<ul><li>“This is the single biggest reform in India’s space program,” Gateway House scholar Chaitanya Giri told Business Insider in an exclusive interview.</li><li>The new wave of reforms could create an Indian consortium like the one between <keyword id="6357957" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="boeing">Boeing</keyword> and <keyword id="112859" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Lockheed-Martin">Lockheed Martin</keyword> — the <keyword id="199284" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="United-Launch-Alliance">United Launch Alliance</keyword> (ULA).</li><li>"Everyone will benefit," said Giri with respect to the reforms.</li></ul>Finance Minister <keyword id="129243" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Nirmala-Sitharaman">Nirmala Sitharaman</keyword>’s announcements to help the private sector collaborate with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) are the “single biggest reform in India’s space program,” according to Gateway House fellow Chaitanya Giri. In an exclusive interview, he told Business Insider that now, the road is clear for the likes of L&amp;T and <keyword id="6369697" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="godrej">Godrej</keyword> to join hands to create an Indian version of the United Launch Alliance (ULA), which is a US-based launch service provider with a 100% success rate of missions so far. Normally, ISRO has discouraged private players from being too big a part of their projects for fear of sensitive data falling into the wrong hands. This time, Sitharaman has assured the industry that sharing data will be done cautiously, it is necessary to help Indian startups thrive. Here are the excerpts from the conversation: Q: Are you as excited as I am right now? This seems like a big announcement! Chaitanya Giri: I have been advocating this for the past eight years. I don't have any vested interest in it. Being a scholar, I don't get funded by any startup, I don't get funded by any venture capitalist. Just out of pure passion for the exploration as well as my love for the nation that I'm advocating this. And I'm really glad that the government took this decision. They might have thought about it, they might have collated ideas from previous sources. And since we are in a crisis, crisis makes one really unleash a lot of inner energies. The government, by opening up space exploration for the private sector, is trying to unleash these energies. I’m very excited. This is the single biggest reform in India’s space program — nothing has been bigger than this before. <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="75776128" title="ISRO treasure trove of testing facilities and data will now be open to startups and private players" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div> Q: Do you think ISRO necessarily has to follow these guidelines or is this more of a, “we'll have to leave it to you and you can do what you want,” kind of scenario? Chaitanya Giri: They will have to. They will have to open it up. If they shrug right now, if they avoid, it won’t be good for the country. Certainly, not for those who are barricading. This is coming from the top. Q: Which company do you think is like going to be like the one to benefit the most from these reforms? Chaitanya Giri: I won't name companies. Everyone will be a beneficiary. There’s not first or second. Everyone will benefit. <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="65073240" title="ISRO creates a space for the private industry, to collaborate for 27 satellites" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div> Q: So in terms of sharing data, Nirmala said this is going to something we’re going to approach with caution. It's not just gonna be an all out access. Does that mean that data access to data will be given as per specific requirements? Chaitanya Giri: As per specific requirements, what sort of institution are you — are you an Indian company, what your beneficial ownership pattern, who owns you, who are the stakeholders, are you invested in by Indian entities — and in that matter, yes. Q: And, also in terms of what project they're working on specifically, like data will be given accordingly? Only that bit of data will be shared? Chaitanya Giri: Of course. Of course. Whatever is demanded will specifically be shared. Geospatial data comes with coordinates and timestamps. You'll have to put in a proposal to get access to it. You will get it for a very key price or free if possible. So, it wasn't the case that the data wasn’t ever available but it was only available to government institutions until now. Now that it will be open to the private sector, especially startups who are into Earth observation and analysis. So for instance, if you see we've been launching quite a few ‘doves’ — these small satellites from a company called Planet Labs, which is an American company. We’ve been launching for them for the past three/four years. Now the Doves’ constellation has grown to more than 100 satellites and is moving towards Earth oversation spheres. It’s futile for ISRO to keep this competency close to its heart anymore. It’s not a baby, it’s grown up. You don’t keep a grown up child close to your heart. You let that child go. <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="70375311" title="ISRO’s commercial operations clock in over ₹60 billion in revenue but leaves private players out of the equation" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div> Q: So the second thing that she spoke about in terms of private participation was future projects for planetary exploration, outer space travel and other things. What exactly is that going to include? Chaitanya Giri: Exploration has completely been in the domain of the Department of Space. All the cameras and instruments and what not have been coming from ISRO labs. None of the companies have built a lander. None of them have built rovers or payloads. All of these are coming from ISRO labs. They might be providing components for rocket manufacturing and satellite bus manufacturing but nothing more than that. These are trivial businesses. Unless you go ahead and become an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), you’re not a part of the industry. With this announcement, a Mahindra or a Tata or Godrej can participate, for exploring the Moon, exploring Mars and for exploring asteroids. I will tell them — please go. <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="73063629" title="India's second mission to land on the Moon, Chandrayaan 3, confirmed by ISRO chief" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div> Q: So this essentially makes way for a SpaceX version of an Indian company, right? Chaitanya Giri: No, not a SpaceX version but a ULA version — United Launch Alliance. This is the consortium of Boeing, Lockheed Martin in space business. So, you may see Godrej and L&amp;T coming together for a space alliance and launching rockets. <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="73462546" title="Exploring space is expensive — and ISRO needs more money from the 2020 Union Budget" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div> Q. The next thing I wanted to ask you about was FDI. Like for defence, they opened up FDI from 49% to 74%. Will these reforms make way for more foreign investment in the space sector as well? Chaitanya Giri: That will require some more scrutiny. But I don't see a problem with the opening up of space for FDI. Space exploration, per se, is an international business. These days you’re seeing a lot of transnational partnership. You see companies from New Zealand going to the US. You see, a Luxembourg company attracting investments from America.You see a Japanese rocket will launch an Emirati spacecraft to Mars. You can’t keep the doors closed. What you can do is, really make sure that your company is closer than the rest. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/policy/economy/news/now-day-four-of-nirmala-sitharamans-stimulus-plan-as-india-preps-for-lockdown-4-0/articleshow/75774080.cms">Now, fourth tranche of Nirmala Sitharaman's stimulus plan as India preps for lockdown 4.0</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/indigo-spicejet-adani-gmr-gvk-share-price-may-gain-after-civil-aviation-reforms/articleshow/75775888.cms">Indigo and Spicejet get shorter routes, cheaper fuel bills while Adani, GMR, and GVK get more airport projects to bid for</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/news/india-opens-nuclear-energy-for-private-players-but-for-cancer-research-and-consumer-applications/articleshow/75776354.cms">India opens nuclear energy space to private players but for cancer research and other consumer applications only</a>

"Now, L&T and Godrej can join hands like Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s ULA," says Gateway House scholar cheering India’s 'biggest space reform'

<a href="http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/google-co-founder-sergey-brin-looks-on-during-a-news-news-photo/152766135">Getty Images / Justin Sullivan</a>President of Alphabet Inc. (Google's parent company), Sergey Brin.Google founder Sergey Brin is "secretly" building a massive airship in Hangar 2 at the NASA Ames Research Center.<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-25/with-secret-airship-sergey-brin-also-wants-to-fly" target="_blank">Bloomberg reports</a> that Brin's fascination with airships began when he visited Ames and saw old photos of the giant USS Macon being built by the US Navy in the 1930s.Google unit Planetary Ventures commissioned the hangars in 2015, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-25/with-secret-airship-sergey-brin-also-wants-to-fly" target="_blank">and according to Bloomberg</a>, a metal frame is already filling most of the enormous building.Leading the project is Alan Weston, a British-educated aeronautics expert born to Australian parents.Weston is keeping quiet about the project right now, but in 2013 he spoke of plans for an airship as a fuel-efficient way to carry cargo loads up to 500 tonnes. REUTERS/John Hamilton/DVIDS/Handout While various attempts to modernize the form of transport, unfortunately, best known in terms of the Hindenburg disaster, have met with varying success, Weston has a unique track record as someone not afraid to take a risk.As in, the ultimate risk, of being one of the first people to bungee jump without having tested the equipment or technique.In the 1970s, while he was at Oxford University, Weston was part of a group known as the Dangerous Sports Club. Their specialty was high risk and surreal sporting activities, such as skiing a grand piano down the Swiss Alps and hang-gliding from active volcanoes. A sort of forerunner to Jackass.One night, they hit on an idea when US member Geoff Tabin told them he was visiting New Guinea. A discussion started about vine-jumping, which was actually a coming of age ritual in Vanuatu.But the discussion turned to how the group could "urbanise" it.One of the group's members, Simon Keeling, had a brother in the RAF. Tabin said the brother arranged for the group to "permanently borrow" one of the elastic cords, made by "Bungee Corporation", used to catch jets as they land on aircraft carriers.And after an all-night party at Oxford, Keeling, Weston, Tim Hunt (the brother of F1 champion James) and founding member David Kirke performed the first recorded bungee-jump off the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol in the UK, on April 1, 1979, and were promptly arrested.That was probably Weston's fault, as he'd told his sisters about the jump and they both independently told the police, fearing their brother was about to kill himself.In 2014, footage of the jump was uncovered in a store of cans of 16mm film rushes:At the time, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-29951282" target="_blank">Kirke told the BBC</a> that Weston was third to jump. One YouTube commenter claims his friend Crispin Balfour pushed Weston off.Four members were also arrested when the group performed the stunt from the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. Weston escaped police by sailing to Fort Point, changing clothes and running off.It wasn't Weston's first escape from the law, according to Kirke, who <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3620215/An-endangered-species.html" target="_blank">told the UK Daily Telegraph in 2004</a>:"He once flew around the Houses of Parliament in a microlight, wearing a gorilla outfit, playing a saxophone and chased by a police helicopter and two civilian helicopters."We got him away to Epping Forest, where we bundled him into a car and put him on the first plane back to America."The sport hit mainstream soon after members were asked to jump from the Royal Gorge Suspension bridge in Colorado for That's Incredible!. Tabin, as the inaugural American, <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/secretlife/health-science/geoff-tabin/" target="_blank">got to jump in a white tuxedo</a>, and won a spot in the popular show's opening credits for a year afterwards.Here's Weston in footage from that episode:Weston clearly has a taste for pushing boundaries. He and Kirke once led a sailing expedition for five days in Force 9 gales to a rock 500km off the coast of Scotland, just to spend the night <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2004/02/oxford-university-dangerous-sports-club" target="_blank">"drinking champagne and dancing to the Beach Boys"</a>.Tabin is now an ophthalmologist. Kirke even now continues his exploits for the DSC. He hurled himself from a trebuchet on his 55th birthday and was last reported to be working on building a working pegasus.Weston continued his daredevil exploits in aerospace engineering, and once broke his ankle trying to hang-glide down Mt Kilimanjaro, before eventually joining the US Air Force.In 1989, he was an engineer on the Reagan government's iconic "Star Wars" missile defence system and oversaw one of its first tests.He's been with NASA since 2006, at one time working on a moon lander.And now he's building an airship for Sergey Brin.This, kids, is why you should stay in school.<a href="https://giphy.com/gifs/132oiSqYsFgDMQ">via GIPHY</a> Get the latest Google stock price<a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/stock/GOOG-Quote"> here.</a><a href="https://giphy.com/gifs/rXBeTcT4tWyC4">via GIPHY</a> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/baltimore-mr-trash-solar-powered-waterwheel-removes-rubbish-inner-harbor-maryland-2017-4">Baltimore's solar-powered water wheel has now removed 1.1 million lbs of rubbish from the river</a></h3> Please enable Javascript to watch this video

The amazing life of the bungee-jump inventor who's now building an airship for Google co-founder Sergey Brin

America is no longer as alarming to its foes or reassuring to its friends.
America's allies are nervous. With Russia grabbing territory, China bullying its neighbours and Syria murdering its people, many are asking: where is Globocop? Under what circumstances will America act to deter troublemakers? What, ultimately, would America fight for?
The answer to this question matters. Rogue states will behave more roguishly if they doubt America's will to stop them. As a former head of Saudi intelligence recently said of Vladimir Putin's land grab in Ukraine: "While the wolf is eating the sheep, there is no shepherd to come to the rescue."
Small wonder that Barack Obama was asked, at every stop during his just-completed four-country swing through Asia, how exactly he plans to wield American power. How would the president respond if China sought to expand its maritime borders by force? How might he curb North Korea's nuclear provocations? At every press conference he was also quizzed about Ukraine, for world news follows an American president everywhere.
When it came to formal pledges of reassurance, Mr Obama did not stint. In Tokyo he offered fresh guarantees that the defence treaty between Japan and America covers all Japanese-administered territory, including the Senkaku islands, which China also claims. While visiting some of the 28,000 American troops stationed in South Korea, he vowed that his government would not hesitate to use "military might to defend our allies". In the Philippines Mr Obama signed a new, ten-year agreement to give American forces greater access to local bases.
While Mr Obama was in Asia on April 28th American officials unveiled new sanctions against Russia: visa bans and asset freezes for Putin cronies such as Igor Sechin, the boss of Rosneft, a big state oil firm. On the same day a final detachment of American paratroopers arrived in Estonia, bringing to about 600 the number of American soldiers now on exercises in Poland and the three Baltic countries (all of which fear Russia). Whereas Russia tried to mask its deeds in Ukraine by deploying troops with no insignia, the whole point of America's action was to show off the Stars and Stripes on the uniforms.
<div class="KonaFilter image-container click-to-enlarge"><div class="image"><a title_source="The Economist" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5363cf566bb3f718314453fa-960/screen%20shot%202014-05-02%20at%201.03.37%20pm.png"></a>The Economist</div></div>
<h3>Philosopher-in-chief</h3>
Yet even as he did his duties as planetary peacekeeper, Mr Obama could not help pondering the limits of American power, out loud. There are "no guarantees" that sanctions will change Mr Putin's thinking over Ukraine, he mused on April 25th. He said it would be in Mr Putin's interests to behave better, but he might not.
In recent years, Mr Obama went on, people have taken to thinking that hard foreign-policy problems may actually have a definitive answer, typically involving the use of force. Mr Obama disagrees. "Very rarely have I seen the exercise of military power providing a definitive answer," he told an audience in Seoul.
In the Philippines he was asked whether his handling of crises from Ukraine to Syria might have emboldened America's enemies. He retorted that his tactics "may not always be sexy", but have strengthened America's global position. Many of his hawkish critics, he said, were the same people who supported the "disastrous" war in Iraq and who "haven't really learned the lesson of the last decade."
Such sentiments may appeal to war-weary voters back home. Most Americans say that defending the security of allies is "very important", but just 6% would use force over Ukraine, says a Pew poll, and huge majorities oppose action in Syria. For countries that rely on American protection, this is troubling. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, for example, feel exposed (see Charlemagne). Like Ukraine, they were once part of the Soviet Union, have Russophone minorities and doubt that Mr Putin respects their borders.
For Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the president of Estonia, the legal order preserving Europe's borders changed utterly when Russia invaded Crimea. The European Union's meek response has made it a laughing stock. "There is nothing left to hold on to," declares Mr Ilves.
Except NATO. Unlike Ukraine, the Balts are members of the NATO military alliance, under whose founding treaty an armed attack on any member is considered an attack on all. This means America is committed to protecting its European allies. And for now, they believe it will. "I do believe that the borders of NATO are a red line. I have faith in that," declares President Ilves. If any NATO ally tried to block a response to an armed attack, NATO would, in effect, cease to exist, he says.
In recent years, Mr Obama has scaled back plans for missile defence in Europe and reduced America's military presence there to two brigade combat teams. But Russia's aggression has had the unintended consequence of giving NATO a renewed sense of purpose: hence those American paratroopers in Poland.
François Heisbourg, of the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique in Paris, reckons America would still fight to defend the Baltic states: "The moment a Russian tank crosses the bridge at Narva [on Estonia's border with Russia] it will be zapped." But America's commitment to defend Europe is undermined by the Europeans' tendency to freeload, which American taxpayers resent. Few allies except Britain meet the NATO target to maintain military spending at 2% of GDP.
In the short term there are two military concerns. One is that the Baltic states are difficult to defend. Their airspace is entirely covered by Russian missiles. A greater worry is that Russia's aggression might be stealthy, as in Ukraine. "Mr Putin does not do frontal attack; he does judo," says Mr Heisbourg. What would America and NATO do if Russia starts to undermine the Balts by stirring unrest among ethnic Russians there and deploying mysterious armed men? NATO was not designed for such contingencies.
<h3>Middle Eastern gloom</h3>
Nowhere is the perception of growing American timidity so strong as in the Middle East. Eleven years ago America conquered Iraq in a matter of weeks. Yet when Mr Obama pulled America's last troops out in 2011, there was little to show for all the lives lost and billions spent. The regime America has left behind in Baghdad is barely friendly.
In the rest of the region the story is not much cheerier. The new government in Egypt ignores American finger-wagging about human rights and buys lots of Russian weapons. In Syria President Bashar Assad was caught red-handed last year gassing his own people, an act that Mr Obama had specifically warned would trigger American punishment. Yet this "red line" was crossed almost with impunity.
There were sound arguments for all these apparent American retreats. Yet the widespread impression in the Middle East is that the lion has turned into a pussycat. Its foes rejoice; its allies bewail their perceived abandonment.
Iraq's leader, Nuri al-Maliki, is chummier with Iran than America. Iran jauntily backs militias and political parties in Iraq. It sends bullets and "advisers" to Syria via Iraqi airspace. It sponsors Iraqi Shia volunteers to fight American-supplied Sunni rebels in Syria.
Of late, America has sometimes taken a back seat to other countries, as with France's intervention in Mali and NATO's in Libya. Or it has simply shied from doing anything much, as in Syria.
Yet reports of the death of American influence in the Middle East are exaggerated. Mr Obama can claim some successes: oil prices are stable, Israel has never been so prosperous or secure and Iran has agreed (under intense pressure) to curb its nuclear ambitions somewhat. Terrorism now poses far more danger within the Middle East than to the rest of the world.
America's regional military bootprint has shrunk, but only from the inflated dimensions of the Bush-era "surge" in Iraq. A constellation of American military bases dots the region, from the 5th Fleet's headquarters in Bahrain to Central Command's massive base in Qatar, to secret airstrips sending drones into the skies of Yemen. No outside power can plausibly replace America there. The Gulf monarchies still rely on American protection, as do Jordan and (to a lesser extent than before) Israel.
The perception of American timidity has yet to do serious damage to American interests in the Middle East. It has, however, spurred allies to look out for themselves. Israel has cultivated military and economic ties with China and India. Gulf states are arming themselves: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE have all recently ordered huge arsenals.
<h3>Facing China</h3>
Moving to Asia, America has been fighting in Afghanistan for more than a decade now. This year Mr Obama plans to bring home almost all of the more than 30,000 American troops there. It may yet be all of them. Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, has refused to sign an agreement that would allow 5,000-10,000 or so to stay on in non-combat roles. But both candidates in the run-off election to succeed him are supporters of the agreement.
So American boots will still be on the ground, providing targets for insurgents. Even if a broader civil war is avoided, America may find itself an unwilling party to bloodshed. If the American-backed government in Kabul finds itself unable to control swathes of the country, al-Qaeda or other groups with global terrorist ambitions might regroup there, as they might in the ungoverned tribal areas of Pakistan. Should they succeed in staging an attack on mainland America, the cycle might start again: experience shows that to avenge the victims of murder at home, America will fight.
It seems far-fetched to think that America would go to war over the islands known to Japan as the Senkakus and to China as the Diaoyus. Nestling in the East China Sea between the two countries, they are tiny, barren and uninhabited save for hundreds of goats and the elusive "Senkaku mole" (a critter, not a double agent). When America administered the islands from 1945-72, it used them for bombing practice.
Yet Mr Obama has put American military credibility on the line over the Senkakus (even if he did not explicitly promise that the 50,000 American troops stationed in Japan would help fight for them). For more than two years now China has been buzzing the islands by air and sea to challenge Japan's claim of control, and last November included them in an "Air Defence Identification Zone". There is a real risk that an accidental clash might escalate. So these desolate rocks may pose the most immediate test of Mr Obama's "pivot" towards Asia.
The South China Sea sets others. Five countries have claims there that overlap with China's. The Philippines' dispute is the most active. In 1995 China evicted it from one reef, and two years ago from another. America takes no position on sovereignty, but backs Manila's efforts to contest Beijing's claims under international law.
In South Korea 28,000 American troops sit near the border to deter the North Korean regime. Few expect that regime to last for ever (see Banyan). Should it collapse, China, fearing the abrupt arrival of a unified Korea on its borders that is America's ally and stuffed with American armour, might intervene. Loth to upset its erratic ally, China refuses to co-ordinate contingency plans for a North Korean implosion with America.
Both big powers hope that Taiwan's deepening economic ties with mainland China will dampen the island's enthusiasm for formal independence. But as Yan Xuetong, a Chinese scholar, has noted, at least 70% of people on Taiwan still see themselves as "Taiwanese" first, "Chinese" second. One day Beijing's impatience at Taiwan's failure to submit may force America into very difficult choices. A 1979 law binds America's government to deem any attempt at forcible reunification "as a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific Area and of grave concern to the United States".
Would America really go to war with China? China plainly seeks to become the dominant power in Asia. Many Asians doubt that America is reconciled to being number two. That said, many Asians also doubt that America would risk a shooting war with a nuclear power. They point to American silence when China seized the Scarborough shoal from the Philippines in 2012; and to its advice to American airlines late last year to comply with China's air-defence zone over the Senkakus. 
In Asia, as elsewhere, America's allies are boosting their armed forces. Some suspect that America's security umbrella has holes in it. Sotto voce, a Japanese diplomat says Japan has never relied on it--though what he perhaps means is that it no longer does.
Under its pacifist constitution, imposed by America after the second world war, Japan is barred from "collective self-defence", even if it means shooting down a North Korean missile on its way to Hawaii. Its current prime minister, Shinzo Abe, wants to change this. The aim, as one scholar puts it, is to become a "normal" ally, like a NATO member, partly to encourage America to keep defending it, and partly because it is not sure it will.
<h3>The trigger-point</h3>
Mr Obama's hands-off approach dismays the foreign-policy establishment back home. Democrats and Republicans alike chide him for leaving a security vacuum for enemies to fill. Yet others note that he does not want to be the American president who failed to honour a treaty. He chose to deploy ground forces to the Baltics and Poland, when he could have sent only a few ships or planes.
A defender of the president, Ivo Daalder, American ambassador to NATO from 2009-13, suggests that if NATO allies suffered provocations short of an invasion (eg, Russian passports being distributed to Russian-speakers, challenges to Baltic frontiers) more troops, ships and warplanes would be deployed, making America's commitment to collective security ever-more visible. It was also under Mr Obama that NATO finally drew up contingency plans to cover threats to all members.
Kurt Volker, George W. Bush's final NATO ambassador and Mr Obama's first, suggests that--despite Mr Obama's distrust of military force--he would still act if there were a loud enough "domestic outcry." An outright invasion of a NATO ally would trigger such an outcry, Mr Volker says, as would a serious attack on Israel. But short of that, Mr Volker worries that other countries see within Team Obama "a creeping willingness to let things go".
A senior former defence official says that Mr Obama acted slowly in sending reinforcements to NATO members, and would do so again. "I think Mr Putin is going to keep coming until someone stands up to him," says this source. In the case of Russian adventurism inside NATO's borders, he predicts that Team Obama would respond: "I would worry that it would be late. Not too late, but late, and that would send a message around the world."
America's obligations in Asia are "nuanced", says another senior figure. Where American troops are stationed in large numbers--in South Korea, or on the main islands of Japan--the security commitment is "absolute". Under Mr Obama, American forces have pushed back (somewhat) against Chinese sabre-rattling in disputed seas. Should China threaten Taiwan, America would feel a "moral obligation" to send ships or planes to serve as a referee. 
Yet during previous crises, as in 1996, when China tested missiles before a Taiwanese election and America sent warships to the area, even hawkishly pro-Taiwan members of Congress privately told officials "you'd sure as hell better not get us into a war with the Chinese", this source recalls.
A skirmish over the Senkakus would trigger help of some sort, says another veteran of many crises: perhaps early-warning planes to patrol the skies for Japan, and warships to show the American flag. But the American public "would not be excited to go to war over a bunch of rocks".
So much for America's formal commitments. When it comes to other countries and regions, insiders worry that Mr Obama sees the world as a jungle full of thugs, forever causing crises that America cannot fix. His failure to enforce his own "red line" over chemical weapons in Syria gravely damaged his credibility.
Team Obama is divided, with an unhappy State Department under John Kerry desperate to see more help for anti-Assad forces in Syria, while the Pentagon has spent months explaining why extra weapons shipments cannot work. Meanwhile, Mr Obama is described as analysing every option to exhaustion before concluding that inaction is the prudent course.
In a few areas, a toughening of current policies is possible. Mr Obama's guiding principle is to avoid new wars. Because a nuclear-armed Iran might start a war which drags in America, he treats Iranian talks with great seriousness.
There are few overt hawks in Congress: the Republican Party of the Bush era, with its dreams of creating democracies across the world, is a distant memory. But some senators are pushing Mr Obama to take tougher, faster action against Russia. On a visit to Ukraine on April 25th Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called for harsher sanctions on Russian banks and energy interests.
Bob Corker, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, grumbles that the Russian stockmarket actually rose after the latest American sanctions were announced, suggesting those sanctions are weaker than the world expected. Mr Corker says several senators want the government to examine the pros and cons of permanently stationing American NATO forces in such countries as the Baltic republics. Russia maintains that any such move would breach understandings reached with NATO in the 1990s. But Mr Obama will be under pressure to declare that the world has changed, and ignore Russian complaints.
Some will celebrate the decline of America's ability to deter. But wherever they live, they may find that whatever replaces the old order is much worse. American power is not half as scary as its absence would be.
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WORLD OF PAIN: America Is No Longer As Alarming To Its Foes Or Reassuring To Its Friends

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image">Donald Petit/NASAAstronauts at the International Space Station took this long exposure image.</div></div></div>SPACE, as Douglas Adams pointed out in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", is big. Really big. It is so big, in fact, that even science fiction struggles to make sense of it. Most sci-fi waves away the problem of the colossal distances between stars by appealing to magic, in the form of some kind of faster-than-light hyperdrive, hoping readers will forgive the nonsense in favour of enjoying a good story.
But there are scientists, engineers and science-fiction writers out there who like a challenge. On October 22nd a small but dedicated audience gathered at the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) in London to hear some of them discuss the latest ideas about how <keyword id="1274004" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="interstellar">interstellar</keyword> travel might be made to work in the real world. The symposium was a follow-up to a larger shindig held earlier this year in San Diego.
Starship research is enjoying something of a boom. "A few years ago, there was only one organisation in the world working on interstellar travel," Jim Benford, a microwave physicist and former fusion researcher, told the conference. "Now there are five." The following day many of the speakers at the event would visit the British Interplanetary Society (BIS, the venerable organisation of which Dr Benford spoke) to discuss design details for a starship named Icarus.
Starship research has always been a small field, full of iconoclasts and dreamers fitting the activity around their "proper" jobs. Serious work in the field dates back to 1968, when Freeman Dyson, an independent-minded physicist, investigated the possibilities offered by rockets powered by a series of nuclear explosions. Then, in the 1970s, the BIS designed Daedalus, an unmanned vessel that would use a fusion rocket to attain 12% of the speed of light, allowing it to reach Barnard's Star, six light-years away, in 50 years. That target, though not the nearest star to the sun, was the nearest then suspected of having at least one planet.
<h3>How final a frontier?</h3>
After Daedalus, interest flagged. Lately, though, several developments have given the field a shot in the arm.
The internet has made it easier for like-minded dreamers to get in touch. Astronomers have discovered thousands of alien planets (including, possibly, one around Alpha Centauri B, which at 4.4 light-years away is part of the star system that actually is closest to the sun), and this exoplanet boom has caught the public's imagination, as well as giving starship researchers a list of destinations. The rise of the private space industry, which aims to slash the cost of getting into orbit, brings hope that the sort of orbital infrastructure which would be needed to build a starship might one day be developed. And the involvement of DARPA, an arm of the American defence department, which is sponsoring a long-term project to develop the sorts of technology a starship might require, has brought money and attention.
The chief problem, as Adams noted, is distance. During the cold war America spent several years and much treasure (peaking in 1966 at 4.4% of government spending) to send two dozen astronauts to the Moon and back. But on astronomical scales, a trip to the Moon is nothing. If Earth--which is 12,742km, or 7,918 miles, across--were shrunk to the size of a sand grain and placed on the desk of <keyword id="425741" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="The-Economist">The Economist</keyword>'s science correspondent, the Moon would be a smaller sand grain about 3cm away. The sun would be a larger ball nearly 12 metres down the hall. And Alpha Centauri B would be around 3,200km distant, somewhere near Volgograd, in Russia.
Chemical rockets simply cannot generate enough energy to cross such distances in any sort of useful time. Voyager 1, a space probe launched in 1977 to study the outer solar system, has travelled farther from Earth than any other object ever built. A combination of chemical rocketry and gravitational kicks from the solar system's planets have boosted its velocity to 17km a second. At that speed, it would (were it pointing in the right direction) take more than 75,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri.
Nuclear power can bring those numbers down. Dr Dyson's bomb-propelled vessel would take about 130 years to make the trip, although with no ability to slow down at the other end (which more than doubles the energy needed) it would zip through the alien solar system in a matter of days. Daedalus, though quicker, would also zoom right past its target, collecting what data it could along the way. Icarus, its spiritual successor, would be able at least to slow down. Only Project Longshot, run by NASA and the American navy, envisages actually stopping on arrival and going into orbit around the star to be studied.
But nuclear rockets have problems of their own. For one thing, they tend to be big. Daedalus would weigh 54,000 tonnes, partly because it would have to carry all its fuel with it. That fuel itself has mass, and therefore requires yet more fuel to accelerate it, a problem which quickly spirals out of control. And the fuel in question, an isotope of helium called {+3}He, is not easy to get hold of. The Daedalus team assumed it could be mined from the atmosphere of Jupiter, by humans who had already spread through the solar system.
A different approach, pioneered by the late Robert Forward, was championed by Dr Benford and his brother Gregory, who, like Forward was, is both a physicist and a science-fiction author. The idea is to leave the troublesome fuel behind. Their ships would be equipped with sails. Instead of filling them with wind, an orbiting transmitter would fill them with energy in the form of lasers or microwave beams, giving them a ferocious push to a significant fraction of the speed of light which would be followed (with luck) by an uneventful cruise to wherever they were going.
Without fuel, the ships could be small, and therefore easy to accelerate. They might even be able to stop at their destinations by employing the solar wind of the target star to slow themselves down, using a second, so-called magnetic sail. The basics of the technology already exist: microwave sails have flown in laboratories. And the transmitter could be reused, which would make such ships cheaper than one-shot nuclear rockets.
<h3>Because it's there</h3>
"Cheaper", though, is a relative term. Jim Benford reckons that even a small, slow probe designed to explore space just outside the solar system, rather than flying all the way to another star, would require as much electrical power as a small country--beamed, presumably, from satellites orbiting Earth. A true interstellar machine moving at a tenth of the speed of light would consume more juice than the entirety of present-day civilisation. The huge distances involved mean that everything about starships is big. Cost estimates, to the extent they mean anything at all, come in multiple trillions of dollars.
That illustrates another question about starships, beyond whether they are possible. Fifty years of engineering studies have yet to turn up an obvious technical reason why an unmanned starship could not be built (crewed ships might be doable too, although they throw up a host of extra problems). But they have not answered the question of why anyone would want to go to all the trouble of building one.
Ian Crawford, an astronomer at Birkbeck College, London, pointed out that sending a robotic probe to another star would be much better, scientifically, than studying it through telescopes. He even presented a checklist of the instruments such a mission should carry, and of the questions--in stellar physics, planetary science and general astronomy--it could be designed to answer. But for many of those attending such conferences, "because we can" would be reason enough to try.
Several speakers at the RAS agreed that a starship would not be feasible until such time as human beings had spread through most of Earth's solar system, and possessed an economy able to command the resources of more than one planet. Whether that day will arrive is an open question. Gregory Benford said that Thomas Jefferson, America's third president, guessed it might take a thousand years for the American frontier to advance to the Pacific Ocean. Humans are bad at prediction, Dr Benford argued, and often things thought on the edge of possibility happen faster than anyone would have believed.
Of course, the past is not necessarily any guide to the <keyword id="23644" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="future">future</keyword>, and the magnitude of the problems involved in space exploration dwarf any earthly analogy. Gregory Benford may be wrong. But he and his fellow starship designers are, by necessity, an optimistic bunch.
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