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Shenzhou 9 Sparks Renewed Debate On Space Race With China
MarkWhittington writes "With the flight of the Shenzhou 9, which includes the first docking between a Chinese spacecraft and a prototype space station module, a renewed debate has arisen over the implications of Chinese space feats. China is planning a large space station by the end of this decade. It has expressed the desire to land people on the moon sometime in the next decade. Scientists, foreign policy experts and journalists debate whether China has supplanted the U.S. as a space power and whether that matters. 'In reality, the implications of China's move could be a much cooler third option: a new space race between the Chinese government and U.S. startups. While China is 50 years behind the U.S. government, they are much more comparable to U.S. companies. It was only a couple of weeks ago that SpaceX made history by becoming the first private company to successfully dock a space module to a station in orbit. This means they are roughly 10-15 years behind the Chinese government, but they could gain fast.'"
China will land a man on the moon first, but SpaceX will win the race to Mars.
China had wanted to cooperate with the world in the space venture
China had wanted to join the ISS
The United States of America objected, and barred the Chinese from ever stepping into the ISS
That left China with no other alternative but to construct their own space station
In other words, the space "RACE" has become a race because that's what USA had always wanted
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
OK, real issues... Will China ever create a television show as good as "Star Trek: The Next Generation"?
Because, if not, nobody will care about their manned space program.
When the Japanese sent their spacecraft to a comet, collected some comet dusts, and then brought those space dusts back to earth, I don't see CCP immediately sent their own spacecraft in doing the same thing
It's more likely that the CCP really does not care what others think - they just do whatever they do on their own schedule
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
They also like their propaganda, and beating the US to something this prestigious would do great things for national pride. Remember why the US went into the space race in the first place - because they couldn't let some bunch of dirty commies get there first.
1. "Nasa is not a provider of real jobs" -> Flame bait. Presenting a highly debatable statement, like this needs argument. You know, extraordinary claim needs extraordinary evidence. Now, he did not provide a tiny bit of argument here, so he is clearly ideological troll. Since NASA do have products, somebody has to work there, thus NASA provides jobs where people do real work.
2. "Especially during times where many tax-payers are feeling the impact of the economic crisis". Well, there's already a false presumption when somebody talks about "tax-payers" in general. There's no general interest between citizens, tax-payers or whatever. Some tax-payers want to disarm the enormous offensive capacity of the USA, and some want to invest even more money in to it. The military budget is magnitude greater than the NASA budget all together, and remember that NASA isn't only works on space missions, but there are other aeronautical, technological projects running along with the space tech. NASA had its budgets slashed since the space race. The military spending however... you know the money that governments invest in order to spy on, and kill other people, and destroy their stuff. Any space agency could do miracles with even the half of that money. So much for the crisis. Not to mention the bailout of banks, and other stupid shit.
find this astronaut, cosmonaut and taikonaut so embarrassing for fuck sake. It's the same fucking thing.
Me too. So let's call all of them cosmonauts from now on, as that notation clearly was the first in use (applied to Juri Gagarin).