Slashdot Mirror
Asia's Space Race: China vs. India
securitas writes "London-based military historian and commentator Gwynne Dyer writes about Asia's developing space race with plans from China and India to land people on the Moon, previously mentioned on Slashdot in China's case. In April India announced it will send an unmanned probe to the Moon by 2005 and a manned mission by 2015. Critics say it's a waste of time and money for India to pursue the goal. Meanwhile, Russian space experts are quietly helping China in what is seen as a growing alliance and a somewhat alarmist op-ed piece from the Washington Times worries about China's 21st century space dominance and monopolization of strategic resources like H3, used in nuclear fusion."
This is exactly whats needed to kick nasa into shape!
There is no god
I wonder if there is enough public interest for the government to enter this new space race. The American side of the race may involve private venture.
I'm glad to see China and Russia get over their differences in a productive, co-operative venture such as this. The world needs to work together as a whole. Remember, we're all the same species! :-)
I know it's offtopic, but I'm feeling philosophical this afternoon...
I really do hope that America and China start a new space race, especially if the prize is a useful resource rather than just patriotic pride. That way any technology that's developed as a result will be more immediately useful to the rest of us, rather than more interesting ideas waiting for applications.
I'm not a great fan of the idea of China and America carving up the moon between them, though.
is always the balance of power. from the napoleonic era to the realpolitik era, to inter-war period and post war period, then cold war, it's always balance of power that acts on the world to prevent world domination.
Powers comes and goes. Napoleon rises, and falls. Bismarck rises, and falls. The franks, then the prussians, the list goes on and on, now it comes to america, who knows if the next one is China?
Yet i don't think china could gasp the key to victory here by having space mission that denotes quite a bit of nothing in military terms (forget the whole lot on spy satellite, they are of no significant use on a direct confrontation of two nuclear-powered countries). To me, I would be more impressed and scared off by the change to democratic (NOT the democratic party but rather democratic society-type form, i.e. humanitarian, [n.b. vegetarian eats vegetable.. so humanitarian eats.. oh nevermind.]) or there is a significant change in the government structure and the way people do business (i.e. guanxi or so.)
enough offtopic, but here's what I want to say on space mission for china.
<div tone="sarcastic">
For india, I think that they better feed their crowd better before the birth mortality rate goes back to the 1930s standard. (THAT'S flamey.)
</div>
In terms of mining, minerals, resources we could acquire out there, if it takes China or whoever else to spank around the U.S. and make them realise that they'll gladly take the whole pie if we do nothing about it.. if that's what it takes to get NASA off of life support and back into space, then bring it on. The ultimate end will justify all the means.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
It is good that India and China are competing through science, and not through arms. Honestly, I don't see how this could be a bad thing for anyone. India and China will both make new scientific discoveries, and seeing them get into space may inspire the EU, the US and Russia to increase their space efforts.
I know lots of people are going to complain that India should be focusing their efforts on improving their living standards rather than going on wild adventures. But I don't think the one has to distract from the other. India actually has enough food to feed herself, its just a problem of social structure and education. And it is not as if the resources used for going into space make that great of a impact on the ability of India to educate its population. In economic terms, there isn't that great of a cost of space missions, because the resources that go into them can't really easily go anywhere else.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Please don't begin to kid yourselves that these countries have an interest in visiting the stars, their entire motive (while hidden well) is to develope their own rockets that will deliever their own nuclear weapons.
One day perhaps the race for space may be an actual race for space and not a politically correct ploy for world destruction. I don't see that time anywhere soon though.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
dire domestic matters first, eh?
Isn't that what they said about America?
Ever recall "Whitey on the moon"?
India has just as legitimate a reason to go into space as China. Aside from needing the room, they have just as much right to push into the ultra modern age as the rest of us.
Jeesh, what a bunch of racist banter.
At least the US isn't threatened with nuclear war with India over Taiwan.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Can any one point to where this one came from?
The number of H-bomb warheads in circulation demonstrates that there is not exactly a world shortage of tritium or ability to produce it; certainly as the US wasn't afraid of polluting the Colorado River, and the UK of polluting the Irish Sea, I can't imagine that the Chinese would be too worried about the side effects of massive tritium production.
Conclusion: this is an attempt to frighten paranoid hawks into believing that the Space Race must be resumed to prevent the Chinese from laying claim to all those tritium mines on the Moon. Whereas, actually, we might be better off with some serious international negotiation on space, perhaps even some cooperation. While articles like this one reinforce Chinese paranoia about US intentions, (the author makes it clear that the US must not lose domination in space) we all surely have more to gain by trying to defuse the potential tensions in advance. Which might mean that Dubya has to rethink his approach to ripping up international agreements, but would that be a bad thing?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Bruce Sterling talked about the India/China space race in his May 2003 Wired column. Some extracts:
"Nobody in the Western press takes much notice of India's space aspirations, because by Yankee standards it doesn't make sense for India to have any. Yet India launched its first missile in 1963 and its first cosmonaut in 1984. Nobody in the West thought the country would ever go nuclear, either. That was a blunder in judgment. [...]
"Why is Gandhi's homeland trying to reach the moon when people sleep on the streets in Calcutta and AIDS gnaws the country's flesh? For the same reason the US sloughed off poverty programs to fund Apollo in the 1960s: global prestige.
"India doesn't need long-range missiles to nuke neighbor and archrival Pakistan. For a war that intimate, bullock carts would do. The Agni III is aimed straight at world public opinion. The India-Pakistan PR skirmish is already almost over, and India is clearly winning. Every great power sweats bullets over Pakistan's bomb, but India's somehow makes that country worthy of consideration for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. [...]
"Since India demonstrated its bomb in 1998, the Chinese have been increasingly uneasy. China reacted to the detonation with angry demands that the international community keep India contained. When that got nowhere, China helped Pakistan go nuclear. In retrospect, that was a scary, destabilizing misstep. But now India and China are poised to continue their rivalry on safer high ground - beyond Earth's atmosphere.
"Nuclear India versus nuclear China is Kennedy versus Kruschev, and Reagan versus Gorbachev, all over again. Now, as then, a space race is a sexy alternative to nuclear annihilation. [...]
"Who will become top dog in South Asia? That's an open question, and there aren't many good ways to answer short of a useless massacre. A space race offers a good solution. It's a symbolic tournament that tests competing political and economic systems to their limit.
"A decade after the end of the Cold War, good old-fashioned space programs still matter. Not for exploration's sake, but to settle new cold wars. If you doubt it, imagine this scenario: It's 2029, and a lunar mission lands at Tranquillity Base. A crew of heroic young Indians - or Chinese - quietly folds and puts away America's 60-year-old flag. If the world saw that on television, wouldn't the gesture be worth tens of billions of rupees or yuan? Of course it would."
Follow-up to my post
I think my post would be misleading, so I have to make something clear (some of it is just restating or rephrasing what I said before, but I hope it would be clearer):
Thus there is no reason for anyone to be worried about India having a successful moon programme.
The point of ICBMs is not to actually deploy nuclear weapons, it's to have the ability to deploy them. Consider four classes of countries:
China and India want to upgrade to World Powers. To do that they need mutually-assured-wounding power. They also need the military infrastructure to send their armies all over the place. The space race fulfills both of these needs.
The caste system society in India is now more or less similar to class system societies in many other parts of the world (including developed countries).
While I agree with your assessment that caste system is bad, I think the sentence "Any intelligent person should not look respectfully at India as a country until the caste system is snuffed out in every form". Rememer, USA has had won two world wars, built the best highway systems in the world, built the bomb, and sent men to moon -- all before it was OK for blacks to sit in the same row seats as whites in a bus.
So, while there are some things that are bad with India, it should not be used as a reason for denying her some other good things.
S
I hope europe, asia, and the US will working together more than they are today
Actually, I think the lesson here is that we need to hope that they don't work together. Why did the space race in the middle of the 20th century accomplish so much? Because the US and the Russians were competing. Why is this talk of Indian and Chinese space programs spurring discussion and worry about the space program in the US? Because they signify new competition when we haven't had any in so long. What we need is competition, not cooperation; just like in business, the best situation is when there are lots of fairly equal players all at each other's throats, and monopolies (either through a single country dominating, or multiple countries working as a team) kills progress.
Narrative
>Powers comes and goes.
This has been true, but has any nuclear enabled nation been overtaken in combat? Nope.
You are absolutely correct that power comes and goes but the combo of ICBMs and Nuclear weapons means that there's a much greater certainty that the "nuclear club" will establish what Europe calls a multipolar world: many powers competiting for a greater good (like in this article) and hopefully not starting WWIII.
Once we're all happily armed with nukes it will only be internal unrest that changes power from now on. I think thats a good thing and a step in the right direction. Its a very arguable point, but the policies of MAD may very well continue into the next few centuries if not for the rest of the time humans populate the planet. At the very least, there will not be an incentive to begin true global disarmament until everyone is about equally armed.
Sounds scary, then again so is human nature.
I don't think we are anywhere near ready for such a form of cooperation. It's obvious that if humanity worked together efficiently we might be able to accomplish some awesome goals but aren't we as a race too immature to handle such a thing?
Just look at the UN... way too many conflicts of interest. I dont' think that such a group of countries/rivals will ever work together in such a way for a long time. But then and again rivalry can also be very good. What do you guys think?
Hmmm... Pie...
This allows the two emerging superpowers of Asia to compete in ways other than an arms race or international satellite countries. I'd like to see this culminate in a Mars race between the US, China, India, Europe, Japan, and perhaps Russia (or at least as part of another team). Competition between space programs drove them to the cutting edge so much faster than would have been possible otherwise, or as Buzz Aldrin said "it was like transplanting a decade from the 21st century into the 20th". Technology will benefit, new technologies will develop, and we just might gain the knowledge needed to get off our little cradle in case of emergency. Lord knows that if someone other than the US gets beyond the moon first we will probably get stirred into action, especially if someone like Bush is in office. With the shuttle program out of whack, we could use a good kick in the pants for our own program anyway.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
As far as the neocons are concerned, China is still the main game. Why do you *really* think the US is building its missile defence system? "Rogue states" my arse. It's all about being able to defend Taiwan without having to worry (quite so much) about nuclear blackmail from the Chinese if you do so.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
You know, there are other Indians out there who'd like to think we've developed our space programmes as technically-capable Indians, not Hindus, Muslims or any other shit. I, for one, can't see why the alleged Hindu contribution should be seperated from an all-Indian one.
More than mere navel gazing.
I am Indian and I dont think the Indian government's really serious about this mission. Its primarily PR. The Indian Prime Minister is visiting China right now and I think its juss the usual diplomatic games being played. India does have a good space programme.The Indian Space Research Organization (http://www.isro.org) definitely has performed beautifully considering that their budget is a fraction of NASA or the ESA. But the government I'm sure knows its going to be a pointless mission, with the only positive thing coming out of it being "supposed" inflation of India's reputation in international eyes. But I also think the Indian govt. knows exactly what many slashdotters are saying right now, "Welcome to the 60s India" and therefore has doubts of funding such a mission. P.S: India first tested its nuclear bomb in 1974, not in 1998 as the Wired article http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.05/view.html ?pg=4 suggests.
There's a guy posting over on FuckedCompany.com. In each forum, he posts the same rant about "currys" and H1B taking over "our" economies and generally being responsible for US unemployment, particularly in the tech sector.
He's probably right, but the fault lies not in their privileged H1-B status, but in his laziness and expectation of entitlement.
The H1-B situation is exactly parallel to the Asian space race situation. Perhaps we as Americans pioneered manned space exploration. It was back in the days when we (nationally) were young and energetic. But that is no longer the case. We no longer have the nerve. Losing one man causes national agony, losing seven in Columbia resulted in weeks of "Is NASA Finished?" in the national press.
We no longer want to take risks. We no longer want to work hard. We just want to eat supersize meals and watch reality TV. It is not just Americans, but all of Europe and the Japanese who have reached or are reaching this state.
Hungrier (sorry) peoples are going to be taking over, and deservedly so. But we won't realize it until the images of Chinese taikonauts traipsing through the Apollo moon landing sites are broadcast, that we will understand.
Sure, they are willing to accept losses. So does the US, that's why no matter they went into afhganistan, then iraq, and will soon take over syria and iran and eventually north korea. The US has never cared about military losses,even though the seek to minimalise them, they still *do it*, else they wouldn't occur. The deal is, "losses" for these other large nations mean they gots no guys in space. I expect either big sabotage or actual destruction of any of their craft if they look to be leapfrogging the DOD in space based human access. I have no proof, it's just an opinion, but I think it's a sound opinion based on past events, current political realities, and future projections and statements. The US has quite clearly stated that they will be the only ones to militarize space. Right now they have the juice to pull that off, and if it looks like they can't or will get beat, they'll go to plan B, which is to knock the other guys out before they gain an overwhelming lead.
Maybe because I'm older, but I've never bought into "civilian" space programs, it's always been by and for the military first, the civilian aspects have always been side issues and the public facade of it, it's been a stealth military budget effort speaking of the over-all aspect of "humans in space".
Look at it this way, the US and a few other countries are now the only ones "allowed" to possess WMD, and the US just invaded and took over another nation based on that premise, that the near monopoly will remain so. I also remember when the thought of other nations besides the US having just missiles and nukes was hotly debated, we came pretty close to pre emptive strikes back in the 50s over it. Real_dang_close. I know even before that, generals like Patton wanted to go in and take soviet russia at the end of the war because he and others didn't want the russians to have rockets and then "the bomb". It didn't happen, and I bet a lot of generals wish it had now. They DON'T want to lose their (near) space monopoly, because of the huge advantages, in fact, just "access to space" can be considered a variant of a WMD. The DOD considering any other large nation having the same as they do when it comes to advanced tech gives them the buckwheats. They WILL do something about it before they can't do something about it is my best guess right now.