unrelated: Your profile, "cognitive radio" sounds fascinating!
  - rayiner 7y ago
    I don’t disagree with that concept, but note that a lot of international cooperation that exists presently doesn’t help countries like India develop their own technology. Putting Indian astronauts or experiments on American space missions, for example. Taking their own shot at going to the moon, independent of US efforts, is an important step forward for India.
    - ineedasername 7y ago
      That current cooperation may not be geared towards knowledge transfer doesn't mean it couldn't be. For example the US helped Great Britain extensively in the 60's and 70's on the space front and other areas, not to the extent that the UK was unable to do it themselves but to successfully boot strap their efforts. There's other examples too: Despite a chilly relationship and very different values, the US and Russia have worked together for two decades on the ISS. The world is littered with current projects or their results that involved significant international cooperation and shared expertise. The argument that it shouldn't happen, or isn't in countries' best interests, or not with India in this case-- those might be interesting ideas to explore, but that doesn't mean it can't or doesn't happen successfully. Practically no country has independently built all of the technology that it both uses, fully understands, and can now produce on its own. What we're really talking about here is teaching-- teaching another country how to do something. I don't need how teaching necessarily disadvantages the student country. It doesn't replace their own initiative to learn and internalize the material, but it does bootstrap the process.
- jackyinger 7y ago
  This is the kind of fractious factionalist junk that is designed to stoke terrestrial xenophobic fears. Anecdotally I have traveled and met folks abroad as well as interacted with many immigrants domestically, at the end of the day I think it’s safe to say the basic nature of being hunt leads to us all having more in common than not. Now governments being divisive for short sighted power grabs? Sure, but don’t say it’s the people.
  - rjf72 7y ago
    I completely agree with you, but I also think you cannot hand wave away the small differences. Islam is such a perfect example of this. Sunni and Shia Muslims have been literally killing each other for about 1400 years now. Why? One side believes that Mohammed's father-in-law should have been his successor, the other side believes that his son-in-law should have been his successor. Their fundamental views and values are identical. There are some derivative differences in the value they give to various supplementary texts to the Koran, but all in all - they are still pretty much the same. Certainly near identical compared to any outsider. Yet that difference is enough to justify thousands of years of murder. People don't tolerate differences well, even when they think they do. For instance how would you like a representative population of the US in your neighborhood and work? People tend to think about things like this in terms of colors instead of views and values. That'd mean, among other things, that of every person who voted in your work/neighbor, more than 46% would have voted for Trump. Ultimately I think politicians are reflections of the people rather than their directors. Did Abraham Lincoln end slavery, or had the public mind changed in such a way that the election of a figurative Lincoln was inevitable, even if by a different name? So too in modern times. It's not like America was just cheery before 2016. Ever since the normalization of the internet we've been becoming extremely divided. And so it's only natural that our politicians would in turn end up being ever more divisive. Think about the migration debate. It's not about things like trying to determine what a sustainable level of migration is, or its longterm economic and social impacts. Instead one side wants to build a wall and block migration as much as possible while the other side is dog whistling for open borders and literally suggesting free medical care and other benefits for people who enter illegally. Both sides are basically just trolling each other, and I think that's a reflection of what we the people are doing to one another. And of course this is not just intra-America. See, for instance, the huge rise of 白左 / baizuo. People view things through difference lenses, even when we do have nearly everything in common. Maybe that is even actually the real point. The more you have in common, the less of a difference you need to create a meaningful divide. When you disagree on many things, one more disagreement isn't really changing your relationship much. When you agree on nearly everything, one irreconcilable disagreement is suddenly a big deal.
- dingoegret 7y ago
  I agree with this. Star Trek was immensely western centric. It always struck me as weird the crew would always quote western historical figures or play classic western music as a token of the "old world". In a power structure, homogenizing as "one world" will only benefit those already with more power than everyone else. They would gobble up the little fish and it would all be for a misbegotten ideal.
- geofft 7y ago
  > We’re different groups of people What sort of groups, precisely? Historically, the concept of a "nation" (as the "nat-" root implies) is a people born of the same ancestry, a people native to the same land. Parthians, Medes and Elamites, and so forth - sharing an ethnicity, a language, and a culture. Yet the first two "nations" to reach space, the US and the USSR, were hardly that. Sure, each had a majority ethnic group, but they both had (in their own way) an expectation that all people within their borders would conform to their culture, and relevantly that their approach to scientific research and space exploration would benefit the country as a whole. And India isn't a "nation" in the historical sense, anyway. It's a collection of dozens of peoples, with significant and influential minority populations among them, and all are represented in the country as a whole and in ISRO in particular. Getting India into space on its own absolutely serves the needs of India as a sovereign power, but that's very different from saying that it serves the needs of humanity (or that India, or anyone else, should be a sovereign power). And, relevant to the concept of "nation," there's no particular reason a person born into a high-information world should adopt the values of their ethnicity's historic culture more than any other values they may see.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    “Groups of people” doesn’t need to mean “ethnicity.” There’s a lot of political conflict in the Us, but it’s not primarily along ethnic or religious lines, for example. But there are groups of people, and they are different. Farmers in Iowa are different people than programmers in San Francisco. Having government necessarily requires those groups of people to make decisions about the lives of other people under the same government. That becomes exponentially harder as the group becomes more heterogenous with respect to the things governments do.
    - geofft 7y ago
      > But there are groups of people, and they are different. Farmers in Iowa are different people than programmers in San Francisco. Again, I disagree with this. Plenty of programmers in San Francisco grew up on farms in Iowa. (And to be transparent about my biases here: my parents are Indian Christians, a distinct culture from the Hindu majority; my dad worked for ISRO; and I was born in the Deep South and worked as a programmer in SF for a few years. So the culture of "India" as a whole doesn't resonate with me, nor that of "the Deep South" or "SF" nor "America," and I don't feel like a lesser person for it.) And I would claim that the fact that you can migrate from an area with one sort of politics / culture / economy / etc. to an area with another one (as a pointed example, anyone remember the "It Gets Better" videos from a few years ago featuring gay people who grew up across the country, half of whom seemed to say "and then I moved to San Francisco"?), and that people do that quite frequently, is evidence that there isn't much reason in attributing politics / culture / etc. to people as people in the way we've historically seen it, i.e., as correlated with place of birth or parentage or childhood culture, or proxies for those like religion. If anything, the unrealistic part about Star Trek is that the various alien species had personalities influenced by their biology (the Vulcans with weaker emotional processing, the physically resilient Klingons, etc.). If they didn't, given pervasive interstellar transport, it's hard to see why so many people stay on their home planets. (And indeed the whole conceit of the Federation is that they don't have to.)
- karpodiem 7y ago
  +1 for escaping the group-think.
- spamizbad 7y ago
  India is not culturally homogeneous (and no, I’m not just talking about the situation with Kashmir here).
- inimino 7y ago
  > A “single human race” would be [...] A single human race is what we actually are. Wake up and set your tribalistic thinking aside, it's not helping anyone.
- eloff 7y ago
  I think if you extend Nassim Talebs ideas of anti-fragile to human societies, the sensible future would be a more loose Federation of (city?) states. Very powerful central governments are undesirable from many, many perspectives. Getting more competing ideas on how to organize society introduces the same free market principles that have been successful for our economies into social structure. We'd have states that are winners and losers, and the losers would pretty quickly copy the winning strategies. You'd also have much less risk of your own government turning into a tyrannical oppressor - the splash radius of such an event would be much smaller.
- greglindahl 7y ago
  This mission was actually multi-country... NASA provided a retro-reflector for the lander, and in exchange provided DSN coverage. Maybe your reaction was slightly knee-jerk?
- MiroF 7y ago
  Sounds tribalistic but ok. Just because you can't imagine an alternative to the status quo doesn't mean it's impossible.
nithinm 7y ago
Maybe because many of the technologies used in space missions have military applications?
lenkite 7y ago
In a world under one uniform system of tightly-integrated government or closely allied nations at the nearly the same economic and technological levels, one can certainly do this. Otherwise, yes, you are right, it's a grand pipe dream. Will all the nations contribute equally in terms of technological, financial and expert human resources ? Besides, tribal, nationalistic thinking is very good for competition and speeding technological progress. It is what took US and Russia to space in the first place. Nations and civilisations try ten times as as hard if they know someone is competing with them. Imagine if the Russians today had a Space-X competitor...
- valarauko 7y ago
  >Imagine if the Russians today had a Space-X competitor... Followed by Samsung launching the SpaceX Note Max.
- philwelch 7y ago
  SpaceX itself exists in part as a competitor to Roscosmos.
blisterpeanuts 7y ago
You make a valid point, when it comes to general scientific research, and scientists already tend to work on international teams across cultures and geographical regions. Space programs benefit from a fairly centralized approach, with teams of engineers working to analyze and correct glitches and anomalies in real time. It would be harder to coordinate a distributed team when time is of the essence.
Merrill 7y ago
>"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." It's mostly a matter of conspicuous consumption, aside from possible military applications and meager civilian technological advances.
- Bluestrike2 7y ago
  For what it's worth, many of the impacts don't seem to be well-reported in popular media. Consider this 2013 NASA report[0] on its socio-economic impacts: an IMPLAN input/output analysis shows NASA directly generates $2.60 of economic output per dollar spent, compared to the federal non-military average of $2.30 and military average of $2.00. This often-quoted 1975 paper[1] posits a 14:1 increase in GNP resulting from a sustained $1bn increase in NASA R&D spending over ten years. The civilian tech benefits, even if you only look at the immediate spinoffs technologies in the short-term, are rather significant. There were over 2,200 tech transfer transactions in 2012 alone, beyond the ~50 or so they profile annually in Spinoff,[2] and ranging from small software usage agreements to patents used for massive changes in the market. There are a ton of articles and infographics out there that list just some of those spinoff technologies that people often directly experience in their daily lives. I don't think meager is an applicable descriptor, even if we haven't seen the sort NASA generate the kind of "wow!" technologies like flying cars, personal jetpacks, and space colonies that people in the 50s imagined would be commonplace by now. What's really interesting, however, is that space spending is rarely defended—or even thought about much—in these terms. In that sense, NASA spending is often discussed in terms of national prestige or a very general sense of scientific advancement. The science benefit is absolutely, 100% true, and an excellent reason in its own right, but sadly not one that has a lot of political persuasiveness. Outside of regions that are directly involved in NASA manufacturing and operations (which lends itself to fierce congressional support by their elected legislators), there's a sense of "that money is spent 'out there' in space, not here at home." Of course, the national prestige aspect does give space funding a bit more protection from the sort of direct attacks we've seen directed at various basic research funding and grants. No legislator wants to be the one to kill something "as American as apple pie." 0. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/SEINSI.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/SEINSI.pdf 1. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19760017002.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/197600... 2. https://spinoff.nasa.gov/ https://spinoff.nasa.gov/
ryloric 7y ago
But the goals are different though, ISRO is less about grand exploratory projects and more about doing the little things and balance them with the commercial aspects of space. India is not a super rich country that can spare ISRO a large budget you know. Eitherway, there's also some advantages from having competing organizations with different operating philosophies exploring space.
- FraKtus 7y ago
  Exactly, I find it impressive what they did achieve within their budget. It's opening ways to create more affordable space missions.
deleted 7y ago
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nolok 7y ago
Anyone can join the ESA and chose which project they want to participate in and get the research results from it, just like CERN it’s not actually an EU organization
zelon88 7y ago
While I agree that in the future we should strive to achieve this level of cultural cohesion, we're currently at a point where the incentive to do these things is largely motivated by technological needs by developing countries. As a result these countries gain experience in these fields that makes their research more relevant. The space race is over, but it happened because the two most technologically advanced nations were competing for dominance that would essentially earn them the "world champion" title. That need to win the title is how we all got to space in under a decade. Now smaller nations are competing for third and fourth place, and that's creating a technological revolution for them right now. So think more long term. We've always been on the same team, but these are pre-season practices where we're all split into subteams and pit against each other to determine the roster. USA and Russia are first string. China and India are competing for second string. When the season starts and were all wearing the same colors; we'll be unstoppable.
cameronbrown 7y ago
The capitalists would argue that free market competition will work in space as well as on Earth.
douglaswlance 7y ago
Do you have proof that this global philosophy you propose is more effective than nation-based organization?
dalbasal 7y ago
Should bes are tricky. At least historically, competitiveness & national pride have been good drivers. That usually meant big money national projects for the US and Russia. More recently it has meant affordable projects can be sold to smaller national governments. Israel & India both went this way recently. Both crashed their landers, but that might not be such a terrible thing. There are also international efforts and private ones. I like having multiple tools in the toolbox. They all seem to operate quite differently. ESA/NASA can do long horizon boundary projects and hard science. ISS can do hard science, and expand/internationalize the knowledge base. These small, one-off national projects can try out new (often low cost) designs and a "just because" rationales for missions. Private space is making great progress commodifying launches... Roscosmos has more room to play (currently, they sell seats on their vehicles), without having to support white elephant projects that compete with NASA's budget. I'd say we're doing well, better than 10-20 years ago when the ISS had more of the "space pie," because space explorations is dispersed. I definitely agree with the spirit of "earthlings unite" but I also like the plurality of space agencies. Hopefully, India is hooked and we'll see more from them. No hate on international (or non national) projects though. Maybe Israel & India can combine forces for a 3rd mission. Both attempted a moon mission for around $100m. Both crashed their first attempt. If a 3rd mission succeeds we'll have a win for cooperation and we'll also have a proof of concept for affordable moon missions.
emanreus 7y ago
Space colonization is a wonderful opportunity to create unique civilizations, each pursuing their own destiny. Where does your sadistic desire to control the future of entire mankind come from? Ability to choose different paths is far more appealing than suffering under some inescapable dystopian global diktat you have in mind. So yes, we should extend tribal thinking to space. Platitudes like "we are single human race" are as meaningful as saying we are all life.
- jasonhansel 7y ago
  Sure is good that "tribal thinking" has never led to dystopias of any sort!</sarcasm> Also: how exactly is OP being sadistic, or planning a "global diktat"? Those are very strong accusations.
hos234 7y ago
Things are moving in that direction - https://www.globalspaceexploration.org/wordpress/?p=940 https://www.globalspaceexploration.org/wordpress/?p=940
nilsocket 7y ago
When situation is out of hand, people suffer a lot. MasterCard and Visa have stopped there services in several countries, in-order to be complaint with American law (Laws which are specifically made, to hurt certain countries). When a Democratic government is controlling private companies, when needed let alone your suggestion of believing in government companies. In 1999, during Kargil War (between India and Pakistan), it's an unexpected war from Indian side. When Indian government asked help from American government for GPS, they have outright denied it. When it's needed the most. As a country we had our fair-share of setbacks from several countries, I think we need to learn from our mistakes and try to be independent. In the need of the hour, every country/state/person has it's own preferences.
- iagovar 7y ago
  I agree with you. Deal with your stuff and then you'll be respected as a country. And know who are you real allies, sometimes it isn't that clear.
pfdietz 7y ago
> Just can't understand why so many countries reinventing the wheels. Reinventing wheels is hugely important to advancing technology, both between countries and between companies. The notion that getting rid of competition is beneficial because of the saving in redundant effort is an evergreen fallacy. The problem with doing single efforts is the huge risk that the effort screws up, or is subverted for illegitimate purposes, and if there's no redundancy it blocks everything. Single efforts become breeding grounds of entitlement and rent seeking.
scarejunba 7y ago
Well, I’m not going to let you give ICBM tech to the North Koreans so you’re on your own here.
trixie_ 7y ago
There will always be groups of people who wish to be independent. Regardless if they're travelling to the new world or into a space. Some kind of authority trying to keep everyone together would not end up in the utopia scenario that you are imagining.
xenocyon 7y ago
Space missions have been, from their very beginning in the past century, not only tribalistic/nationalistic but very overtly and pointedly so; indeed, that was practically the reason they came into existence.
jasonhansel 7y ago
I can't upvote this enough. If we could somehow establish that tribalism and nationalism were the only ways for us to get into space, then spaceflight wouldn't be worth it.
ibrault 7y ago
Haven't seen anyone mention it, but NASA JPL and the Indian Space Agency are collaborating on the NISAR mission [0]. [0] https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov/ https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov/
philwelch 7y ago
There’s value in any organization independently working out for itself how to land a probe on the moon. Multinational efforts like ISS are great but it’s often useful to have redundancy. If Roscosmos loses funding or there’s some catastrophe preventing them from launching Soyuz from Baikonur, I think it’s good for humanity that China can still launch their Shenzhou and America (hopefully soon) can still launch our Dragon or Starliner. Besides, as long as we still have national sentiment, I think it’s wonderful for an Indian or Chinese child to be able to have the same feelings of inspiration that American and Russian children have grown up with.
whoisninja 7y ago
agreed, should be like that. but play Sid Meier's Civilization read about operation paper clip and read about Helium on the moon and it's not just space, you can say same about any technological advancement. why re-invent? why not collaborate? I guess, you've think deeper about nation states in current form.
- whoisninja 7y ago
  also universities, internet and open-source software has bridged lot of that gap but then we also have claims like China stealing IP from US (not suggesting who's right or wrong, but stating a fact)
sqldba 7y ago
I also have to disagree. There’s a difference between working with others to achieve a certain familiarity with the science and industry to sustain it, and riding on the coat tails of other countries who can provide all of that for you but may pull it at any time such as for trade war purposes.

rayiner 7y ago

No. We’re different groups of people with different interests, different values, different ideas principles cultures histories views of the world. It’s good for us to be competing to explore space (and in trying to develop technological advantages in general). For countries like India it’s critical to develop their own technologies on this front. Otherwise they’ll remain eternally dependent on America, etc., for access to space. A “single human race” would be a deeply dysfunctional, unworkable mega-society. Our societies are already too big to be governable. (Ever notice how in Star Trek, aside from token, curated, differences, trillions of people are somehow almost completely culturally homogenous? That’s what makes the federation governable. But it would never work that way in real life. There would be intense conflict. The idea of a society that big being governable is part of the science fiction.)

nafey 7y ago
Well let's revisit this statement in 500 years. Every decade has brought the world closer. Even the recent developments (brexit, trump) are reactions to increased pace of integration. You can find kfc, coca cola in socities as diverse as Mongolia and Madagascar. It will be extremely difficult to turn the clock back on this and this will only keep on intensifying in my opinion.
- lenkite 7y ago
  Of-course you are right: there are likely to be several major wars in 500 years where smaller and poorer nations get annexed or more likely - simply subjugated by sheer economic dominance. The winners who perform this 'integration' will definitely be in charge of the space missions.
- roenxi 7y ago
  " A 1910 best-selling book, The Great Illusion, used economic arguments to demonstrate that territorial conquest had become unprofitable, and therefore global capitalism had removed the risk of major wars. " [0] If you assume that the world order should look like America in charge, everyone else playing quietly in their own garden then everything is fine. If you assume that the Asian, African and European powers might see the world differently, there is a lot of potential that the last 60 years are not the inevitable tide of history but a happy anomaly while everyone stood back up from WWII. [0] http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-kaletsky/2014/06/27/world-war-one-first-war-was-impossible-then-inevitable/ http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-kaletsky/2014/06/27/world-w...
  - rayiner 7y ago
    > If you assume that the Asian, African and European powers might see the world differently And if you’re an American, the prospect of that single national government being say Bangladesh (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/world/asia/bangladesh-statue-justice-supreme-court-islam.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/world/asia/bangladesh-sta...) should be pretty scary! Star Trek style global government seems attractive to many people because they assume it’ll be “America in Space.”
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      More like Europe in space (more socialist/democratic) and I wouldn't mind it - but then I guess I'm biased, as a European (and I half-seriously fly the flag of United Federation of Planets). Still, I don't think we can face planetary-scale challenges much longer as a bunch of competing nations; some form of global governance will be necessary for humanity to move forward. As for culture difference, this may be unpopular opinion, but I do hope things will homogenize further over time. The driving aspect towards cultural unification even today is that people copy what works.
      - rayiner 7y ago
        Europe is not socialist. The government does not own the means of production.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  It's certainly odd to measure the closeness of human societies by the proximity of coca cola dispensers. Humanity is scientifically and materialistically closer and that will certainly continue, but the world is not closer in terms of modes of governance or ideas of how society ought to be organised. On the contrary, 30 years ago after the fall of the Soviet Union that sentiment peaked and Fukuyama's end of history seemed plausible. Today with the nationalisation of cyberspace, we can see countless of new divides. The US is rapidly withdrawing from global affairs, China is emerging with a competitive, alternative mode of organisation, a distinct European identity is beginning to form as a response to this particular in France, India is slowly emerging (see the very thread we're in), and Africa is a whole other matter. But by no means does it look like the world is converging, as it did in the 90s and early 00s when we were all listening to corporate world music and cheering for Blair.
  - JohnStrangeII 7y ago
    The convergence is massive and even faster than in the 90s. Languages die nearly daily (a language dies when its last speaker dies) and with them their culture, and people consume the same media and news all of the world. I'm not going to dig up some links on the net, you can do that yourself, but these are measurable phenomena. You're thinking in short, next twenty years or so. A resurgence of nationalism is a response to globalization, but unless we give up our ways of living entirely (no capitalism, no markets, no growth) these movements will have practically no effect. Mass media alone ensure that, let alone the nature of global trading and social mobility. Think about the next two hundred years and there is no way culture on earth will not be vastly homogeneous. Whether that's good or bad I will leave open, my personal view is that all massive shifts in human development are accompanied by positive and negative effects.
    - balt_s 7y ago
      > You're thinking in short, next twenty years or so I suspect the drawdown of easily-accessible, dense, cheap fossil fuels will spell the end of global integration; consider a very low-energy future where most communication takes place via radio and travel for 99% takes place at a fraction of today's rate. We would expect regional differences to increase as groups adapt to local areas, ideally while carrying out extensive sharing of e.g. practices and techniques.
- emanreus 7y ago
  Trash food and beverage franchises brought us together? I don't think so.
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  Sounds like proof that cultural imperialism is a valid complaint for much of the world. Is it a bad thing that some of the previous worst offenders are starting to pull back?
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Every decade has brought the world closer. Well, (1) there are more sovereign nations now than ever, (2) all the big empires (from Babylonian, to Alexander's, to Roman, to Byzantium, to Persian, to Incas, all the way to the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, British and French colonial empires, USSR, and more) -aside from the Chinese and Indian who are more homogenous racially/culturally - have collapsed (3) there is way more infighting that on any time in the previous 40 years (4) nations that were held together for half a century as a single country have nonetheless split at the first chance, often under fierce wars (e.g. Yugoslavia), and even centuries old countries like Canada, Belgium, UK, Spain, etc, still have infighting, and even votes to break up... (5) a worsening of climate change and economy will more than likely see every-nation-for-itself than some unity, even if there's a coordinated effort to reduce emissions and so on, there will also be huge pressure to ascertain certain resources, safety, etc at a country by country level (sharing is only good for those that need it. For those that have the power to avoid it, or even grab from others, it just gives you moral points) >You can find kfc, coca cola in societies as diverse as Mongolia and Madagascar. Yeah, that's a huge cultural (and dietary) destruction...
  - Razengan 7y ago
    > aside from the Chinese and India Do you know how many different empires, rulers, internal wars and government systems China and India have gone through in 2000 years, and how many "races" and "cultures" they have?
    - coldtea 7y ago
      >Do you know how many different empires, rulers, internal wars and government systems China and India have gone through in 2000 years, and how many "races" and "cultures" they have? Yes. Still more homogeneous and stable than most other empires...
      - Der_Einzige 7y ago
        Oh you mean like that time when the Mongol conquered and ruled china for like, 100+ years, ushering in the largest case of minority rule the world had ever seen to that point. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_dynasty https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_dynasty
- ekianjo 7y ago
  I love the fact that people always bring stuff like: > hey you can find McDonalds and Starbucks even when you don't expect it, so it means the world is closer than it has ever been right? You could find pottery exported in multiple places even in antiquity, that did not mean they had a single culture or single belief system in place. Do not equal exchange of goods with the assumption of a mono-culture.
  - rjf72 7y ago
    Tea is also a phenomenal example here since it's been so globally traded that it no longer even has a cultural identity. And then when you get into the age of sail you suddenly see a massive intercontinental trade of sugar/cotton/tobacco/coffee/etc. I also never understood why people seem to think that a multinational corporation selling stuff to different cultures is somehow doing anything but increasing the corporation's profit margins.
    - ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
      Interesting fact: if tea arrived via land, it's nomenclature is rhyming with chai. If it arrived via the seas, it rhymes with tea.
      - lovemenot 7y ago
        Japan, an island nation, seems to be an exception. Ocha rhymes with chai.
- rjf72 7y ago
  Integration is such an interesting term. Before we got to see what the internet actually became, it was a realm of endless idealism. It was going to be something that would finally unite people across cultures and any sort of boundaries. People would be able to share ideas, communicate instantly, and effectively turn humanity from a disparate group of people separated by arbitrary lines into simple a group of diverse and interesting people all sharing and communicating among one another. Instead we used its filtering ability to break down into even smaller groups than before. Before the internet Americans were mostly unified by an American identity. Now instead we've splintered off into a whole host of little subculture identities driven by the great ability of the internet to unite niches and expel the nonbelievers. But this isn't about the internet. It's about people. Birmingham is one of the most "integrated" cities in England. This [1] page has heat maps showing the various religions there. There's basically no overlap. Instead of integration you have the Muslim section, the Christian section, the Jew section, etc. Even the Sikhs have there own little section, though granted they do share it a bit with the Hindus. Now instead of having one mostly unified city you now have a half dozen cities that have some very sharp cultural conflicts. The irony that literally bringing people closer together can, figuratively, do the exact opposite. Even the notion that we're becoming more integrated is something I'd question. This [2] is a video showing the borders of the world over time. The surprising thing you'll notice is that, over time, divisions between society have actually been accelerating. Check out the mid 1200s. The Mongols created a single unified empire than stretched from western europe to eastern asia. Very near the entire known world at the time. No need for borders when there's one world government, and one that was also extremely tolerant of foreign cultures. Can you imagine living in this time and then somebody saying that within a couple of centuries the entire empire would be scattered like ashes in the wind? And like nearly all the empire collapses you can see in that video, it was caused by internal culture clashes. Should the Mongol empire adopt western traditions and become a sedentary settled empire, or should it remain a putative Mongol empire? One side said x, the other said y, lots of people died, the empire broke up. A story told a million times on various scales. Of course even if they had chosen one direction or another, it likely would have had the same ending because once one side or another reached a critical mass - you'd see the emergence of internal insurrections. Of course we've had a pause in open war since 1945 but nuclear deterrence isn't going to last forever. Imagine there were no nuclear weapons today. Do you think China, the Mideast, the United States, China, Russia, Europe, etc would still be maintaining the already tenuous peace we have? Without nuclear weapons the Cold War would not have been the Cold War, it would have been World War 3. And as soon as nuclear deterrence can be nullified by technological means, I expect we'll be quite quick to pick right back up. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Birmingham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Birmingham [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6Wu0Q7x5D0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6Wu0Q7x5D0
inopinatus 7y ago
Just because we’re separable into groups doesn’t mean we have to be in competition. That’s exactly the false equivalence of petty tribal nationalism that GP is calling out.
jddj 7y ago
If tribe was (I hope you'll agree) too small, and nations "too big", what in your view is the optimal scale for governance? Personally, the most logical conclusion for me is that national governance being the highest level is a local maxima, and I think I'd take a long bet that if humans are around in another 1000 years, there would be a necessary requirement for at least some form of planet-scale government.
dragonsh 7y ago
I will disagree with your views, scientifically we are same race and our genetic differences are insignificant. Our ancestors originated in Africa. Indeed today most nation's are a hotpot of multi-culture, language, colors, food etc. All these difference you talk about came from our tribal nationalistic mentality. Indeed the reason USA and many other countries succeeded is due to openness to embrace diversity. Single human race does not mean everyone is same, I am not sure if you heard "Unity in diversity". All the boundaries we talk about today hopefully do not extend to space.
- neoplatonian 7y ago
  " the reason USA and many other countries succeeded is due to openness to embrace diversity." - I'd say it was due to a combination colonialism of Asia, subjugation of Africa by the slave trade and world wars recking Europe. By 1950s, USA was already ahead of the rest of the world. Because it was in that position that it was able to attract immigrants which then helped to sustain its position. There are many countries which are open to diversity - India would probably lead that list historically followed by modern Canada. But none is close to USA. On the other hand, Japan, South Korea, China and Asian tigers have done well without being open and diverse.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - dear 7y ago
    >On the other hand, Japan, South Korea, China and Asian tigers have done well without being open and diverse. They all make money by selling to the USA.
  - SamReidHughes 7y ago
    The USA just had a lot of land and a low population. America already had a better quality of life than Europe in the 1700's.
    - ever1 7y ago
JohnStrangeII 7y ago
Your post has "false dichotomy" written all over it. Of course, space exploration is an international endeavor and most space missions are highly international. Planning international space exploration missions doesn't force anyone to give up their nation, just as global trade does not imply that. Moreover, if mankind ever expands into space, it would be rather naive to think that earth's nations would play a role there in the long run. Earth's nations change all the time, they are mere human constructs, and of course the same would happen in outer space. It would take maybe a hundred years or so for space colonies to declare their independence. And afterwards, they form larger unions again, just like on earth, because forming unions is in their interests. > The idea of a society that big being governable is part of the science fiction. That's far off topic, but to reply to this aspect of your post: Claiming that you can govern countries like Australia, the US, and Russia, but not the world as a whole draws some pretty arbitrary boundaries. With a federal structure, it would be no problem. People said about every country before it was united that it will never be united. Before Germany was united, people said that it's absolutely impossible to govern such a big country and that the cultures of Prussia and Bavaria are just too different. Before the EU was funded, people said that certain European countries could never closely work together or even form a trade union and that there would always be war between some of them. Heck, probably settlers in the US also were convinced that the South and the North could never live together or be governed as one nation, because it's just too big. And so on, and so forth, you get the gist.
- gandutraveler 7y ago
  It's easy to say that it's an international initiative and ignore how we failed at others like global warming.
  - Sharlin 7y ago
    Like Antarctica, exploiting off-world resources is not economically viable and thus remains mostly unaffected by the tragedy of the commons, for now anyway. Cooperation is easy when there’s little incentive for individual agents to defect.
- rayiner 7y ago
ineedasername 7y ago
Collaborating on scientific endeavors is not the same as a single world government. It also doesn't account for way we and other countries do collaborate on large scientific projects, such as the LHC. Then there are the technologies that India and other countries have not developed themselves, but instead acquire or license and avoid having to reinvent the wheel, and come to understand themselves much faster than starting from zero. India would not be dependent on the US if we used some of our expertise to teach them. It doesn't have to a black box that "just works" without any understanding of it. There's also no reason knowledge sharing couldn't take in the context of market economics. The experts that helped India wouldn't be working for free. It also doesn't have to contradict different interests, values, etc.: Vastly different groups can still have some areas of collective self-interest that coincide. India for example is the world's largest Democracy. That alone is a good reason for the US to want to help make them successful and provide to them scientific help that advances their society and thereby assists in their long term stability. Unrelated: Your profile, "cognitive radio" sounds fascinating!
- rayiner 7y ago
  I don’t disagree with that concept, but note that a lot of international cooperation that exists presently doesn’t help countries like India develop their own technology. Putting Indian astronauts or experiments on American space missions, for example. Taking their own shot at going to the moon, independent of US efforts, is an important step forward for India.
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    That current cooperation may not be geared towards knowledge transfer doesn't mean it couldn't be. For example the US helped Great Britain extensively in the 60's and 70's on the space front and other areas, not to the extent that the UK was unable to do it themselves but to successfully boot strap their efforts. There's other examples too: Despite a chilly relationship and very different values, the US and Russia have worked together for two decades on the ISS. The world is littered with current projects or their results that involved significant international cooperation and shared expertise. The argument that it shouldn't happen, or isn't in countries' best interests, or not with India in this case-- those might be interesting ideas to explore, but that doesn't mean it can't or doesn't happen successfully. Practically no country has independently built all of the technology that it both uses, fully understands, and can now produce on its own. What we're really talking about here is teaching-- teaching another country how to do something. I don't need how teaching necessarily disadvantages the student country. It doesn't replace their own initiative to learn and internalize the material, but it does bootstrap the process.
jackyinger 7y ago
This is the kind of fractious factionalist junk that is designed to stoke terrestrial xenophobic fears. Anecdotally I have traveled and met folks abroad as well as interacted with many immigrants domestically, at the end of the day I think it’s safe to say the basic nature of being hunt leads to us all having more in common than not. Now governments being divisive for short sighted power grabs? Sure, but don’t say it’s the people.
- rjf72 7y ago
  I completely agree with you, but I also think you cannot hand wave away the small differences. Islam is such a perfect example of this. Sunni and Shia Muslims have been literally killing each other for about 1400 years now. Why? One side believes that Mohammed's father-in-law should have been his successor, the other side believes that his son-in-law should have been his successor. Their fundamental views and values are identical. There are some derivative differences in the value they give to various supplementary texts to the Koran, but all in all - they are still pretty much the same. Certainly near identical compared to any outsider. Yet that difference is enough to justify thousands of years of murder. People don't tolerate differences well, even when they think they do. For instance how would you like a representative population of the US in your neighborhood and work? People tend to think about things like this in terms of colors instead of views and values. That'd mean, among other things, that of every person who voted in your work/neighbor, more than 46% would have voted for Trump. Ultimately I think politicians are reflections of the people rather than their directors. Did Abraham Lincoln end slavery, or had the public mind changed in such a way that the election of a figurative Lincoln was inevitable, even if by a different name? So too in modern times. It's not like America was just cheery before 2016. Ever since the normalization of the internet we've been becoming extremely divided. And so it's only natural that our politicians would in turn end up being ever more divisive. Think about the migration debate. It's not about things like trying to determine what a sustainable level of migration is, or its longterm economic and social impacts. Instead one side wants to build a wall and block migration as much as possible while the other side is dog whistling for open borders and literally suggesting free medical care and other benefits for people who enter illegally. Both sides are basically just trolling each other, and I think that's a reflection of what we the people are doing to one another. And of course this is not just intra-America. See, for instance, the huge rise of 白左 / baizuo. People view things through difference lenses, even when we do have nearly everything in common. Maybe that is even actually the real point. The more you have in common, the less of a difference you need to create a meaningful divide. When you disagree on many things, one more disagreement isn't really changing your relationship much. When you agree on nearly everything, one irreconcilable disagreement is suddenly a big deal.
dingoegret 7y ago
I agree with this. Star Trek was immensely western centric. It always struck me as weird the crew would always quote western historical figures or play classic western music as a token of the "old world". In a power structure, homogenizing as "one world" will only benefit those already with more power than everyone else. They would gobble up the little fish and it would all be for a misbegotten ideal.
geofft 7y ago
> We’re different groups of people What sort of groups, precisely? Historically, the concept of a "nation" (as the "nat-" root implies) is a people born of the same ancestry, a people native to the same land. Parthians, Medes and Elamites, and so forth - sharing an ethnicity, a language, and a culture. Yet the first two "nations" to reach space, the US and the USSR, were hardly that. Sure, each had a majority ethnic group, but they both had (in their own way) an expectation that all people within their borders would conform to their culture, and relevantly that their approach to scientific research and space exploration would benefit the country as a whole. And India isn't a "nation" in the historical sense, anyway. It's a collection of dozens of peoples, with significant and influential minority populations among them, and all are represented in the country as a whole and in ISRO in particular. Getting India into space on its own absolutely serves the needs of India as a sovereign power, but that's very different from saying that it serves the needs of humanity (or that India, or anyone else, should be a sovereign power). And, relevant to the concept of "nation," there's no particular reason a person born into a high-information world should adopt the values of their ethnicity's historic culture more than any other values they may see.
- rayiner 7y ago
  “Groups of people” doesn’t need to mean “ethnicity.” There’s a lot of political conflict in the Us, but it’s not primarily along ethnic or religious lines, for example. But there are groups of people, and they are different. Farmers in Iowa are different people than programmers in San Francisco. Having government necessarily requires those groups of people to make decisions about the lives of other people under the same government. That becomes exponentially harder as the group becomes more heterogenous with respect to the things governments do.
  - geofft 7y ago
    > But there are groups of people, and they are different. Farmers in Iowa are different people than programmers in San Francisco. Again, I disagree with this. Plenty of programmers in San Francisco grew up on farms in Iowa. (And to be transparent about my biases here: my parents are Indian Christians, a distinct culture from the Hindu majority; my dad worked for ISRO; and I was born in the Deep South and worked as a programmer in SF for a few years. So the culture of "India" as a whole doesn't resonate with me, nor that of "the Deep South" or "SF" nor "America," and I don't feel like a lesser person for it.) And I would claim that the fact that you can migrate from an area with one sort of politics / culture / economy / etc. to an area with another one (as a pointed example, anyone remember the "It Gets Better" videos from a few years ago featuring gay people who grew up across the country, half of whom seemed to say "and then I moved to San Francisco"?), and that people do that quite frequently, is evidence that there isn't much reason in attributing politics / culture / etc. to people as people in the way we've historically seen it, i.e., as correlated with place of birth or parentage or childhood culture, or proxies for those like religion. If anything, the unrealistic part about Star Trek is that the various alien species had personalities influenced by their biology (the Vulcans with weaker emotional processing, the physically resilient Klingons, etc.). If they didn't, given pervasive interstellar transport, it's hard to see why so many people stay on their home planets. (And indeed the whole conceit of the Federation is that they don't have to.)
karpodiem 7y ago
+1 for escaping the group-think.
spamizbad 7y ago
India is not culturally homogeneous (and no, I’m not just talking about the situation with Kashmir here).
inimino 7y ago
> A “single human race” would be [...] A single human race is what we actually are. Wake up and set your tribalistic thinking aside, it's not helping anyone.
eloff 7y ago
I think if you extend Nassim Talebs ideas of anti-fragile to human societies, the sensible future would be a more loose Federation of (city?) states. Very powerful central governments are undesirable from many, many perspectives. Getting more competing ideas on how to organize society introduces the same free market principles that have been successful for our economies into social structure. We'd have states that are winners and losers, and the losers would pretty quickly copy the winning strategies. You'd also have much less risk of your own government turning into a tyrannical oppressor - the splash radius of such an event would be much smaller.
greglindahl 7y ago
This mission was actually multi-country... NASA provided a retro-reflector for the lander, and in exchange provided DSN coverage. Maybe your reaction was slightly knee-jerk?
MiroF 7y ago
Sounds tribalistic but ok. Just because you can't imagine an alternative to the status quo doesn't mean it's impossible.

nithinm 7y ago

Maybe because many of the technologies used in space missions have military applications?

lenkite 7y ago

In a world under one uniform system of tightly-integrated government or closely allied nations at the nearly the same economic and technological levels, one can certainly do this. Otherwise, yes, you are right, it's a grand pipe dream. Will all the nations contribute equally in terms of technological, financial and expert human resources ? Besides, tribal, nationalistic thinking is very good for competition and speeding technological progress. It is what took US and Russia to space in the first place. Nations and civilisations try ten times as as hard if they know someone is competing with them. Imagine if the Russians today had a Space-X competitor...

valarauko 7y ago
>Imagine if the Russians today had a Space-X competitor... Followed by Samsung launching the SpaceX Note Max.
philwelch 7y ago
SpaceX itself exists in part as a competitor to Roscosmos.

blisterpeanuts 7y ago

You make a valid point, when it comes to general scientific research, and scientists already tend to work on international teams across cultures and geographical regions. Space programs benefit from a fairly centralized approach, with teams of engineers working to analyze and correct glitches and anomalies in real time. It would be harder to coordinate a distributed team when time is of the essence.

Merrill 7y ago

>"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." It's mostly a matter of conspicuous consumption, aside from possible military applications and meager civilian technological advances.

Bluestrike2 7y ago
For what it's worth, many of the impacts don't seem to be well-reported in popular media. Consider this 2013 NASA report[0] on its socio-economic impacts: an IMPLAN input/output analysis shows NASA directly generates $2.60 of economic output per dollar spent, compared to the federal non-military average of $2.30 and military average of $2.00. This often-quoted 1975 paper[1] posits a 14:1 increase in GNP resulting from a sustained $1bn increase in NASA R&D spending over ten years. The civilian tech benefits, even if you only look at the immediate spinoffs technologies in the short-term, are rather significant. There were over 2,200 tech transfer transactions in 2012 alone, beyond the ~50 or so they profile annually in Spinoff,[2] and ranging from small software usage agreements to patents used for massive changes in the market. There are a ton of articles and infographics out there that list just some of those spinoff technologies that people often directly experience in their daily lives. I don't think meager is an applicable descriptor, even if we haven't seen the sort NASA generate the kind of "wow!" technologies like flying cars, personal jetpacks, and space colonies that people in the 50s imagined would be commonplace by now. What's really interesting, however, is that space spending is rarely defended—or even thought about much—in these terms. In that sense, NASA spending is often discussed in terms of national prestige or a very general sense of scientific advancement. The science benefit is absolutely, 100% true, and an excellent reason in its own right, but sadly not one that has a lot of political persuasiveness. Outside of regions that are directly involved in NASA manufacturing and operations (which lends itself to fierce congressional support by their elected legislators), there's a sense of "that money is spent 'out there' in space, not here at home." Of course, the national prestige aspect does give space funding a bit more protection from the sort of direct attacks we've seen directed at various basic research funding and grants. No legislator wants to be the one to kill something "as American as apple pie." 0. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/SEINSI.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/SEINSI.pdf 1. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19760017002.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/197600... 2. https://spinoff.nasa.gov/ https://spinoff.nasa.gov/

ryloric 7y ago

But the goals are different though, ISRO is less about grand exploratory projects and more about doing the little things and balance them with the commercial aspects of space. India is not a super rich country that can spare ISRO a large budget you know. Eitherway, there's also some advantages from having competing organizations with different operating philosophies exploring space.

FraKtus 7y ago
Exactly, I find it impressive what they did achieve within their budget. It's opening ways to create more affordable space missions.

deleted 7y ago

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nolok 7y ago

Anyone can join the ESA and chose which project they want to participate in and get the research results from it, just like CERN it’s not actually an EU organization

zelon88 7y ago

While I agree that in the future we should strive to achieve this level of cultural cohesion, we're currently at a point where the incentive to do these things is largely motivated by technological needs by developing countries. As a result these countries gain experience in these fields that makes their research more relevant. The space race is over, but it happened because the two most technologically advanced nations were competing for dominance that would essentially earn them the "world champion" title. That need to win the title is how we all got to space in under a decade. Now smaller nations are competing for third and fourth place, and that's creating a technological revolution for them right now. So think more long term. We've always been on the same team, but these are pre-season practices where we're all split into subteams and pit against each other to determine the roster. USA and Russia are first string. China and India are competing for second string. When the season starts and were all wearing the same colors; we'll be unstoppable.

cameronbrown 7y ago

The capitalists would argue that free market competition will work in space as well as on Earth.

douglaswlance 7y ago

Do you have proof that this global philosophy you propose is more effective than nation-based organization?

dalbasal 7y ago

Should bes are tricky. At least historically, competitiveness & national pride have been good drivers. That usually meant big money national projects for the US and Russia. More recently it has meant affordable projects can be sold to smaller national governments. Israel & India both went this way recently. Both crashed their landers, but that might not be such a terrible thing. There are also international efforts and private ones. I like having multiple tools in the toolbox. They all seem to operate quite differently. ESA/NASA can do long horizon boundary projects and hard science. ISS can do hard science, and expand/internationalize the knowledge base. These small, one-off national projects can try out new (often low cost) designs and a "just because" rationales for missions. Private space is making great progress commodifying launches... Roscosmos has more room to play (currently, they sell seats on their vehicles), without having to support white elephant projects that compete with NASA's budget. I'd say we're doing well, better than 10-20 years ago when the ISS had more of the "space pie," because space explorations is dispersed. I definitely agree with the spirit of "earthlings unite" but I also like the plurality of space agencies. Hopefully, India is hooked and we'll see more from them. No hate on international (or non national) projects though. Maybe Israel & India can combine forces for a 3rd mission. Both attempted a moon mission for around $100m. Both crashed their first attempt. If a 3rd mission succeeds we'll have a win for cooperation and we'll also have a proof of concept for affordable moon missions.

emanreus 7y ago

Space colonization is a wonderful opportunity to create unique civilizations, each pursuing their own destiny. Where does your sadistic desire to control the future of entire mankind come from? Ability to choose different paths is far more appealing than suffering under some inescapable dystopian global diktat you have in mind. So yes, we should extend tribal thinking to space. Platitudes like "we are single human race" are as meaningful as saying we are all life.

jasonhansel 7y ago
Sure is good that "tribal thinking" has never led to dystopias of any sort!</sarcasm> Also: how exactly is OP being sadistic, or planning a "global diktat"? Those are very strong accusations.

hos234 7y ago

Things are moving in that direction - https://www.globalspaceexploration.org/wordpress/?p=940 https://www.globalspaceexploration.org/wordpress/?p=940

nilsocket 7y ago

When situation is out of hand, people suffer a lot. MasterCard and Visa have stopped there services in several countries, in-order to be complaint with American law (Laws which are specifically made, to hurt certain countries). When a Democratic government is controlling private companies, when needed let alone your suggestion of believing in government companies. In 1999, during Kargil War (between India and Pakistan), it's an unexpected war from Indian side. When Indian government asked help from American government for GPS, they have outright denied it. When it's needed the most. As a country we had our fair-share of setbacks from several countries, I think we need to learn from our mistakes and try to be independent. In the need of the hour, every country/state/person has it's own preferences.

iagovar 7y ago
I agree with you. Deal with your stuff and then you'll be respected as a country. And know who are you real allies, sometimes it isn't that clear.

pfdietz 7y ago

> Just can't understand why so many countries reinventing the wheels. Reinventing wheels is hugely important to advancing technology, both between countries and between companies. The notion that getting rid of competition is beneficial because of the saving in redundant effort is an evergreen fallacy. The problem with doing single efforts is the huge risk that the effort screws up, or is subverted for illegitimate purposes, and if there's no redundancy it blocks everything. Single efforts become breeding grounds of entitlement and rent seeking.

scarejunba 7y ago

Well, I’m not going to let you give ICBM tech to the North Koreans so you’re on your own here.

trixie_ 7y ago

There will always be groups of people who wish to be independent. Regardless if they're travelling to the new world or into a space. Some kind of authority trying to keep everyone together would not end up in the utopia scenario that you are imagining.

xenocyon 7y ago

Space missions have been, from their very beginning in the past century, not only tribalistic/nationalistic but very overtly and pointedly so; indeed, that was practically the reason they came into existence.

jasonhansel 7y ago

I can't upvote this enough. If we could somehow establish that tribalism and nationalism were the only ways for us to get into space, then spaceflight wouldn't be worth it.

ibrault 7y ago

Haven't seen anyone mention it, but NASA JPL and the Indian Space Agency are collaborating on the NISAR mission [0]. [0] https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov/ https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov/

philwelch 7y ago

There’s value in any organization independently working out for itself how to land a probe on the moon. Multinational efforts like ISS are great but it’s often useful to have redundancy. If Roscosmos loses funding or there’s some catastrophe preventing them from launching Soyuz from Baikonur, I think it’s good for humanity that China can still launch their Shenzhou and America (hopefully soon) can still launch our Dragon or Starliner. Besides, as long as we still have national sentiment, I think it’s wonderful for an Indian or Chinese child to be able to have the same feelings of inspiration that American and Russian children have grown up with.

whoisninja 7y ago

agreed, should be like that. but play Sid Meier's Civilization read about operation paper clip and read about Helium on the moon and it's not just space, you can say same about any technological advancement. why re-invent? why not collaborate? I guess, you've think deeper about nation states in current form.

whoisninja 7y ago
also universities, internet and open-source software has bridged lot of that gap but then we also have claims like China stealing IP from US (not suggesting who's right or wrong, but stating a fact)

sqldba 7y ago

I also have to disagree. There’s a difference between working with others to achieve a certain familiarity with the science and industry to sustain it, and riding on the coat tails of other countries who can provide all of that for you but may pull it at any time such as for trade war purposes.