US not producing enough engineers, technicians to meet space goals: Axiom investor
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The United States is trying to curtail Russia's space program as it is suffering from a deficit of its own, with a small number of minorities and young people being in the sector and a lack in terms of technicians and engineers.
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NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei sets up components for a space botany study
The economy in the United States is not producing enough engineers and technical workers to allow it to meet the demands of building a functioning space economy, Delalune Space CEO and major Axiom investor Rob Meyerson said Tuesday.
"We are not producing enough engineers, machinists, technicians [and] welders who can help build [the infrastructure] we need," Meyerson told The Washington Post in a podcast interview.
The US has "long ignored the industrial base. It is fragmented and it is unreliable," he added.
According to Meyerson, the United States needs to expand its technical work base and include more women and minorities so that their number increases. He also called for encouraging young people not to all go to college and instead to head straight for the industrial workforce and find their opportunities there.
"We don't have a diverse enough workforce in aerospace [who are] learning machining, welding, and assembly," he said.
The hypersonics industrial base was also in need of strengthening, Meyerson added.
This comes after the United States had sanctioned Russian enterprises related to space activity, which, according to Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, could cause the agency's space station to crash.
As the United States tries to undermine Russia's standing in space, its own space program has been faltering with a deficit in its capabilities.
Despite this, NASA announced on March 1 that it was working to find a way to keep the ISS in orbit without the assistance of Russia despite space being one of the last areas where the US and Russia continue to collaborate.
Roscosmos announced in early March that it would prioritize the construction of military satellites amid the unprecedented levels of Russophobia.
