Peter Banks and Paul Saffo talking technology and a Space Race, a war for the information space of Space.

China attempted three previous times to create a human space program. Has as much to do with China-Russian relations. Who would have thought that 2 months later the US president said we would go to Mars too. This is the president, so we are talking atmospherics

We will spend $60B today for star wars with one successful test flight out of eight. First time deploying without having a successful engineering test.

Gravity Pro B attempts to look at a guiding star to measure drag. Testing if Einstein was right.

China says it will go to the moon and stay there for a while. Says for cultural reasons and other cold war attributes, military dictium of owning the high ground. A launching platform or for communications. US Air Force now being organized around space. Will create a new race. Very sobering.

What we have achieved with our major investment in space thusfar:

• Introduction of geosynchronous satellite communications
  
• Deterrance of warfare during the cold war, they could look at us, we could look at them
  
• Photos of earth, to prove it was round, but other salient effects
  
• Remote sensing
  

Geo-information. Keyhole. What happens when you start loading it all into databases? All the two-story buildings in the world have been counted. This information can be overlaid with others, could impact taxation, etc.

Note the 4 impacts have applications without us leaving the ground. Less necesary for us to go there ourselves.

Weightlessness and solar cosmic rays -- a perfect place for Congress? Nah, point is we are not well adapted. Genomic impacts without lead casing.

Hubble vs. People to the Moon & Mars is a real vote coming up.

Becoming apparent that humans may not be able to live in space anyway, so the point may be moot. Very few things worth the infrastructure for life science experiments, except keeping astronauts alive in space.

Maybe we are in the early stages of shifting the evolution of consciousness to autonomous machines? Where unmanned exploration leads? You need a motivation or payback, discovery of intelligent life outside the solar system for example.

China as a motivation for going into space. Commercializing technologies not as readily available in the US. Using Russian technology and developing it may also develop capabilities for doing it better?

Russian approach was ICBM technology and keep it simple. Our approach was the shuttle, link to skylab and then the complex space station -- all delayed and leads to abandonment. Large and attractive and above all expensive. The Chinese looked at both, decided it couldn't replicate or afford the US approach and went with the Russian approach with new manufacturing and materials technologies. Simple, fast and cheap. Now this is the plan in the US, but as a re-develop from scratch and will take us longer than the Chinese.

X-prize for $1M for the first group to put together a low-earth orbit. Rutan Space Program. A couple will succeed. Not out of the science budget of the US, but private. Political implications. How can a future president of the US let the Chinese get to the moon first? Can we be second?

What's the big suprise we can count on? We could find five meters of water under the surface of Mars. Would provide scientific and useful value for establishing a base. Hubble indicates our universe is different in dimensionality and composition, parallel universes, now may be there to impact our mental outlook and overall. We may discover its a very small place and we are stuck in it. What is the universe we live in, what is it really like?