Space Exploration

For the past several week I've been watching a show called Defying Gravity on Hulu. Its on ABC Sundays at 10 but I keep forgetting to set the Tivo. Its set in the future, 2050 I think, and its about a crew flying around the Solar System in a state of the art space ship complete with faux gravity. I read somewhere someone compared Defying Gravity to being like Grey's Anatomy in space and I could see that with the character development, but its also similar to LOST. Throughout all of the episodes so far there has been some underlying alien influence pushing the crew to it's hidden purpose.

The aspect that I want to talk about though isn't the technology or to review the show, its to talk about the organization that is running everything. ISO. International Space Organization. Its an ambitious flight around the solar system where the crew is mainly seemingly American with a Latina, a Russian, and an Israeli so people might be excused for thinking its a NASA mission if they didn't pay close attention. I don't know exactly how its International in the show but I think that its a good idea. With the recent problems NASA is having with its budget and future programs I don't think anybody could be hurt by having a more international space exploration cooperation. There are quite a few countries with experience sending satellites into orbit, but only three that have been capable of sending humans into space; US, Russia, and now China. I know the ISS is international, but the US has had to pay for a good chunk of it. Thats not to say that we shouldn't have because we could. But if there were a true international space body (organization, cooperation, something) maybe it could have been built faster and/or cheaper.

What I'm thinking of wouldn't need to necessarily replace NASA, ESA, JAXA or the others but could be a kind of behind the scenes money/mission allotment group. If somebody has an idea for a new kind of satellite the group could see which space agency has the most experience with the type of technology as well as the ability to launch it into space and the money to accomplish the mission. The money issue though I would think would be the biggest hurdle. I was thinking that the member countries could pay the international body a percentage of their GDP (or whatever measure is used for something like this). Then after the payment, all member countries could have access to any data collected from missions under the body. That would leave more developed countries like the US paying more because they are able, but it would also help less developed countries gain access to science and technology that they may not have been able to otherwise.

An international body of this kind, along with the private companies now attempting space flight, could bring the cost of space missions down to the point where agencies wouldn't have to cut corners or stop funding missions while they are still capable of producing good science. As far as I can tell this would be beneficial to many, if not everyone, while harming no one.


As an aside, last week was the last episode of Defying Gravity on ABC Sundays at 10 because they want to move it. A lot of times for a genre series this signals the shows imminent demise. However, the show is developed or produced or paid for by a group of international sources. So even if ABC decides to stop showing it, Defying Gravity might be picked up and continue to air somewhere else. Which for my sake I hope happens, at the very least I would love find out what Beta is and what it wants.