For all the prestige that putting someone into orbit brings, it's really not that useful in the grand scheme of things, unless you invest an awful, *awful* lot in developing it from the single-person showboat flights into a sustainable orbital presence.
Even then, it delivers nowhere near the same boost to capabilities as the previous resources invested in satellites and launch systems do. There just really isn't all that much for a human to do in space, unless you're a scientist.
Add to that the fact that manned spaceflight is much, much harder to achieve than simply putting a payload up there, and there's really not much likelihood of any Turkish manned missions for the foreseeable future. Problems on the ground have a habit of overshadowing orbital ambitions.
Manned spaceflight is a prestige item right up there next to nuclear weapons, a very very exclusive club. And Turkey wants to be a player on the big stage. So I can see them making noises about having a manned space program. But, as Shock said, kind of hard to pull off and very little actual pay-off for the expense. Manned spaceflight is a prestigiously exclusive club for a reason.
Yes. Yes it can.
ReplyDeleteFor all the prestige that putting someone into orbit brings, it's really not that useful in the grand scheme of things, unless you invest an awful, *awful* lot in developing it from the single-person showboat flights into a sustainable orbital presence.
Even then, it delivers nowhere near the same boost to capabilities as the previous resources invested in satellites and launch systems do. There just really isn't all that much for a human to do in space, unless you're a scientist.
Add to that the fact that manned spaceflight is much, much harder to achieve than simply putting a payload up there, and there's really not much likelihood of any Turkish manned missions for the foreseeable future. Problems on the ground have a habit of overshadowing orbital ambitions.
Manned spaceflight is a prestige item right up there next to nuclear weapons, a very very exclusive club. And Turkey wants to be a player on the big stage. So I can see them making noises about having a manned space program. But, as Shock said, kind of hard to pull off and very little actual pay-off for the expense. Manned spaceflight is a prestigiously exclusive club for a reason.
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