Brazilians suffered a double sadness this week. Within hours of the body of slain UN diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello being returned to his homeland from Baghdad, an explosion at Brazil’s Alcantara rocket base killed 21 expert space technicians and scientists and destroyed a rocket that was due to launch two satellites into space next week. This was the third failure of the Brazilian Space Agency to launch a rocket.
Many people, inside and outside Brazil, have asked why the state should be pouring money into a space program when the country has so many pressing problems, not least great poverty, at home. It is an easy argument to make and the United States and Russia, which still dominate space science, will no doubt be glad to make it. But though at first sight plausible, the criticism is wrong. Of course the money could be spent on programs to lift Brazil’s poor out of poverty. The great disparities in wealth that mar Brazilian society, with the rich being extremely wealthy and the poor abjectly poor, need to be addressed. But it can be argued that in its way, Brazil’s space program is doing just that.
For a start, the millions that are being invested in the country’s drive into space are hardly disappearing into some black hole. Certainly some of the money is being spent abroad, but the majority of expenditure is being made in Brazil itself. Space-age technology demands firms with the sophistication and equipment to supply components and software to go into the rocketry and ground control systems. To a very large degree, Brazil’s space program has been using homegrown resources. Therefore the investment has been made in Brazil. As NASA in the US has not tired of telling everyone, its own space exploration produces substantial commercial technological spin-offs that are of use here on earth. This must hold true of Brazil’s program too.
On top of this, the programs of Brazil, India, China, Japan, the Ukraine and even the Europeans represent a challenge to the two established space powers. They are a marker for the future when the exploration and exploitation of space will need to become a truly global effort, in which the US and Russia can no longer be the dominant powers. The best cooperation comes when all parties have something to bring to the table. The technological exchange that will be essential for the hard challenges of space will need to be evenhanded. Hence the drive by countries such as Brazil and India to acquire the experience and knowledge and be a part of a greater, global effort in years to come.
Maybe as Brazil learns to conquer space, it will also acquire the will to conquer its own domestic problems using the commercial and technological vitality that underpins its visionary space program.
