What will Italy do in space?
Who legitimized the delegation that will represent Italy at the Space Ministerial on 22 and 23 November? Paolo Chersei's speech
With a handful of days separating us from the meeting of space ministers, which this year will take place in Paris on 22 and 23 November, Italy has not yet officially defined its own representative cadres. And to date, while taking for granted Adolfo Urso's leadership of the delegation that will represent us, there is no trace of the investiture.
Senator Urso, elected in the Veneto constituency in the ranks of the Brothers of Italy, is Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy in the Meloni government. Not therefore of the ASI vigilante ministry: the mechanisms that control national space policy by statute are the Interministerial Space Committee (Comint) and the Italian Space Agency.
Among the tasks that will fall to him, if he is to be the head of delegation in Paris and also the holder of the informal meeting between the main contributors that will meet in three days, there will be first of all Italy to defend against the French aims which with the Maia program of Cnes, a small reusable launcher in which Italy has not been admitted to participate, will tend to asphyxiate Vega, already controlled by Arianespace which has the commercial exclusivity. A very complicated task that the in pectore but not certified boss will be called to define, in collaboration with a staff from Paris imposed at the last moment by the minister Vittorio Colao, who thus armored an iron pact with the current entourage of the European Space Agency, in which Italy, by specific will of the past undersecretary Riccardo Fraccaro, did not have the leadership.
Moreover, in such a thorny moment, the national space institution is also experiencing another difficult transition with an opinion from the State Attorney's Office which questions the appointment of two ASI councilors, always wanted at the last mile of the government past, when he was already resigned.
Undoubtedly it is singular how an executive represented mainly by the opposition to both the Conte and Draghi cabinets now passively accepts the previous wills, with its figures and its references. Nor can it be accepted willingly that, in an atmosphere tense by unjustified conflicts between Italy and France due to facts of a completely different nature and therefore distant from those that have been signed, ratified and not (yet) repealed agreements, Italy of space experiences a situation of isolation in Paris since its industries, its services and therefore the entire supply chain are linked to a global context without which any form of survival would be unimaginable. Because the Italian space industry, by the will of a past Berlusconi government and never questioned by his successors, is and remains under French control!
It is well known that space-related activities embrace a now indispensable as well as irreplaceable strategic field and the Italian leadership in the field of radar sensors, currently at the state of the art worldwide, cannot be overthrown by any party logic, but neither has autonomous perspective, given that our country does not have independent launch pads and that the only European base is and continues to be on French territory under the undisputed will of the Elysée.
For the moment we are observers of an event of high economic importance represented for Italy by about 4.5 billion euros, which will serve to cover both the Italian participation in the overall budget of ESA and the investments foreseen for the national space sector.
It is not a large figure, if compared to the thicknesses imposed by France and Germany but it is taxpayers' money and must be spent wisely. But of the 18 billion that the general manager Joseph Aschbacher will ask for a further increase in the overall funding budget of the Agency, how much will Italy be willing to put in to remain among the main contributors? And who will give this mandate to the delegate we all expect to captain the expedition?
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/italia-spazio-programma-maia/ on Tue, 15 Nov 2022 13:06:37 +0000.