Published by Scotties Playtime
I am an older gay guy in a long-term wonderful relationship. My spouse and I are in our 33rd year together. I love politics and news. I enjoy civil discussions and have no taboo subjects. My pronouns are he / him / his and my email is scottiesplaytime@gmail.com
View all posts by Scotties Playtime
Scottie's Playtime 
One can’t help but wonder how we will be able to find “common ground” in space when it seems to be next-to-impossible to find it on earth.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hello Nan. The idea of cooperation in space is a myth. Back in 1980 I had the opportunity to meet and spend time with a NASA engineer who worked on the Apollo missions. He once told me that the people in the US had no idea what the US had up there for weapons and defense. He wouldn’t tell me a high school senior what specifically he was talking about, but he did just say we had very capable weapons in space.
Fast forward to now. Space has always been driven by first national security interests and then by corporate profit. Really. Years ago during the Bush administration I posted about the people connected to Dick Cheney having published papers about the profit in space mining. Nothing about ethics of course, but boy the profits were there. Think about Elon Musk, the son of a ruthless mining owning South African who supported apartheid, what is his intense interest in space? There are precious metals and other things in those asteroids. And what drives the US, greed.
The US and China are in a race to build bases on the moon. There are treaties on what can be done with the moon, but they mean nothing, who will enforced them especially against the US or China? These bases will be military, they will have weapons and secret departments on / in them. They will be driven by greed to mine the moon and asteroids while promoting the nations’ interests that own them. Yes it will cost the people of the countries involved a lot of money to maintain so others can profit, what is new.
And to be realistic no one believed the Russian threat to leave the ISS. They couldn’t do it if they wanted to. But it doesn’t matter. The usefulness of the ISS is long over. The focus has changed to the space between the Earth and the Moon. Why do you think Musk keeps pushing Mars while his company is busy trying to win contracts to set up way points between the earth and the moon? The plans floated involve tanker ships sent to these way points from earth that would supply a back and forth from the moon set up. Why would such a system be needed? Not even for the military because once the weapons were in place the traffic to keep them ready is minimum. But to supply a commercial caravan supplying goods from space to the earth and workers / supplies back. The US government is actively working on that and paying private companies like Space X and Blue Origin to create them. We the people are paying for that as the people that will profit are not even paying their share of taxes.
No Nan there is no real cooperation in space. We are now finding out that Russia couldn’t afford to support even their transporting of the astronauts and commitments without NASA having to pay them to do it. The real issue is between the US / the world against China. Who will get the weapons up first. China is ambitious, they have plans for a middle orbit station of their own (for defense and commercial traffic) and a moon base. Who will get there first and be able to maintain it? And how much stealing of the other’s data and interfering with the others plans there will be is going to be something to watch.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Putting “countries” aside, what does all this greed and power tell you about the human race? Rhetorical question.
LikeLiked by 1 person