You missed the most incendiary statement from that op-ed:

At my Washington office a few weeks ago, I met with a visiting Japanese parliamentarian who specializes in science and technology issues. I related to him my belief that the Chinese would be on the moon within a decade with a declaration of permanent occupation. He disagreed. He smiled and said my conclusion was accurate but my timing was off. In his view, the Chinese would be on the moon within three to four years.

The op-ed was published in May 2003.

http://tinyurl.com/d1zj

I think we would be wise to take space as seriously as the Chinese do.

Cheep, cheep, do I hear a little birdie cheaping? If you want cheap, you’ll never get to orbit, let alone low Earth orbit, and you won’t stay there. What we need is volume, and then costs will fall, but accelerating a mass to a minimum of 7500 m/s and then making that mass sophisticated enough to carry out a space mission will never be ‘cheap’, unless all you are doing is throwing a mass of something (uranium or plutonium, and a small amount of explosives for instance), and that can be accomplished much cheaper by never reaching orbit. The Chinese know this, that’s why they have volume rockets that can double as ICBMs.

The kind of irrationality I find here is both amusing and frustrating, but it goes with the political territory that now litters the landscape of America, like the disposable carnage of an overflowing landfill.

If you want to get to low earth orbit, might I suggest propulsion and tankage as your first priorities? You know, the rational approach.

The way things are going in America, I may as well go work for Volvo. Even my astrodynamics tools are all European now. As long as America’s goals in space are based on the irrational reasoning of an irrational administration, America is going nowhere, and I see little or no evidence that anything has changed at all here since November 7, 2006. You know America, though, when they do anything, they do it in a big way, and when America decided to go irrational, they pulled out all the stops. And so here we are. If it wasn’t so tragic I’d be laughing hysterically. But since I’m rational, hysteria doesn’t seem to solve my problems.

I have to disagree.

If the Chinese were to field a credible RLV — which would be both a military spaceplane, and allow them a path to become the dominant force in Earth orbit in both the economic (as well as militarily) spheres — THEN I would say we have a problem.

The reverse is also true.

I see little military value (in the next Century) in putting people on the Moon, without “cheap access” to LEO. If your goal is national security, I see huge near-term military (and economic) value in achieving “cheap access” to LEO.

Suggesting that investing now in a lunar base — will help with US national security — is similar to suggesting (in the 1600s) that colonizing the new world will help England with its national security concerns in Europe. In 100-300 years, that “lunar base/settlement” might grow enough to effectively intervene in a national security matter (e.g., WWI & WWII), but we have urgent issues on a much shorter time scale. In fact, the only way for that lunar base to grow sufficiently to help is to achieve cheap access to space.

All roads go through cheap access.

– Al

Considering the real long term geopolitical challenges encompass things like global warming, disruption of oil flow, financial collapse, feeding the masses from a diminishing ecosystem, and of course, asteroids, among other imminent natural and man-made disasters, I would say, yes, being worried about the Chinese beating us to the moon is pretty far down on the list of priorities. Not only is it uncool, it’s totally paranoid.

Now if the Chinese were able to field a credible launcher with a credible propulsion system, and started pouring huge amount of launch dollars into launch operations, then yes, I would say that we have a problem. But the extreme disparity of scale of actual space launch capabilities verses many space exploration fantasies is readily apparent to the rational eye, so until that changes, it’s pretty easy to laugh off paranoid delusions and grandiose visions of cowboys and horseys and plastic army guys on the moon..

I was also unimpresesd at the gratuitous swipes at the Administration – a playground level “no WMDs, hur hur hur”. Aside from its utter irrelevancy to the topic at hand, how did it educate anyone or advance any debate at all?

“We want to work with the NASA administrator to make sure we have reliable transportation to take us [to the Moon].

“We know if it’s made in Huntsville, we can count on it. We want to make sure we keep (space travel plans) on time and on schedule.”

I guess NASA could really depend on those SRB o-rings. And the foam-shedding External Tanks. And the X-33 to show up on time.

Gotta love those Huntsville-designed/managed space transportation projects… ever since Von Braun left, MSFC has consistently produced deadly, broken, costly, and late rockets.

So let’s depend on them for Ares 1 and 5 so we REALLY get to the Moon.

Jeez, Mikulski should be ashamed of herself.