Asian Nations in the Space Race

With the U.S giving up its role as the leaders of space exploration, it is increasingly falling to other nations to launch rockets and begin space exploration. The European Union and Russia have thus far led the charge but this week Japan entered the space race, launching two Japanese and a Korean satellite. This on the heels of China's incredible success in space.

While I'm sad to see Obama scrapping the space shuttle fleet in favour of bailouts and bombings I am happy to see other nations picking up the slack. While I never thought that China would be the first to reach Mars, that is looking increasingly likely (though maybe the PRC on the Red Planet makes sense :P). Although they are only ten years in to manned space flights they are only the third nation to do it at all. Their plans for a new space station and a lunar station are becoming less and less of a fiction as they already have the technology to move and build on the moon, they just lack the ability to get enough equipment there to build it. The U.S has banned sharing technology with China but as we saw today, Japan is now able to launch satellites in to space. The world's third largest economy is now in the space race. They launched satellites made in Japan and Korea successfully and one wonders if those nations will feel as bad about working with China when the U.S has scrapped its space exploration anyway. China, Japan, Korea and Malaysia all have space programs capable of building satellites though at present only China and Japan can launch them. India is also firmly in the space race though they are about 20 years behind China.

To me, no matter how much better Obama is than Bush or McCain (which is very much better) I can't help but think that if McCain had been put in he would have continued Bush's expansion of NASA rather than scrap it in favour of, well whatever Obama is spending it on. It amazes me that with a 7 trillion dollar defence budget they can't find money for space exploration in that (China and Russia, whose combined budget in this area is less that two trillion seem to find adequate resources for it). I think space exploration is our future, and if the U.S doesn't want to be a part of that then I'll cheer the Chinese, Japanese, Russians and Europeans on as they explore the galaxy.