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Two Views On a China-US Space Race
An anonmous submitter writes "While there has been recent discussion about China and India engaging in a space race, most people are still focused on a potential race between China and the US in near future. The Space Review recently published a pair of essays on this topic: the first argues that China-US space race is both unlikely and undesirable, given the aftermath of the US-USSR space race thirty years ago. A followup article suggests that a China-US space race is vital, so long as it takes a more commercial, long-term approach than the US-USSR one. Food for thought..."
Anything to helps to get the human race off of this death trap of a planet is a Good Thing(tm). In the long run I don't really care if they're Chinese, Indian, American, or even French. If everything goes tits up here on Earth (and when you talk about long-term that becomes a statistical certainty) we damn well better not have all our eggs in this supremely fragile basket. Just MHO.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
I don't want to be rude, but why does the US insist on racing everyone for everything?
Don't they have other things to worry about?
The article talks about China using the spinoff tech of their space program to improve their ICBMs. Well, sure, of course...but what nobody's considering is the military effect of a permanent moonbase. With a mass driver. Read The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress if you don't know what I'm talking about.
Healthy competition is good.
It is only unfourtunate if China and the US try to do exactly the same thing, and don't share their experiences.
If they set different, ambitious goals it can extremely fruitful for mankind. And there seems to be no shortage of interesting projects.
Tor
The articles seem to have opposing points of view, but let me add a perspective that says they're both the same. I needlessly mention that we live in a highly interdependent world, yet still, we maintain a tribal mentality--it's always us versus them, in this case the US versus China. Both essays, regardless of their conclusions pits the US against China, but why need that be the case?
The United States purpose in the world is not to remain the sole superpower and go around and do whatever it wants. Today, our position in the world as the sole superpower is indeed unique. Instead of going around trying to squash the competition, why don't we try to improve the plight of other countries, and if other countries become both powerful and good, we should welcome them to the club with open arms.
Practically, with China, this means not letting greedy coorporations dictate foreign policy, and even more important, considering China a strategic _partner_ for the future, and not this bullshit strategic _competitor_. In an interdependent world, there are no enemies, only parts of yourself that you can improve.
U.S has placed robots on Mars, Venus and landed a satellite on Eros the asteroid but China has yet to place a man in space. This is hardly a race, yet.
www.rexguo.com - Technologist + Designer
China is about to do what the US/Russia did in the 1960's. Even then there are pretty much using a copied Russian design. They aren't developing any new technology. How is that impressive? I'll be much more impressed if someone manages to get a commerical fight into space by years end. They don't have the budget of a government like China's so they've had to do some real inovation. China hasn't had an original idea since gunpowder.
Nuts like Rumsfeld would rather have nasa working on ways to shoot each others' spacecraft down. I'd worry that given the current administration, a space race wouldn't have exploration as a goal (or even a wanted side-effect).
I will try to say this without being a flamebait. It is fine for USA to have space technologies with many military applications, or to have the ability to hit targets around the world accurately. But if another country does this, it threatens world peace.
Why ? Is it because we are the only country with "God" on our side ? :-)
It's far more likely to step on Taiwan first.
Public ignorance is no reason to stay away from space. Knowledge is there for those who seek it and realistic programs can be made. What are we going to gain from sitting on our hands, drawing up slow and cautious nothings like he accuses NASA of? Blah!
Oh yeah, knocking NASA for all our space woes is pathetic. It's not NASA's fault hydrogen peroxide and even model rocket engines are hard to get your hands on. There are plenty of other large slow, careful offices making sure we sit on our hands so no one gets hurt.
A space race is a good thing. VonBraun got to live half of his dreams because we were afraid of the USSR. He and many others showed us a cheap way to the stars on top of mild steel rockets. It's not his or NASA's fault we terminated those programs and now have to rely on USSR boosters for heavy lifting. Did NASA kill Nerva? I don't think so. The blame lies squarely on those who want to take things slow and careful.
China has a hard time keeping it's submarine fleet from sinking, but that won't keep them from putting rockets up. They don't care as much as we might over a few heroic, and needless, deaths. Fine, bring it on.
Why do we need to go to space? Because the Earth is limited. People need the resources space , which is limitless, has to offer. We can go get those resources or we can sit on our hands and fight over petty differences, like who owns Jeruselem suburbs, and wait for the next large scale extintion event to settle everything for us.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The nation benefiting most from the technologies that comes from successful space projects (of course I don't mean the Shuttle, that would have been a success if closed out 10 years ago) will be the nation that makes the projects.
If America wants to buy its new high tech from China and India and exit the superpower business shortly afterwards, they should ignore the space programs both countries are planning.
It's about time we got a new technology driver other than the consumer sector, the idea that space is back in that role could be a very good thing.
Tech Public Policy stuff
It's a priori pretty unlikely that there could even be a second space race between the US and China. You only engage in a space race if you have something to prove; since the United States beat the Soviet Union to the Moon and won the Cold War, the only country with something to prove is China, and as it stands they're way behind in the game. One could perhaps start talking about a renewed space race after a large amount of concerted effort by China -- say, China sets up a space station, goes to the Moon, and has plans for a manned mission to Mars -- bu that could only happen after a decade or more of successes by the Chinese.
I don't understand why people keep saying this. Launching stuff into orbit is excesively expensive. there is no way to relieve a meaningful amount of the population pressure this way. The only viable way would be with a space elevator/cable, but that's still far off; till then it's just not economically feasible. (and... imagine the pollution it would cause, sending millions of rockets into orbit... nah.)
We're a stable democracy and China isn't. As an American I wouldn't lose any sleep at night if all of Western Europe had the power to blow me off the earth. Because they're stable democracies, which means the masses of people generally run the show.
I DO worry about countries where the people that live in the country don't have a say in how it operates though, because you're more likely to end up with a rogue nut in power that stupid enough to pull the trigger and there's no one to stop him.
A china man, indian, and american are a super team for space race, all of them together. Why have 3 seperate moon races when we can do it together on just one trip?
I suggest you read Slashdot
Not necessarily. See what happened when Microsoft found competition from GNU, Linux, et. al.? They put more energy trying to destroy and discredit GNU, Linux, et. al. than than they put into innovation. Look at all the dirty SCO business going on.
Or, 'the Chinese can spur' CIA 'on in a way similar to the Russians, you know...'
If the US feels threatened, the easiest way is to destory Chinese military establishment from within, using our extensive CIA et. al. network.
*sigh* its this "us vs. them" mentality which depresses and scares me. i live in England, but do i want what's best for England? nope. do i want whats best for Britain, or Europe, or even "The West"? nope. i want whats best for HUMANITY... why is there so much competition about this sorta thing? to gain a military and economic advantage? why are people so damn selfish? why does anyone want their country to succeed at the expense of others? as far as i can see, any form of nationalism is just a tribalistic throwback from our evolution, and is more of a hindrance to progress now than anything else... why can't countries SHARE their tech? and everything else, for that matter? it would sure make it a lot easier for us to do stuff like establish permanent bases on the moon, because we wouldn't all have to research the same stuff... ahh well, call me a naive hippy dreamer if you like, but i think a completely nation-less utopia would a nice base to build scientific research on...
Competition is good. Look at all the technology that came out of competition between the free world and the communist block... You can't follow up to this post without using several hundred innovations that resulted from nationalistic competition.
Now if we could figure out how to compete without having wars and stuff...
-- $G
The use of the weasel words 'aerospace' is telling. The major projected market was *military*, not manned space (and the major driver was reliability, not reduced weight or power, although the latter were welcome).