Uhhh... isn't the US currently depending on Russia to launch rockets to the ISS? Speaking of which: the ISS is a collaboration of many countries. In other words: it doesn't matter whether a country is big or small as long as the countries are willing to work together great things can be achieved.
It always amazes me that people think that the USA won the space race. They lost in almost everything.
Intercontinental ballistic missile (August 1957)
Artificial satellite (October 1957)
Dog in space (November 1957)
Satellite to orbit the moon (1959)
Man into space (April 1961)
Man to spend a day in orbit (August 1961)
Long-duration flight for five days (June 1963)
Woman in space (June 1963)
Man to perform a spacewalk (March 1965)
Add stuff like the MIR, the Lunokhods, the Molniya satellites... And the fact that they are currently able to send stuff to orbit, unlike NASA.
I did not say whether USA won (or not). The statement I made was that "we reached the moon within 10 years." That was huge development. Some consider "we won" because we reached the moon first. Whoever the winner was, neither USA nor USSR did much after the space race was over.
That both were doing-less supports my point that
absences the pressure of competition, the progress is impeded.
I futher posited that
had the Space Race continued to this day, we may be on Mars already. Instead, absence competition, we drew blanks after blanks once the Apollo program ended. To add insult to injury, one of NASA primary goal now is Muslim Outreach
*1. I don't care if it is Muslim outreach or Buddish Outreach or Amish Outreach, how would that help us reach beyond the moon? And now we have to get a ride from someone else to even get into orbit!
Had there been competition, perhaps NASA would have focused more on
Space - that is the S in NA
SA.
Cooperation has its benefits, and has its costs. Lost of competition is one of its costs. Lost of National-pride and the resulting lost of national support is another costs. Another possible cost is cooperation became a cover for doing less. Therefore, one question to ask is: would EU itself become a progress-zapping entity, or not.
From where I sit, it appears to me EU is already a progress-zapping entity. Like a living organism,
a bureaucracy tends to focus on its own existance and its own growth. EU bureaucracy will grow EU so as to expand the EU bureaucracy. Progress of participating nations and the well-being of the citizens of the participating nations is but an after thought.
*1 Re "Muslim Outreach" - This was big news then, you can still see some links surviving to this day:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/07/07/nasas_muslim_outreach_106214.html
Excerpt: "It's not really surprising that President Obama told NASA administrator Charles Bolden that his highest priority should be "to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering." It fits with so much that we already knew about the president."