I don't know how many of you have read that article on Yahoo news about us eventually losing the space race to the Asian countries, but I did and I can't help but wonder if the statistics sighted in the article mean anything at all? The article talked about a fall off of people wanting to be engineers in this country and it blamed a lack of interest. It stated that the kids today were more interested in games and certain online entertainment than in the engineering fields. Here is the rub, it stated that "The numbers of new scientists in Asian countries are eclipsing those in the United States. In 2004, around 500,000 engineers graduated in China, 200,000 in India and only 70,000 in the US, according to a report from the National Academy of Sciences released this year." I would like to ask any thinking person this question, China had an estimated population this year of 1,321,851,888. India had an estimated population this year of 1,129,866,154, is there anyway that we could possibly turn out more scientists than them now that they are becoming industrialized? I want you to notice that the article gave statistics for engineers and is not clear if they were also referring to scientists or considering engineers to be scientists. I took it to mean that they were discussing the entire field of engineering and science. It is amazing that this slipped by.

The US population is estimated this year, to be 301,139,947. It is true that if you take the percentage of people becoming scientists and engineers in this country, it will be less than China, but it is still more than India. If you figure out the percentage of the population becoming scientists in these three countries, here is what you get:
China - 3.78 % of the population
US - 2.32 % of the population
India - 1.77 % of the population
Right now China is pushing for a lead in science. It is not a noisy push, but a quiet one. The Chinese believe that in time, they will be the dominant world power. They have already demonstrated that they could take over most of the manufacturing in the world and this has not all been due to cheap labor, some of it has come from government policies. An example of that is having prisoners, that don't get paid, make goods for export. What could be cheaper than that? It is the US that has the biggest prison population in the world, not China or India and if we did the same thing, we might even be able to undercut them. Why don't we do this? Is it because certain people would say that it isn't nice to take advantage of prisoners in this way? Instead we give them cable tv, gyms and all sorts of comforts, so this we have to blame on government policies. Hey we even pay them.

Back to the space race. We are our own worst enemy, we always have been. If there would have been a country that we considered our enemy making huge leaps in space, we would have started a national program of catchup, as we did with the Soviet Union when they got ahead. It is not going to be so easy next time and might be impossible. There is a basic question here however and that question is haven't we grown up enough to create a united earth space agency instead of each country trying to repeat what was already done? Indeed, imagine how far more advanced we would be in space, if we all cooperated. It is also time to do away with those politically correct projects, like the International Space Station, that are international in name only, with much of the cost being loaded onto the shoulders of the US tax payer. The space shuttle is archaic and badly designed and needs to be disbanded. It is also time for us to reveal if we have a military space vehicles that could be used for civilian purposes. Why design these things twice? It has long been suspected that we have one, you know.

If we would stop funding the space station and the space shuttle, we would have additional monies, so lets see how much. NASA lists the costs of the station as 25.6 Billion dollars for the years 1994 - 2005. This does NOT include the space shuttle. For each year after that, the cost will be approximately 2 Billion dollars with it going up to 2.3 Billion dollars by 2010. The Space Shuttle Program has cost us 145 Billion dollars as of the beginning of 2005 and the estimate is 174 Billion dollars by the time it is retired in 2010. The cost of a launch, when you consider everything, is about 1.3 Billion dollars.

So what does all this have to do with not producing enough scientists and engineers in the US? I think it is very simple really. Look at the huge amounts of money that have been wasted by these two programs. We had absolutely no need for the space shuttle for most of our launches, rockets would have been much cheaper. If we would have infused the 174 Billion dollars from the shuttle and the 25 Billion from the space station into our space program, we would have been able to spend another 200 Billion dollars on space exploration, thus having many exciting programs that might have stirred the excitement of the young folks, thus having more of them entering the scientific and engineering fields. There is a very good chance that we would already have had settlements on the moon and have had humans on Mars. Even the military industrial complex might have been happy with this, because we would have been building advanced machines to travel in space and increasing our knowledge of space travel. As they say, we screwed ourselves in this area.

There is another facet that has to also be considered when we talk of producing engineers and scientists and that is the quality of their education. It is true that China has drastically improved their educational system, but there are still problems. While many new Chinese scientists seem to have more facts crammed into their heads, they are not as innovative, according to a prominent American-Chinese scientist. He went on further to state that they found it hard to work out new creative ideas and that this will have some effect on China's competitiveness in the future. India has a problem with its primary education. It is still struggling to reach 100% literacy, but does have some fine universities. Indian Institutes of Technology were placed 50th in the world and second behind only MIT by Times Higher World University Rankings. When the ratings are examined, here is what you get for the top 19:

THES - QS World University Rankings 2006
= indicates a tie
Source: WIKIPEDIA

As you can see, out of the 19 top schools listed, China has only 1. If you want to count Singapore it has 2. India has 0 and the US has 10 with Great Britain having 4. I am not saying that quality of education is everything, but it certainly does mean something when you are comparing the education of scientists and engineers. There is no doubt that both India and China will produce more scientists and engineers than us over the years, but how many do you need to accomplish your goals? If I have 100,000 scientists and engineers and you have 200,000 does that automatically mean that you will be ahead of me in technology? In case you think that the numbers are slanted in favor of the west in the above ratings, here is a list of the top 19 universalities in the world, in 2007, compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai:

1. Harvard - US
2. Stamford - US
3. Univ California - Berkeley - US
4. Cambridge - UK
5. MIT - US
6. California Institute of Technology - US
7. Columbia - US
8 Princeton - US
9 University of Chicago - US
10 Oxford - UK
11 Yale - US
12 Cornell - US
13 University of California - Los Angeles - US
14 University of California - San Diego - US
15 University of Pennsylvania - US
16 University of Washington - Seattle - US
17 University of Wisconsin - Madison - US
18 University of California - San Francisco - US
19 John Hopkins - US

As you can see we still seem to have an overwhelming lead in the quality of our universities, when even a Shanghai University acknowledges this.

What we have to do is get rid of the waste in our space budget, stop diverting funds for senseless wars and occupations and get on with the business of exploring space. If we are not going to form a world space body, than the US must get down to business and form some partnerships. We have already joined forces with Russia in some projects and maybe it is time for us to join with them, Great Britain, Japan, Canada, and a few other countries, maybe even India and head out to the stars. What is the difference if we plant a US flag on a planet or one that represents a coalition. The important thing is that we get there. If we think that we will prevent others from going to a planet because we claim it, that is nonsense. Look at the North and South Poles. Everyone is there, that is probably what will happen in the future with planets and even the moon. We are in a position where we are bleeding money right now and others are taking advantage of this. Maybe if we knew what was going on as far as black projects we wouldn't feel this way. It could be that we have advanced space craft and the general public doesn't know it. If this is the case, it is a crime that this technology isn't being applied to the civilian agencies such as NASA.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I want to get on with space exploration and the smart way to do it, is to try and get as many of the world's resources in one place for this task. Let's get on with it!