
China takes a key step toward building a large space station - rbanffy
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/china-takes-a-key-step-toward-building-a-large-space-station/
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skolos
Very happy that countries continue pushing into space. However couldn't help
but notice that SpaceX is progressing faster than anyone else. Long March 7
that they used for this mission had just 2 launches [1] compared to similar by
payload to LEO Falcon 9's more than 30 launches [2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March_7](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March_7)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9)

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nullnilvoid
SpaceX hired all NASA's engineers and uses all NASA's technologies. China
builds its technologies all by itself, given that the US banned any
collaboration in space program with China. You bet that SpaceX launched a few
more than rockets than China. Even that, China has a higher success rate than
SpaceX in rocket launching. SpaceX explodes a little too often.

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seanmcdirmid
> China builds its technologies all by itself

Well, if you want to be technical about it: they are using Russian designs and
got help from Russia.

Russian designs are also very reliable, which is why we use them ourselves.

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avmich
> they are using Russian designs

Not at all. An important and telling detail: pintle injector is almost never
used in Russia, but standard for Merlins. Or you can look into gas generator
cycle, which isn't used for today's Russian kerosene engines except RD-107
family, which have separate components for turbopumps and pressurization.

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ceejayoz
It's irritating that the US hasn't swallowed their pride and invited China to
join in on the ISS. If we can manage ITAR with Russia, we can manage it with
the Chinese.

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pdelbarba
ITAR is a complicated problem. In many cases the Russians either already have
the technological capability or don't have the interest/ability to clone it.
The Chinese are often the other way around on all three constraints.

The issue isn't so much ITAR, but tech transfer in general though. The US is
an economic rival to China whereas Russia has roughly the GDP of NY. We've
seen time and time again that feeding China technology only results in it
being replicated and further developed domestically.

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dis-sys
Here comes one interesting problem - as an economic rival to China, if the US
keeps refusing to sell its techs/high tech products to China, what US can
really do about the current trade deficit with China?

For the general tech transfer issue, did the embargo actually work? Look at
supercomputers, satellites, nukes including its delivery systems and jet
fighters etc. It didn't work very well to serve the US interests. It is a
failed system that probably slowed we Chinese down a little bit, but in a long
run it gives your rival all motivations to invest heavily in _all_ those areas
and eventually master them. When the US is basically forcing its rival to
invest in itself, it sounds like a strategic mistake to me.

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pdelbarba
Yea, it's probably true that it incentivizes China to develop it's own tech
(most notably super computer chips) but to develop something from square-one
takes a lot of resources. It's a lot easier to reverse engineer something you
bought and use it to build your own then it is to develop something from a
concept. If everyone has to spend their time reinventing the wheel, they're
not doing other things.

As far as the trade imbalance, the things that would fall under ITAR (the only
goods that are significantly restricted) are not particularly significant on a
global trade scale. Yes, the US could sell a few billion dollars worth of F-22
jets to China, but that still wouldn't make a dent, and to acquire the tech,
China would only have to buy one.

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maverick_iceman
I fail to see what's the point of building space stations. What problem do
they solve? It doesn't help with exploration of other planets and satellites.
No major engineering application or scientific experiment needs them. They
harm space efforts by taking money away from more fruitful ventures.

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pdelbarba
They serve as a platform for testing the technologies required for long term
space exploration.

You can't just jet off into interplanetary space and expect good things to
happen, you need to develop a huge array of life support systems that need to
be highly reliable.

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MrZongle2
Every time I see a story about the Chinese space program I have two thoughts.
First is the standard "good for them, let's get more competition in space."

The second is "thank God I'm not the head of security for SpaceX."

