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Levente Sitkei
24/01/2024 12:03
No country would currently be able to send a man to the moon. Astonishingly, this technology, which is more than 50 years old, has been forgotten by NASA and Roscosmos, and the Chinese, Europeans, Japanese and Indians have never had it. "NASA or Roscosmos is a factory. It cannot think like a small research institute. And revolutionary thinking is exactly what is needed to create revolutionary solutions," said a NASA employee who asked not to be named when contacted. And a lot of money, but money that gets results.
Since the results of space research are extremely diverse, and some of them are for military purposes, they are clearly classified and can be outsourced. For Singapore, with the world's second busiest port after Shanghai, this is not only a good business opportunity, but also a much-needed one to coordinate ships. Not to mention that the trading city-state has long enjoyed good relations with the French and British space research institutes, India and China, so it can take over - in part - the necessary revolutionary thinking from the giants.
Singapore has been more seriously involved in space exploration, particularly its theoretical and technological foundations, for about fifteen years. It launched its first commercial satellite, developed in-house, into orbit in 2015, using an Indian launcher from southern India. India plans to launch its first manned space mission by 2025, making it the fourth country to do so after the Soviet Union, the United States and China. "Satellites are essentially just computers with radios and solar panels. Most of it is electronics equipment, the kind that Singapore has been able to produce in high quality for years," said a senior official of the Singapore Economic Development Board.
Space exploration is an industry that has always been very expensive and taxpayers everywhere have always been shocked by the billions spent on what seems like a spectacular investment. At the time of the first moon landing in 1969, only 53 per cent of the American public supported continued exploration. The result of international cooperation is that not only are costs spread, but private sector involvement makes research more efficient, as there is no perpetual money spigot pouring billions into the strategic sector. At the same time, the involvement of smaller states and private companies also means that military research is relegated to the background, or perhaps tried to be done differently, with no one outsourcing military secrets to an unknown private company.
The author is a foreign policy journalist