Editorials of / Editoriaux de Gilles Gervais Back to previous selection / Retour à la sélection précédente Salvaging Critical Canadian Space Infrastructure 27 February 2012 The heads of the world’s five biggest space agencies are scheduled to meet this week in Quebec City to reassess international space programs in the context of the austerity measures being dictated to nations of the trans-Atlantic region by a bankrupt British financial empire. The more damaging measures are President Obama’s deep budget cuts to NASA and especially his cancellation of all programs linked to manned-space exploration, a prospect that would eventually doom humankind to extinction were it not reversed. As a backgrounder to this upcoming meeting the Canadian Press’ Peter Rakobowchuk reports, in a Feb. 26 article datelined Montreal, that “several countries, including China have expressed a desire to start mining the moon’s resources…The moon is home to a number of compounds that are not readily available on Earth—like Helium-3, a gas that could potentially fuel future nuclear-fusion power plants. Such a development would hold drastic implications for human activity, beginning with energy consumption. The moon also contains gold, platinum-group elements, and rare-earth elements. Rakobowchuk further details that “since 2004, Neptec [Canadian maker of one of the excavation rovers], NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and the Northern Centre for Advanced Technology (NORCAT) have all been working on a drilling project, called RESOLVE, which involves water ice on the Moon. “…The lead scientist on NASA’s RESOLVE drilling project, Tony Colaprete, was also the principal investigator for LCROSS, the 2009 lunar probe that found a significant amount of water ice on the moon. Colaprete says the next step is to find the veins of water on the moon and map out its distribution. That’s where RESOLVE would go to work, drilling for samples and analyzing their components. He says the equipment will be ready to be flown to the moon at the end of 2014. He adds that people are already interested in flying it, both commercially and within NASA. “One missing piece is a rocket to get RESOLVE to the lunar surface, admitted Colaprete.” We would add that not only is a rocket missing, but more importantly Man! This morning, Canadian Federal Industry Minister Christian Paradis gave a press conference at the Canadian Space Agency headquarter in Longueuil where he announced Canada’s commitment to continue its participation in the International Space Station till 2020. Paradis also announced the appointment of David Emerson, former Industry Minister, to head up a 3 persons panel that is tasked with producing a report on how to best safeguard critical Canadian space infrastructure and preserve Canadian aerospace sector jobs. But regardless of any positive recommendations that might be forthcoming from the Emerson Commission, the Harper government has already annouced that in the next federal budget there will be across the board cuts of between 5 and 15% affecting all federal ministries. The shutdown of major NASA programs in the United States has already taken its toll inside Canada in terms of Canadian industry layoffs. The Canadian space and aerospace sector employs over 80,000 people and is an economic sector eligible to receive federal subsidies. If we are to not only "safeguard" but grow this vital industry which operates at the frontier of science and technology, we must prove the British Empire wrong when it directed one of its mouthpieces, The Economist, to write that the year 2012 would mark the “End of the Space Age”. The Canadian space and aerospace industry must not try salvage their sector by resigning themselves to adopt the robotics-only British Empire approach to space exploration. They must join with Russia, China, and other countries who are involved in manned-space flights and, together, reaffirm the fundamental reasons why they are strongly committed to this latter approach. They must remain unshaken in their knowledge that it is man’s unique creative abilities which is the primary source of wealth and that creative minds will only be developped to their fullest when mankind journeys to the stars and finally explores the confines of our solar and galactic system. In that sense, Man’s immediate future lies in that extraterrestrial imperative for a fusion-powered mission to Mars. That approach is not only sound economics, it is the only economics that works in an oligarchical-free future! As for Obama’s no-future approach, this could be rapidly remedied by making 2012 the year that "Ends the Reign of Obama" by invoking this month, section 4 of the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution against this insane British-agent President. The only other option for survival would be to start right away the impeachment procedures against Obama in the U.S. Congress. Gilles Gervais