There Are A few People At NASA Who Understand Soft Power
During an @AIAA webinar @blal @NASA Associate Administrator for Technology, Policy, and Strategy cited 'an old African proverb' when it comes to international cooperation: "If you want to go fast you go alone. If you want to go far you go together". #softpower pic.twitter.com/OVJDvivV4q
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) February 15, 2022
I would say that soft power and playing politics should be far more important for domestic US support than it should be for international support.
I am all for going together in order to go the duration. But that is often not how its been working in the space program.
ISS is a good example. Canadians wanted to specialize in an area, so they focused on robotics. The built the RMS and SSRMS for ISS. US has not designed or built any of those.
US had a Shuttle to carry modules. Europeans did not want to pay for using Shuttle, so US said, in exchange, please build our modules. US has not built a module since the early 1990s. Orion/Artemis, ESA said we’d like to participate, but no sense paying our way; we will supply ATVs (originally intended for ISS); now the Orion service module. I wonder how much less Lockheed charged?
Somehow NASA gets stuck with a lot of bills while others get a lot of significant jobs, technology advancement, career growth for their Engineers….
NASA sees the necessity of making the program be international so that Congress continues funding and its more difficult to cancel, but if NASA and the US wind up without the jobs/ability/experience, then whats the point?
NASA providing commercial crew certainly create enough jobs at SpaceX and Boeing locations, the former being much more successful at this point. Most likely at future points as well.
And if you want to go to Perdition you get the Federal Government involved.