Scott Pace, executive secretary of the US President's National Space Council, in an interview with Scientific American, described the country's current strategy to maintain its leadership in space.
“Now the measure of leadership is how many people want to work with you, how many people want to be part of your team, right? If we want to become the world leader in space exploration today, we need projects that are both challenging and realistic, but that also involve meaningful international partnerships and private sector involvement,”said Pace.
In his opinion, this strategy is significantly different from what was done in the 1960s and 1970s by the United States and the Soviet Union. "At the time, it was about demonstrating leadership by doing what another country could not do," said the executive secretary.
According to the expert, NASA's reorientation from a manned mission to the Moon instead of Mars is associated with the possibility of integrating into the program of international partners, while a flight to the Red Planet would be largely an American project.
“They were so ambitious (projects of missions to Mars and asteroids - approx. Lenta.ru) that they did not provide opportunities for international or commercial partnerships, and therefore, I would say, they actually contradict the national interests of the United States. And the reason why we are engaged in space is not space itself, but the promotion of US national interests,”Pace said.
Pace also spoke about the possible competition between the expensive SLS (Space Launch System) carrier, created by Boeing, and the cheap rockets of the private American companies Blue Origin and SpaceX. “Heavy missiles are strategic national assets such as aircraft carriers,” the expert said. ArsTechnica disagreed with him, pointing to various sources of funding for projects Boeing, Blue Origin and SpaceX.