Partnerships aim to blunt new challenges from U.S., China

The deficit-reduction measure that went into effect March 1 cuts 7.9% from discretionary defense spending and 5.3% from non-defense discretionary spending. Surely, Washington's latest manufactured crisis will not do any serious damage, will it? Well, consider this:

With a U.K. commitment to increase its European Space Agency contribution 25%, the space industry is becoming a major economic driver in Britain. The nation's £1.2 billion ($1.8 billion) pledge to ESA programs is part of a larger €10-billion ($13 billion) spending package the agency approved last November, making the U.K. the agency's third-largest funder—after France and Germany—and positioning Astrium U.K. to reap the benefits.

It's been 10 years since the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) began its careful probe into the reasons NASA lost a second space shuttle. The late Sally Ride, a member of both the CAIB and the Rogers Commission set up after the first shuttle disaster, famously commented at the time that she heard an “echo of Challenger” in the loss of Columbia. Now many of the conditions that allowed the U.S.

In November, Comesep will debut its new space weather alert system

From locating balloons to re-assembling documents, from crowd-designed vehicles to disaster-response robots, researchers are using challenges to draw ideas from those who would never normally do business with the Pentagon.

As budgets are cut and margins squeezed, and business becomes more competitive, industry is turning to challenges to seek diverse views on difficult problems. And the prize, for the companies, can be ideas, talent or visibility in key markets. “Diversity of thought is key to innovation,” says Ray Johnson, Lockheed Martin senior vice president and chief technology officer. “The more different views you get on a problem, the more you can facilitate a culture of innovation.”

The U.S. has long been a leader in creating new technologies and in creatively adapting existing ones to new uses. This leadership arises from the interaction of several mutually supportive sectors of innovation. But we face a serious challenge to continuing that creative interaction which is so necessary to keep the U.S. engine of innovation strong.