Right on the heels of the recent Chinese and Japanese moon probe launches, S. Korea is also planning to get into the game.
The Ministry of Science and Technology said Tuesday that it plans to send an unmanned probe to orbit the Moon in 2020 and to land another on its surface in 2025.
According to the roadmap of South Korea’s space exploration projects, the ministry will also develop a large-size rocket that can carry 300 tons of freight into space by 2017, and will start to build a space shuttle launching system in 2020.
However, the ministry didn’t reveal how much the space projects will cost, or how they will be funded. Detailed plans will be fixed later, it said.
It’s good that Korea is looking beyond Earth orbit for its space exploration roadmap, but one wonders at the timing of the announcement. Well one can always count on the Chinese and the Japanese to spur up things in Korea.
29 Comments
If it is true that pure, unadulterated spite can accomplish anything, then South Korea will definitely prove it.
Moon envy?
I would love to see more innovation in technology and creative thought that would free Korea from the grip of petroleum. That might seem less glamorous than large rockets but it would be more meaningful and useful.
Just about any major government project can have beneficial spin-off technologies (the AFN ads often remind us). Car navigation systems, teflon, and many others are tracable to military research.
What I would watch, though (let’s just play along for a moment and assume that Korea really goes through with this), is how much of this space project is actually powered by local R&D. That’s the only way to ensure widespread benefit from the project.
Korea’s trade deficit with Japan is holding steady at $20billion per month. That’s technology that is licensed from Japan, allowing Samsung and Hynix to build memory chips, allowing Hyundai to build cars, allowing LG to refine chemicals and SK to transmit your cell phone signal.
If Korea puts a man on the moon just by paying to use Japan’s technology, then it will only have purchased a Kodak moment, and not really logged a national achievement.
(With all due respect, of course, being a citizen of a country whose national economic achievements consist mainly of digging it up and cutting it down).
If Korea has the dosh to spend on this sort of national aggrandizement project, why is Uncle Sucker still subsidizing its defense?
“If Korea has the dosh to spend on this sort of national aggrandizement project, why is Uncle Sucker still subsidizing its defense?”
I can only imagine, whether it happens to be right or wrong, that Uncle Sucker reckons the cost is justified in the larger scheme of things.
Anyway, a moon mission doesn’t strike me as a terrbily good Korean priority. I would venture to guess that the moon may be just as devoid of natural resources as the Korean peninsula.
#3
Qualcomm is an American company based in San Diego.
Actually, I think that the problem is that no one (except Todd Galen Carpenter) has done the reckoning in terms of the US national interest - as distinct from the interests of those with a more limited stake in the matter, including e.g., the military establishment - don’t want to give up that 4-star billet, you know - since the original rationale for US involvement evaporated more than 15 years ago.
Sperwer,
If that be the case, why don’t Korea just sell all their $200 billion in U.S. treasury bills and exchange them for Euro denominated bonds?
It’s tiring for Korea (and other nations) to support America’s consumption economy given how sh*tty an investment the U.S. dollar is nowadays…
Beautiful. Simply beautiful. “… will be fixed later” as in the likelihood of this crapsicle coming to pass is remote. Unless like mateomiguel suggests, ’spite might accomplish this’.
I like to think a President McCain would have done by now the type of “reckoning” of the real US national interest you detect.
Based on how he stopped that 767 tanker program. Lots of 4 star and corporate interests involved in that. And somebody like him won’t be worried about having his national security “credentials” questioned.
You think not? Then the situation is hopeless and we’re going to be in Korea for hundreds of years — like the Roman legions on the Rhine. Please, no — enough is enough.
If heavy armored vehicles, air defense missiles, short-range attack missile systems, and attack helicopters need to be present in the ROK for its defense — let the ROK undertake to purchase the systems and man them. It’s not like we have appreciable amounts of infantry there anymore.
If they aren’t needed — because it’s unthinkable that Koreans would fight Koreans — then we don’t need to be there.
Is Qualcomm crucial? I thought that agreement just allowed SK the right to make some types of handsets, but that the total network was mostly local companies using Japanese technology.
WangKon:
I doubt that the Korean sovereign holdings are that large, but let’s say they are. If that’s the Korean response to loss of the US defense subsidy, I’d judge it to be an tolerable trade-off, if only to jettison an “ally” that seems to evaluate everything in just such terms.
Korea’s foreign currency reserves are something closer to US$260 billion these days. (China’s got US$1.5 trillion.)
The reason Korea won’t sell dollars is that selling dollars strengthens the won. While the US remains such an important export market for Korean products, Korea believes it can’t afford to allow the won to find its “true” value.
China holding US$1.5 trillion is really worrisome, though. It would be the equivalent of a declaration of war to dump all those dollars.
I was just going to say “Good grief WangKon, you can’t open up sovereign wealth and the USD balance of terror now. It might be evening for you, but it’s the workday for us. Let’s meet back here on the weekend, and bring your links.”
But it’s too late. Carr’s already out of the gate.
We can let it go. I’m just killing time until a telephone conference at 3:00 p.m.
We need to be more careful about what we are talking. Korean holdings of Treasuries at 12/06 were only ~ 67 Billion. Assuming that the rest of its alleged 257 billion total foreign currency reserves are held in dollars uninvested in US Treasuries, that leaves ~ 197 billion in currency or other instruments priced in USD. But Korea the BOK (in)famously declared in 05 that it was diversifying out of USD (an announcement made in a decidedly inept manner that resulted in a hit to the Dollar and consequently to Korea’s own trade competitiveness), so one has to ask how much of its total of 197 billion non-Treasury holdings actually is denominated in dollars. The IMF data doesn’t say, simply reflecting the notional dollar value of holdings; and I haven’t has the time to check BOK data to see if they provide a breakdown.
I like the points you make Paul. Korean moon exploration should equate to the US military not needing to be here. End the tripwire bullshit.
And it’s tiresome, WangKon, to listen to complaints about American consumption tendered on behalf of the beneficiaries thereof like Korea. Perhaps the US can respond to any Korean redemption of US obligations by curtailing sales of Korean cars, electronics and white goods in the US.
The moon probe is just to get everyones attention. Its just a cheap crappy trinket shot into space to get Korea thought of as a first world nation. What is really going to be expensive is developing the Heavy Lift Vehicle to do it. One might infer that Korea is looking to get into the Heavy launch rocket industry… which is stupid considering the competition, market saturation, and Koreas poor geography for rocket launches (but its still not as dumb as Germanys bid!) Also who would have the balls to believe a market projection ten years out?
And keep in mind, Spead Quality, Price, Pick any two… Korea want this thing not to blow up, they don’t want to pay out the ass for it, so they are spreading this project out over 13 years (probably 20 years given standard projects schedule slides for space programs). This is Similar to Japans space project, they have had some sort of “shuttle” planned since the 90’s and its gone nowhere… so will Koreas.
one other thing, who ever said the us was in korea because korea had no money? listen, the us doesn’t do anything that doesn’t benefit the us. the troops in korea are there because they serve america’s interest. that’s obviously what the people who run are government think.
# 18,
Sperwer, I think you get my point now. You can’t make a unilateral decision on something and expect the nature of things to stay the same. I suppose the U.S. can leave Korea and I suppose Korea could stop buying U.S. treasury bills. That would cause interest rates to rise and tighten monetary policy, the only thing keeping the U.S. out of a recession right now. However, consumption in the U.S. is important for Korea…
There was a similar argument back in the mid to late 80’s with Japan when Japan’s economic rise was feared and not well understood in the U.S. Why defend Japan and buy her products when they undermine our economy? (They were also selling some of our military secrets to the Soviets) Remember the old George H. Bush joke? George H. hit’s his head and gets in a comma and wakes up in 5 years later. The first person he sees by his side is Dan Quayle and Dan says, the country is doing great, the economy is doing fine and a loaf of bread is only 100 yen…
Today, in retrospect, we know such thinking was not only nationalistically immature but short sighted. Japan bought a lot of our treasury bonds, which kept more money in American’s pockets and they also reinvested a lot of what they made in the U.S. back into the U.S. (due largely to fluxuating exchange rates).
Lastly, isn’t the Korean War, the current success of South Korea and America’s continued presence in Korea creating stability in Northeast Asia pretty much the onl… errr… I mean the best excuse George W. has for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq?
Who is this Moon fella, anyway?
If it’s a matter of doing it with “Korean-only” technology, how about a massive program of ROK assistance to the North in getting a Taepodong successfully launch-tested? Followed by the planned multi-stage versions; after all, it’s the same exact technology as what’s needed to achieve earth orbit and then to the moon.
Now that will get the world attention! Shouldn’t take until 2020 either, could probably be done in 3 to 5 years with a concentrated effort. And if that project didn’t clear the Americans out, nothing will; pawi will be proved right in his assertion that the US simply has to stay in Korea no matter what.
The North Koreans used technology from the Scud missile to develop the Taepodongs, so no “Korean-only” technology here. It’s ironic when you consider that the South Koreans are adopting the Russian Angara booster as the first stage of the KSLV, which means that the two Koreas are both using Russian technology to pursue their rocket/ballistic missile programs.
Who knows the plan will still be in place when the February 08 comes?
Anyway, it’s probably not much an exaggeration to say that America has economically benefited from Japan and Korea holding substantial amount of Treasuries, although the significance of that seems to have started waning, as the Chinese, together with Arabs, both of whom feel less obliged to hold on to them, started to flex their economic muscles, and send the dollar travel South.
It’s good that Korea is looking beyond Earth orbit for its space exploration roadmap, but one wonders at the timing of the announcement. Well one can always count on the Chinese and the Japanese to spur up things in Korea.
So what? What’s your point?
The entire history and development of aviation, rocketry, nuclear bombs, and other goodies produced by the Cold War was driven by the fact that “the other guy” was doing it too. The entire Apollo missions project was sprung by the fact that the Russians put up Sputnik. The H-bomb, basically a rivalry between Edward Teller and Andrei Sakarov. History has proven that nationalism + paranoia + technological development = innovation.
BINGO! I get annoyed when people base their simplistic opinions about the US-ROK alliance on the unspoken assumption that government decisions and expenditures always reflect national interests.
When I asked other Koreans how they felt about the moon project they were either 1) not interested 2) wondering why billions of won in taxpayer money will be going down the drain to sent probes to the moon when there are more urgent problems here in Korea, and 3) wondering whether the bureacrats at MOST have finally lost it. The only Koreans who are supporting the project, however are, you guessed it, die hard nationalists/Japan haters.
Yes, but innovation also works better when you actually do something…you know…innovative. Going to the moon was done almost 40 years ago, along with beehive hair…