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Japan’s entire space program faces a major overhaul.

Feeling the heat of competition: Japan’s entire space program faces a major overhaul.

In the last few decades Japan has not done very well in space when compared to other Asian countries like China and India. Thus, this overhaul. Yet, based on this article, it doesn’t seem to me that they are making the real changes they need to do to successfully compete. If anything, it sounds instead like the actions of a bureaucracy that is merely rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship, in the hope that this will somehow save it.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

2 comments

  • I like the simplicity of their goals: national security, and boost industry.

    I’d argue that there’s nothing a government can do to boost industry except getting out of the way, but hey…

  • Kelly Starks

    I worked with a guy at Hamilton Sundstrand that was part of a team reviewing the Japanise Maned space program. They weer HORRIBLE! Training just reexercized folks doing perfect day executions of the mission plans over and over – NO test on what they would do when a problem happened. Air intake for the underwater suits umbilicals was right next to the exaust for the emergency generators – so in a emergency you poison the astronaut in zero G training. Folks couldn’t even find the keys to get into the cabinet holding emergency valves or circuts.

    ;/

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