What the Space Shuttle Program should teach us

Where's the part about how robots can do more and better science than humans-in-space? (See Mars Rovers et al.)

Joe(on the blue dot)Nation

i have a funny feeling that when china gets to the moon, they're gonna say, it's theirs, and reap for themselves the benefits they can until someone stops them

While the Antarctic Treaty, written in 1959 and amended in 1991, extended the provision against mineral exploration for 50 years, the agreement has never adequately addressed exactly who owns the seabed surrounding the continent. That future fight has been left to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III), which has suggested the seabed around Antarctica, is the “common heritage” of “all interested parties.”

On more than 20 excursions to Antarctica's high, cold interior and the Peninsula, I've visited a dozen science bases from as many countries. Every single one of them has had some kind of drilling going on, always in the name of science, to study climate history or geology. I’m sure they are doing just that. But they are also drilling to figure out how to penetrate all that ice just in case someone “accidentally” strikes oil.

Who will be first, is a good question. The Chinese have recently announced a big new investment in Antarctica and may be the front-runner.

On the surface, China’s spending on planes, helicopters and outfitting its station for year-round use falls in line with the treaty’s “for science only” mandate. The upgrades also match China’s emergence as a growing influence around the globe. The country's new icebreaker will be able to carry 60 scientists and 8,000 tons of equipment, through five feet of ice. It expects to drill deeper than anyone has before, “through more than 1 million years of climate history.”

But in an upcoming Asian Survey story titled “China’s Rise in Antarctica,” New Zealand researcher Anne-Marie Brady suggests, “Chinese-language polar-science discussions are dominated by debates about resources and how China might gain its share.”

The Chinese government says of course it will be drilling at its newly retrofitted base, called Kunlun, but only for science. Yet its Antarctic program is a division of the State Oceanic Administration, which last week sent submersibles to the bottom of the South China Sea to claim its disputed seabed for the motherland.

we will know soon enough, by how hard they push to violate treaties and norms in Antarctica. The signs do not look promising

Does it really bug you that badly that there might be some country that seeks to replace the US as the number one rapist of Mother Earth?

As Chomsky often points out, anti-Americanism is a mindless slogan. If he criticizes Portugal’s foreign policy, does that make him anti-Portuguese?

We built the space station only because we needed something for the shuttle to do, and almost nothing gets done in it, or is likely to get done in it before we abandon it.

For the record, the US has never done anything to me personally. What it has done, and this should bother those with even the slightest level of morality, is provide for, both actively and by supporting others, the deaths of millions, the torture of dog knows how many, the rape of, really, who the **** could even begin to imagine, ..., all the while, and this actually makes it worse, much much worse, mouthing platitudes about how wrong all these things are bad bad things that everyone else shouldn't do.

I think that many of us share some of JTTs frustrations with our govt. However where we differ with him is that he has taken a position that this can never be fixed .

I think that many of us share some of JTTs frustrations with our govt. However where we differ with him is that he has taken a position to the extreme that borders on delusion AND he feels that this can never be fixed .

As Tommy J said(FIRST), Democracy is a terrible form of govt, except for all the others.