Talk:United North American States/@comment-3084244-20141024131225/@comment-5135903-20141024182817

Surely a downward spiral would result in less investment in space travel; already the ISS is due to be deorbited in the 2020s and, after the end of the Space Shuttle program, manned space travel is pretty much solely reliant on old Soyuz rockets (which seems slightly ironic; the fact that modern Western manned space missions now rely on 1960s Soviet technology). If the space industry is like this today, it doesn't seem very promising if we're due to go downhill from here.

Also, I find it hard to see how a resurgence in the space industry would be such a big boost to the global economy, unless the space industry is just the target of some sort of huge international stimulus program (which seems unlikely, considering there would be much better targets for stimulus if the aim was to trigger an economic recovery). Have I missed something?