The Planetary Society of Japan : Column

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PS COLUMN ARCHIVE

May 27, 2009

What will become of new space policy plans of Japan?

According to the today’s morning papers (May 27, 2009), the expert panel of intellectuals under the leadership of government’s Strategic Headquarters for Space Development headed by Prime Minister Taro Aso was held yesterday on May 26 at the office of Prime Minister. Minister Seiko Noda in charge of space development said at the conference that the public comments exceeding 1,500 had been received in three weeks concerning the original plan concluded at the end of April, which showed how much people were interested in this subject matter. The papers reported that the Strategic Headquarters composed of all ministers would decide Japan’s first Basic Space Development Plan under the Basic Space Law in early June after adjustments of reflecting those public opinions.

The basic space plan is the plan to decide national space development program for coming five years by taking an overall view of future ten years. The draft version states that there will be programmed nine development and utilization plans including earth observation accompanied by corresponding launches of thirty-four satellites under the fundamental strategy to shift its priority from research and development to utilization. However, it is not clearly indicated how to promote space science that has played an important role in space development of this country so far; and what vision is there for the government to develop future moon and planetary explorations which many members of TPS/J (The Planetary Society of Japan) must be interested in. It is not clear either how to proceed in future with International Space Station (ISS) that America would abandon in 2011. What is only clear though is government’s intention to utilize space technology for military purpose.

I suppose some of 1,500 public comments must have pointed out those matters in question. It is really a big problem to draft up a final plan only within half a month after receiving comments from people. I think it must be quite difficult to clean up contradictory opinions of general public in a short time of half a month, and it would be even further difficult to make it a final plan. What for did they ask public comments? How do they react with those opinions with what sort of understanding, and how do they come to the final draft? Strategic Headquarters is responsible for clearing these questions before public. At least, the deliberations of the panel at Strategic Headquarters must be carried out in a transparent manner and its debate process must be disclosed to public.

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(Translated by The Planetary Society of Japan)