U.S. Snubs China's Offer for Space Cooperation

Devar writes "According to this space.com article The US has turned down China's offer for cooperation in space because their 'technology was not mature.' "Anticipating future space cooperation with the U.S., China fitted the Shenzhou craft with a docking ring capable of linking up with the International Space Station (ISS) and has at least one launch site, Jiuquan, located at near the same latitude as NASA's Cape Canaveral, which would allow similar launch profiles." This action has prompted China to turn to the ESA."

Comments

It's not NASA's decision

[cyclone96]

Disclaimer: I work for NASA.

A lot of the comments on this thread are being critical of NASA for not allowing Chinese participation in ISS.

This is not NASA's decision. Hell, many of us would be thrilled to work with the Chinese (despite what you may see on the news, working with the Russians is very fun, challenging, and exciting to us grunt engineers). NASA takes its marching orders directly from the executive branch, and whether or not to include China in NASA's manned program is decided by the White House, and technical merit is at the very bottom of the evaluation criteria on whether to include them or not.

At the top are probably two considerations...

Political - this is a huge carrot to wave in front of the Chinese, and I don't think the White House is ready to cash in on it yet. I can imagine it coming into play if we wanted something from China with respect to either the North Korean or Taiwan issues.

Technology Transfer - like it or not, the same basic technology that is used to put people in space is also used to defend the United States. Any time you work with an international partner who is "behind" you technically, some of the technology bleeds over (no matter how hard you try to stop it) and the technology gap closes. You need to be very careful about that when you are talking about working with a potential adversary. Is the risk worth the benefit? Right now, I think the answer the national leadership has decided is "no".