

Space Plan From China Broadens Challenge to U.S. - aaronharnly
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/world/asia/china-unveils-ambitious-plan-to-explore-space.html

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melling
Hopefully China has a great decade and doesn't falter. Their rise has been
truly impressive. The Economist is predicting they will pass the US economy in
2018. Having another country as big as the US pushing boundaries in science,
engineering, etc will accelerate progress.

What's really missing is for China to have a few dozen universities doing
research at the most advanced levels.

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melling
Why the downvote? It's not my fault that America exported its middle class,
its manufacturing, and its future. If you ask the average American, they'd say
"why are we spending so money on NASA, when we've got problems on earth?" Then
they'd run off to Walmart to buy all that cheap crap from China. At least
China is doing to cool stuff with the money. A space program, thousands of
miles of high-speed rail, etc.

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andylei
> "why are we spending so money on NASA, when we've got problems on earth?"

> doing [...] cool stuff with the money

is that the best reason you have? i think the money would be better spent
curing diseases

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melling
We already spend a lot more money on medical research than space exploration.
The NIH budget is bigger than NASA's.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institutes_of_Health>

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estevez
I don't understand stories like these at all. Why are still seeing this from a
Cold War perspective?

First, in what possible sense is a Chinese manned spaceflight program a
_challenge_ to the U.S. If we apply the same standard to the Russians, haven't
we've already "lost"? What's with the International Space Station, can China
not join the club? The first item in the National Aeronautics and Space Act
[1]:

    
    
      >(a) Devotion of Space Activities to Peaceful Purposes for Benefit of All
      >Humankind.--Congress declares that it is the policy of the United States that
      >activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of
      >all humankind.
    

Second, why no division of labor? Let China do manned spaceflight. Hell, let's
chip in (aside from debt service on all those T-bills). We can do plenty of
cool stuff: start flinging bacterial spores into interstellar space,
submersible probe(s) on Europa, etc.

[1]: <http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ogc/about/space_act1.html#POLICY>

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CWuestefeld
I don't get it. Where's the challenge? If the Chinese are able to excel in
their space program, how does that have any effect (particularly a negative
one) on the rest of the world? This, as with economics, is not a zero sum
game.

Space... is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely
mindbogglingly big it is...

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gasull
The challenge is on

a) challenging US domination of the space

b) China might (and probably will) deploy weapons in the space, just like the
US does.

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estevez
Two questions: (1) What does domination of space look like, number of military
satellites?; (2) What weapons has the US deployed in space?

~~~
groks
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/30/chinese_space_white_...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/30/chinese_space_white_paper/)

~~~
estevez
I suppose my point is that China, like Russia and the United States, see a
comprehensive space program as important to its interests. As the article
linked to in the parent notes, these technologies are necessarily dual use,
but I see no reason for that to lock us into a Sino-US space race.

China's leaders have ambitious long-term goals for their space program that
will be almost impossible to meet on its own (the cost of a Mars mission would
be staggering), so cooperation with the US is in their interests as well as
ours. China gains access to dual-use technology, we get to massage China's
nationalism into something less virulent, and if nothing else, we both get to
delay a strategic confrontation.

Hey, I'm just some guy on the internet. But it seems wise to avoid repeating
the mistakes of the 20th century and do a better job of accepting the reality
of China's rise to great power status and accommodating them into the
international system.

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cpleppert
The challenge from China on space needs to be kept in perspective the chinese
still spend much less than the US on space technologies. The real failure has
been the constant insistence by political leaders that NASA utilize shuttle
derived components. After having to cancel the constellation project due to
questions about whether the ares rockets would ever fly it is disconcerting
that a similar approach is now being tried again. The new approach is probably
workable in the sense that it will fly but it will continue to use shuttle
derived components that will promise a high cost and limited flexibility for
very little benefit over commercial approaches.

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karamazov
I can't help but compare this to the US government, which can't even seem to
pull itself together for an annual budget. With respect to space, hopefully
SpaceX and other private efforts will be able to propel the US in ways that
NASA hasn't been able to.

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a_a_r_o_n
It's only a challenge if the challenged has the ability and intention to rise
to it.

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EREFUNDO
This century (the next 88 years) can be summed up in one word: China....

