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..."

Comments

Bring it on

[bravehamster]

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.

Re:Bring it on

[cmacb]

"Anything to helps to get the human race off of this death trap of a planet is a Good Thing(tm)."

I too support the exploration of other planets, but I find it amusing that we would escape off this "death trap" to planets where it is so cold that the carbon dioxide is in solid form.

If ultimately we learn to terraform planets such as Mars, then we will have much sooner than that developed technologies to bring our own ecosystem back into balance (assuming you believe that it is significantly out of balance as it is).

If on the other hand the "death trap" refers to interactions between people, then maybe it would make more sense as was done in Hitchhiker's Guide to send the trouble makers on ahead.

Re:Bring it on

[apsmith]

Somewhat incoherent comments there (though I agree with some of your points) - but just on the moon-mining business:

I don't want any country mining the moon. It's far too close to the earth. We could end up exploding the moon.

uh... do you have any idea how big the Moon is? It doesn't look that big in the night sky, but that's because it's very far away: the distance is 30 times Earth's diameter. Total mass is about 1% of Earth's - do you think we're anywhere close to having mining/explosives technology that could effect anything on that order? The biggest mountains on Earth are maybe 100,000 times smaller, and even our biggest nukes and our mightiest construction techniques could barely scratch them. If we ever do get powerful enough to do the sort of damage you're suggesting on the Moon, I'd much rather have it put to peaceful use there than to the more likely war-mongering here on Earth... but it's not going to happen for 1000's of years, and personally I find mining the Moon to be the most likely way for us now to ensure our descendants of that era can survive stupidity of that magnitude.

Space is big

[f97tosc]

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

Us (US) versus Them

[amerinese]

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.

Re:Us (US) versus Them

[Brian_Ellenberger]

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.

Wouldn't it be nice if it was that easy. Give grants or loans? Well, that feeds dependency and often goes to the hands of dictators or warlords. Build factories? Your being "economic imperialists" and using the people for cheap labor. Take out murderous dictators? Your trying to "conquer the world". Do nothing? Your being selfish "isolationists". Heck we can't seem to get it right even when we try to feed starving people (see Somalia).

The problem is that very few people in this world want to "cooperate". Most people are out for themselves. And most people generally have to succeed or fail for themselves. That is why restricted competition works so well in this world.

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_.

There is nothing that corporations love more than peaceful cooperative foreign policies. The less barriers the more trade and the more markets to sell goods to. There are a heck of alot more corporations selling butter than selling guns.

Brian Ellenberger

What race?

[mlg9000]

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.

Re:What race?

[Rxke]

That's exactly the point. It's been 30+ years since... All the know-how has been rotting on the shelves, resulting in one sad fact: NASA wouldn't be able to put a man on the moon in a sort timespan, it's even conceivable they would be hard pressed to beat China to land (again) on the moon even if they wanted to... secondly: it's like if the brothers Wright flew around for a bit and call it a day; mothballing their plane and go home; 30+ years later some chinaman flies again, but everybody says: 'what's the point, we've done that before' but THIS guy does not call it a day, heck no, he's dreaming of passengerplanes et.c... You get the picture. China seems pretty determined to go to the moon TO STAY THERE. Something NASA isn't even considering in their long term plannings, Mars being the more sexy target, at least in the eyes of the (funding guys of the) government. the moon is relatively easy. Mars is Not.

This race wouldn't be like the last one.

[roumada]

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).

Double Standards

[silverbolt]

China's ascendancy as the sole superpower, helped along by her space activities, would be a horrific development, threatening freedom and world peace. Even without reference to China's lunar ambitions, the military implications of Shenzhou should give one pause. The integration of technologies achieved by Shenzhou , including recoverable satellite capability, implies the ability to hit targets in the United States with nuclear warheads with a great deal of accuracy. Also the same low-power propulsion technology used to adjust a spacecraft's orbit could also be used to alter the path of offensive missiles, helping them evade proposed US anti-missile defense systems

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 ? :-)

Sorry, Jeff, you are nuts.

[twitter]

The 1960s space race created institutions and bureaucracies that needed to be served after the race was over and warped expectations of what a realistic space program was for the worse.

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.

in this case, it had better not...

[alizard]

The technology you are using to put your ill-formed thoughts onto the Internet mainly comes from semiconductor devices invented for the first aerospace applications where weight and space were at extreme premiums.

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.

Re:is there really a race?

[bj8rn]

Look at it as a race between Achilleus and a turtle. The turtle gets head start, so that he's already run half the way when Achilleus finally wakes up and starts running. When Achilleus has run half of the distance, the turtle is already at half the final half (Achilleus ain't actually trying). And so on. And Achilleus can never catch up with the turtle because every time Achilleus gets to a point where the turtle has been, the turtle is already gone. Ergo, there's no movement and where there's no movement there can't be a race (how can you race when nobody's winning?).

one world?

[rezza]

*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...