The Japanese lost a rocket and its payload of surveillance satellites yesterday. Once again, like the Chinese, their decision to play “follow the leader,” instead of being a leader, has come back to bite them and their space program. Taking the lead from the government space agencies of the US, Russia and Europe, they continue to operate under the delusion that space launch can be made affordable and reliable by souping up expendable ballistic missiles, and launching them a few times a year. The reality is that neither goal can be achieved by that method.

No matter how vaunted your quality control, and technological prowess, it is simply not possible to reliably or affordably build vehicles for which each flight is a first flight and a last, particularly when you build so few.

This is why I don’t fear international competition when it comes to space. The only people really making breakthroughs and demonstrating innovation right now are in the Anglosphere, and are for the most part American (though they have nothing to do with NASA). By the time the rest of the world realizes what’s happening in Mojave and other places, they’ll be too far behind to catch up.

And by the way, I should add, via Mark Whittington, that the Chinese have now set out their bold space goal–they’ll put a man on the moon in 2020–sixteen years from now, and only half a century after we did it. I found this part particularly amusing:

…until Luan’s comments, officials had denied having plans for a manned lunar landing. They insisted that, in contrast to the U.S.-Soviet space race of the 1960s, China was moving at its own careful, cost-effective pace.

Careful, perhaps, but hardly cost effective.

And Mark thinks that this will, or should, have the American public quaking in our collective boots?

At that rate, they’ll be greeted on arrival by the concierge at Club Med Luna…