Tag Archives: space exploration

Through the Adversity, the Stars

Royal Air Force Motto

The history of the politics of Space has always been colourful. I was reminded of this when I recently stood in the Imperial War Museum in London looking up at a V2 rocket that stands prominently in the lower hall. It remains a disquieting fact that the first man-made vehicle to breach the Karman Line (the widely though not universally agreed line between Earth’s atmosphere and Space) was a V2 rocket, designed by the SS Colonel and Nazi scientist Dr Werner Von Braun. Years later, Dr Braun met his public downfall when his past caught up with him, after he helped design the Saturn V rocket that made the Apollo Moon missions possible. In many ways this prelude to Space Travel’s journey puts Elon Musk’s politics in context. Future centric minds have sadly not always been liberal ones.

It would seem today that the politics of our relationship with Space are in flux. Legendary NASA Astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s public endorsement of Donald Trump’s second run for the presidency last year raised speculation that his Administration would see an advantage in having a renewed US Government commitment to Space. This speculation was raised even more when in his second inauguration speech President Trump talked about putting “Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars”. Since then, drastic budget cuts to NASA proposed by the Trump Administration, including the decimation of its Earth Science’s division, has shown that Trump has little interest in Space as a long-term project. Even the long-awaited US Artemis Programme, heralded as the great return of Americans to the Moon, has its future in doubt. The People’s Republic of China is now widely seen as on a more certain path to get to the Moon before the US mission, reinforcing the image of the US and the West in decline.