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.'"

Comments

Prediction

[Spy Handler]

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

Re:Prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they'll build their own knock-off moon.

It's a space "RACE" because that's what US wants

[Taco Cowboy]

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

Is China even behind at all?

[mpoulton]

"While China is 50 years behind the U.S. government..."

Um. No they aren't. The US government did these same things 50 years ago, but is no longer capable of easily repeating its past feats. The first US moon landing program took less than 10 years from conceptual announcement to a giant leap for mankind. How long would it take for the US to do the same thing again? I'm not confident we even could. I'm not sure we could even replicate China's docking-to-a-station performance in 10 years, now that we've abandoned all of our previously successful manned spaceflight programs.

Re:Is China even behind at all?

[FatLittleMonkey]

Perhaps more appropriate, his Rice U speech:

So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward--and so will space.

As soon as the US got to the moon, they rested, they waited. While space will be conquered by those who are moving forward.

"The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space -- each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision." – XKCD

Re:Is China even behind at all?

[jandersen]

There was a time when the right mix of brains, creativity, and guts came together

There still is - it's called haggis.

Re:It's a space "RACE" because that's what US want

[Anonymous Coward]

That left China with no other alternative but to construct their own space station

With blackjack. And hookers.

Re:It's a space "RACE" because that's what US want

[progician]

I find this astronaut, cosmonaut and taikonaut so embarrassing for fuck sake. It's the same fucking thing. A person is space (or anywhere for that matter) isn't defined by the nationality but what she/he does and in what quality.

Re:It's a space "RACE" because that's what US want

[progician]

If you ask me, I don't refer to China as a communist place (note that being a communist country is a contradiction), but as a state-capitalist country, meaning that the state is the major owner of the national resources and therefore the biggest capitalist of them all. Never the less, you can see how the Chinese capitalism is compatible with the "Western" version of it, given that China is bailing out the EU, also developed private industry and so on.

Capital can be concentrated or highly distributed, but as long as the society runs on the principles of market available property (public or private does not matter, since if nobody else, Chinese government can sell national assets), on the internal mechanism of investment, exploitation and market valorization, than we're still talking about the roughly the same social organisation, that is, capitalism.

Monopolization is a natural process within capitalism, so even the so called free markets lasts only as long as the state power regulates the economy (anti-trust laws, anyone?). But as political and economical power always tend to merge because people with considerable wealth are commanding over larger amount of economy, hence they rule over larger proportion of people, directly or indirectly, the state is always central to the capitalist system, either in the framework of the western style indirect market manipulation, or with being in charge directly over the economy, like in China. These are different politico-economic management styles, not entirely opposite social organisations. Monopolization can take charge through economic power, or political. But the end-result is the same. As an anecdotal side note, I'm from a country, which was considered as socialist/communist for 40 years, until 22 years ago. I've seen both management styles, through the transition and now living in the west, and I have to tell you, that the ideological differences are just rather covering up the converging features of the two political and economical management, than actually creating differences on a social level.