WikimediaToday is the 52nd anniversary of the first human
spaceflight. The lucky zero-gravity Russki, Yuri Gagarin, is
honored every year with Yuri’s Night
festivities around the globe. (These generally involve a lot of
nerds drinking novelty cocktails called things like
Vostok Fuel or the
Keppler 22b.)

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin is celebrating Cosmonautics
Day—as it is known in Russia—in style this year, with an
announcement of $52 billion in new space spending. (No word on what
he will be drinking, but, you know, vodka probably.)

Focusing on the completion of the Vostochny cosmodrome, Putin
highlighted the fact that the additional funds will mean that
Russia will no longer do manned launches from the Baikonur
cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, from which Gagarin made his historic
flight. 

He touted the
economic benefits of the space spending to the area
surrounding the cosmodrome in the far eastern part of the
country:

Putin announced that the town being built around the new
cosmodrome to house its engineers and families would be called
Tsiolkovsky, in honour of the Russian scientist Konstantin
Tsiolkovsky who pioneered rocket design in the early Soviet
era.

WikimediaThere are plenty of folks who want to see
the U.S government follow suit, upping spending on space, including
superawesome astrophysicist guy (and inventor of the Kepple 22b
cocktail) Neil
deGrasse Tyson:

The problem is that many people operate on the assumption that
NASA should go to Congress every year with hat in hand and justify
it every year. Well, I see it as the greatest economic driver that
there ever was. Economic drivers don’t need justification.

The president’s 2014 budget allocated $17.7
billion for NASA, not a big change from the baseline. Which
means the debate about the potential stimulative effects of
space spending will rage on in the U.S.

But would another space race actually be a good thing for
the economies of Russia and the U.S.? Instead of two rival
powers spending billions on duplicative launch facilities and
secret programs, imagine if they could just pay for (at least some
of) those services from private companies and get the same results
for a fraction of the price. That leaves more money for other
projects (including, perhaps, deep space exploration) while
creating real robust private industries.

Oh look! We don’t have to imagine that! We are already
contracting out some space services and many more private space
companies will start selling passenger tickets and space delivery
very soon. Let’s skip the space race. Maybe Tyson and Putin can
just start
taking space vacations together instead.