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Shenzhou 9 Sparks Renewed Debate On Space Race With China

Posted by Soulskill on from the where's-jfk-when-you-need-him dept.

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.'"

5 of 283 comments (clear)

  1. Prediction by Spy+Handler · · Score: 5, Interesting

    China will land a man on the moon first, but SpaceX will win the race to Mars.

    1. Re:Prediction by Riceballsan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The bottom line, what on earth is spaceX's motivation to go to mars? The thing with corporations running things, is they have to be profitable. Hence why spaceX's missions are to deliver to ISS etc... China just has to get a guy there and put up a flag. SpaceX has to, find a resource on mars, figure out a way to obtain said resource, get good enough quanities of it, and bring it back and sell it, for roughly more money then the trip cost. Unless of course they can write it off as a multi-billion dollar marketing plan. But even that, marketing to whom? They aren't in a business where they can easilly increase their number of customers. Only governments, and multi billionares can even think of hiring them, and well, I'm pretty sure every government with interest in stuff from space, and person ritch enough to actually afford a space tourist trip, knows of them already. Maybe a tourist trip where they can bring along say 15-20 of the people on the forbes list who are brave enough to want to be part of the first trip to land on mars, that might fund it.

  2. It's a space "RACE" because that's what US wants by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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 !
  3. Re:Do you mind ? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:It's a space "RACE" because that's what US want by risom · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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).