Reuters reports that the lower house of the Mexico’s Congress has approved the formation of a national space agency for the country. The Mexican Space Agency, with an initial budget of only $2 million, would “coordinate research and work with universities and the private sector to launch communication and weather satellites.” (For $2 million, that won’t allow for much coordination.) Backers of the proposal hope that the agency will help development of high-tech industries in the country. While the article treats the agencu as a bit of a novelty, a number of countries not traditionally associated with space now have national space agencies, including NASDRA in Nigeria and GISTDA in Thailand.
Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…10 Comments
Cartman wrote @ April 28th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
I realize this is only slightly on-topic but I wonder how long it will take before they will be able to put a whale on the moon.
Dwayne A. Day wrote @ April 28th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
Isn’t it great that we have Wikipedia to preserve the important information?
But that was a hilarious episode.
Greg Kuperberg wrote @ April 29th, 2006 at 12:32 am
I wonder how long it will take before they will be able to put a whale on the moon.
If spacecraft will be assembled and provisioned on the moon, why not a Marine World to go with them? Even lunar engineers need R&R.
Sam Dinkin wrote @ April 30th, 2006 at 10:54 am
Mexico may be able to get a low regulation spaceflight regime with third party required coverage that successfully competes for border town US human spaceflight traffic. No environmental impact statement required. With self-ferrying from US, we may even be able to avoid ITAR issues.
Shubber Ali wrote @ April 30th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
It never ceases to amaze me how the alt.space community can take any minor news blip (wow, a whole freakin’ $2m for space?!?! they can’t even afford a trip to ISS with that!) and blow it into either (a) a great new validation of the Private Space Era (”Coming Soon!”) or (b) another threat to try to scare the US government into spending more money on one particular pet project or another…
Call me a Cynic.
Mike Puckett wrote @ May 1st, 2006 at 5:58 pm
Subber,
Some more fiber in your diet would do wonders for your cynicism 
You are sounding like a constipated old curmudgeon (not a dig at Mark Whittington’s site btw)
BP wrote @ May 1st, 2006 at 11:38 pm
We are not lauching astronauts to space. We are only interested in Mexico´s participation in space proyects at an international level.
AEXA (Mexican Space Agency) member team
Shubber Ali wrote @ May 2nd, 2006 at 12:31 am
Mike,
i get plenty of fiber every morning, thank you very much.
And you have to work on your typing skills - this is the second time you’ve mispelled my name…
Mike Puckett wrote @ May 2nd, 2006 at 5:32 pm
Left the ‘R’ out this time though!
TORO wrote @ May 5th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
If a large, bureaucratic nation can claim it has a space program, and yet still not be able to get humans to and from low Earth orbit, then it must be both easy and ethical for a small Nigeria or Thailand to claim they have a space program that equally cannot get human beings to and from space.
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