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China Plans Space Station By 2020
RedEaredSlider writes "China unveiled plans for its own space station, to be completed by 2020, along with a cargo ship to ferry supplies to and from orbit. The fact that the country is proposing one is a sign of the Chinese government's ambitions in space. China is the third nation to launch its own manned rockets into space, sending its first astronaut into orbit in 2003 aboard the Shenzhou 5 rocket. Since then two other manned missions have been launched."
Just because China is planning to planning to build something does not mean they will. Remember we we planned to build that super mega particle smasher in Texas? I don't recall that plan working out.
Remember when the US planned to have colonies on the moon by now?
Remember when I planned to marry a super model when I was a teenager? I am sure you can guess how that worked out.
That aside, I hope they do it. It seems the world will only move forward with competition from an "evil" empire.
at lease someon is going. Good luck China.
BTW, Manned Space Programs are what countries get for have appropriate eye on science and the longevity of a country.
It's also what you loose when all focus is on money spent now and constantly cutting.
But hey, let keep lowering taxes and butcher all our assets. It's the libertarian way...to 3rd world status.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Perhaps they are waiting for us to finalize our designs for our Back to the Moon missions so that they can finally start building their ships. I doubt they want to replicate our Apollo Era technology at this point.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I hope my Chinese made sarcasm detector is just off today, because I'm not sure if that was a joke or not. The crap they sell you is cheap, because frankly you keep buying it and they don't care what you do with it; they aren't investing in you. A space station on the other hand, is something they are interested in investing in, an investment in themselves (or at least an investment in sabre rattling).
Unless Beijing wants to start spewing propaganda that they invented space travel, have had it since the beginning of time, but graciously let the west ungratefully steal it from them, I can think of better places to use my stereotyping.
How? There simply isn't that much to do up there. There are a few manufacturing advantages (You can grow absolutly perfect silicon crystals - might up the yield on semicondunctor manufacture), but not enough to justify the huge expense of getting things up and down. There are only enough idle rich to support a very small tourist industry. The only way you're going to see a profit on human space travel is some revolutionary new technology to bring the price down. That's why public and academic funding is so important. Do it for science!
the future of space is commercial there is no point if we can't make money
words entrenched from a broke government with the wrong focus. If china starts a new space-race, expect America to go the way of the soviets, they are already almost broke to the point of collapse.
Dude, its a cultural thing not a race thing. A Chinese person that grows up in the states doesn't have issues. It's about a guilt society vs a shame society. Japanese act similarly, they might go farther with underhanded things to get ahead, but then if it is unveiled publicly they actually suffer more shame than westerners would. Its just a different approach. The Western way is more focused on the individual, the eastern way is more focused on the group. Sure there are lots of exceptions, everyone is different, but in my experience, Chinese engineers tend to fudge things to give managers what they want to hear a LOT more than American engineers.
Hell, I'm about to review 3 test reports from Beijing this evening. I go over several every week. Some of the engineers over there are better than others, but on average they are overly optimistic compared to test reports form our American engineers. Are they capabke of learning and improving? Certainly. I see it first hand. But when the short comings get pointed out in a conference call, we have to tread very carefully because they get so butt hurt by criticism in front of their peers we are afraid someone is going to start crying or do something drastic. The director we have over there lived in the States for 20 years. He is very helpful in bridging the gap between the two different cultures...
Anyway, I'm just trying to say that I'm extremely open of other cultures and ways of life. If anything I'm strongly anti-racist. But that doesn't mean I cannot recognize cultural differences that can dramatically impact performance when it comes to building and testing complex systems. China faces some serious challenges, political and cultural. It will be very interesting to see what happens over the next 20 years or so, but I still expect them to rise above all other nations to become the next true global hegemony.
The problem with the plan outlined in The High Frontier is that it's "bootstrap" is essentially circular logic: "We need colonies in space to build the infrastructure in space to build colonies in space". He adds in "and build solar power satellites" in order to make it appear that his logic isn't circular - but any more-than-cursory examination of the economics involved shows how ludicrous that idea is. (Short version: it would be cheaper to burn the dollar bills directly for energy.)
The grandparent has it right - there's nothing to do there and little advantage to be gained by going there.