The point about the study is really good, especially facing European problems. Well, let’s hope some more people can be encouraged to study sciences – we don’t need more philosophers

For China spaceflight definitely is a question of prestige. You are 100% right.

Then the space industry has also further impact as it is a driving force for developments for daily use. Many people who are in highschool and getting ready for university might choose a science course just because they got inspired by their national space program. The majority of those however won’t work in the space industry, but other industries need just people like these: highly educated in scientific areas.

That being said, it is still useful to bring humans into space to convince more people to study scientific topics.

There is another thing I’d like to mention. Some people celebrate when their country wins the Soccer World Cup. Then there are people like me. I’m not interested in soccer at all, but I do follow every space mission, like others follow their national soccer leagues.

ESA on the other hand has one big problem. Their budget is really small compared to the NASA. As human spaceflight costs a multitude of robotic exploration, ESA should stick to the unmanned part. The descriptions of the Aurora program are published as a vision. And they will remain just that, a vision. Especially the later parts that include bringing humans to Mars.

Have You looked at the insane amounts of fuel Space Ship One is using? Space travel is becoming big in a few decades, but it will significantly increase pollution, especially in the higher atmosphere.

One thing that I really dislike at the moment is several nations all want to have their own launch vehicles capable of transporting humans into low earth orbit (LEO). China is the latest addition to this list. Cost could be reduced if as few rockets as possible are being developed and only one is produced in large quantities (Basics economic rule). The politicians in charge of this haven’t understood that yet.

There is so much to talk about the space industry and space exploration, however this blog might be the wrong spot to go into the details. A good read is this forum:
http://unmannedspaceflight.com

In the 21st century, bringing men to space is not crucial for science anymore – ESA and the American NASA were both not putting much effort in manned missions anymore, as scientific the return on investment is much higher when robots are used.
Nevertheless George W. Bush revived the manned space programme of the USA, so that a new space ship is now being developped (the space shuttle will ground in 2 years).
It also seems that there are half-hearted efforts by the ESA to get the Aurora programm running again – the ATM was a first step towards a manned mission. But I don’t think that Europe is really interested in having a manned programm, as they are leading the unmanned commercial missons already and cooperate with Russia who’ve got the very reliable Sojus for their manned mission.

In conclusion, China, Japan, India, Russia and USA are just setting up manned missions to gain prestige – not for commercial or scientific use.
There is still a lot of effort needed to get a efficient project running which also offers commercial space travels and useful scientific missions. The Space Ship ONE is a first stepd towards this goal – and hopefully not the last.