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Is China's Space Race An Opportunity For the US?
Hugh Pickens writes "Lieutenant General Frank Klotz (ret.), the former vice commander of Air Force Space Command, writes that it's worth considering whether aspects of the U.S.-Russian experience with space cooperation can be pursued with China to serve long-term American interests. 'China has in many respects already reached the top tier of spacefaring nations — with profound implications for America's own interests in space,' writes Klotz. While initially starting well behind the two original space powers, China has slowly but steadily added accomplishments to its space portfolio, conducting nineteen space launches in 2011 — twelve less than Russia but one more than the United States. It's worth recalling that even in the darkest days of the Cold War, the United States and its archrival at the time — the Soviet Union — embarked upon cooperative efforts in space, most famously with the joint Apollo-Soyuz docking mission in 1975 and today the first stage of one of the rockets that currently lofts U.S. national-security satellites into orbit — United Launch Alliance's Atlas V booster — uses the powerful RD-180 rocket engine, which is made in Russia. Washington has called for enhanced dialogue with Beijing on strategic issues and for military-to-military exchanges to help reduce uncertainty and potential misunderstandings, however, in May of last year, the House inserted a provision into the NASA appropriations bill prohibiting the US from spending any funds 'to participate, collaborate, or coordinate bilaterally in any way with China or any Chinese-owned company' and blocking the hosting of official Chinese visitors at facilities belonging to or used by NASA. 'This legislative action reportedly reflected deeply held concerns about protecting American intellectual property and sensitive technologies in the face of aggressive Chinese attempts to glean scientific and technical information from abroad,' writes Klotz. 'However, in the process, it foreclosed one possible avenue for gaining greater insight into China's intentions with respect to space.'"
writes Klotz. "However, in the process, it foreclosed one possible avenue for gaining greater insight into China's intentions with respect to space."
Luckily that avenue is risky and useless. Isn't a very early step in the decision making process "exclude the really bad ideas"?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
nice info tq
The European aerospace industry seems to see the recent US ban on cooperation with the Chinese space program as an opportunity, and is stepping up cooperation.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
You can either cooperate. It means you have no unique intellectual property (IP) position, but through the widespread use of your IP you might get some benefits back like cheaper space flight. Also, with some luck, new orders for your own local economy, where that IP originated and where the most knowledge is available.
Or you can protect the IP. No cooperation. Create an inflexible closed operation. Costs increase and without cooperation you'll have to invent everything yourself, or buy it under a license agreement. The best case scenario you succeed at being the first at everything. In a worse scenario, you pay for knowledge. In the worst cases, you either have no access, or you're violating someone else's IP.
Look at the money being squandered on patent battles in courts in the IT and also manufacturing industries. Don't get space flight locked into a similar situation, because there's no way out.
Cooperation through openness is the way forward. But it takes some balls to start doing that. (And please note that top managers and politicians, who think only short term, generally don't have those).
As people say, China will get old before they get rich. Please don't interpret me as saying America doesn't have several problems they have to work through, but at the very least they don't have a demographic problem (compared to most parts of the developed world).
China's one child policy is ultimately going to bite them. I know the general sentiment on Slashdot is Malthusian, but the number one resource of a nation is people. And if you have a demographic of population decline (eventually), a lot of single males, and too many old people relative to young people, that's not a long-term trend for success.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
You act like trade benefits one party and doesn't benefit the other.
Due to China's low cost labor, we, in the US, have been able to enjoy a -much- higher standard of living than we otherwise would be able to have. In exchange, China is getting a huge amount of capital which raises their standard of living, although, due to not having a free market it really only raises the standard of living for those at the top.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The sad part is, China has almost become more capitalist than a good chunk of Europe and the US.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Since its topical, and in "space articles" we often get real rocket scientists reading, how does the oxygen rich preburner in the RD-180 work? I don't mean the "duh" stuff like how do you adjust the mixture, but what in the world are these guys doing for metalurgy such that you can basically pipe a metal cutting torch's flame around the innards of an engine? Or is it something totally bonkers like they use nozzle style film cooling inside the pipes and stuff (which doesn't help with the turbopumps, but...)
I would assume if the russians ship working hardware to the DoD that whatever the answer is, its probably not classified.
Also I might be dense here but isn't it harder to maintain stable combustion when oxidizer rich rather than fuel rich? Or maybe its just "different" for an industry used to running fuel rich?
Do they use oxidizer rich preburner gas to cool the nozzle? I'm guessing they aren't that crazy and use the traditional nozzle coolant of fuel. Now a oxidizer regeneratively cooled nozzle would be bonkers, I don't recall anything that crazy. Maybe one of those weird solid fuel/liquid ox hybrids used liq O2 to cool the nozzle. I would imagine a pinhole leak in a oxy cooled nozzle would be a pretty spectacular failure whereas a pinhole in a fuel cooled nozzle is pretty much irrelevant until its a big enough leak to affect flow rates...
The background is that the 170/180 are the only engines I can think of off the top of my head that run oxidizer rich... every one else preburns fuel rich because a traditional welder's cutting torch is an oxidizer rich flame and putting what amounts to a cutting torch inside a engine seems a recipe for disaster. On the other hand oxidizer rich would seem to eliminate carbon/tar/gunk buildup issues. Maybe if you're stuck using heavy tarry parafiny filthy liquid fuels, like cruise ship heavy bunker oil as a fuel, the oxidizer problems are easier solved than creating a whole new fuel refining infrastructure... Would be interesting to know the design tradeoff, assuming its not just "too many bottles of vodka"
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
China is getting a huge amount of capital which raises their standard of living, although, due to not having a free market it really only raises the standard of living for those at the top.
How is that different than the USA? Wages have been stagnent for all but those at the very top for decades. Real income is actually slipping.
On the one hand, it sounds reasonable to work with China now when they have a reason to work with us rather than wait until they've passed what NASA can do. On the other hand, given their history they would almost certainly learn whatever they can however they can, then cease cooperating once they've sucked away all the technology anyway. I don't see any benefit to the US in working with them.
Oh, *that* was it? Slashdot editorial quality is in the toilet, really. I've come to accept incessant grammatical and spelling errors in summaries. But this is just lazy sloppy work. Please make a *summary* that is short, clear and explains why I should read the rest of the article.
Or, to put it in terms that even slashdot editor could understand:
tl;dr;
Because in the USA you can choose a better job and there are plenty of better ones out there if you have the skills/aptitude for them. In China, unless you have a family member in the Communist party, you're pretty much stuck doing either factory labor or agricultural labor. Starting your own business in China is nowhere near as easy as it is in the US unless you have political connections.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Actually class mobility in the USA is pretty much at an all time low.
I know that conflicts with your American Dream mythology, but that is all it ever was a myth.
Starting your own business in the US is easy, making it big pretty much requires political connections or connections with already established big business.
Seems like the Chinese are run by government bureaucrats and we are run by Corporate bureaucrats.
Isn't that our capitalist victory over the communist bastards? :)
It seems that it never occurred to anyone that by winning the cold war, the communist countries would start playing the game by our own (rather ruthless) rules.
When they were commies, we could block them out. Now we have to allow them to play the game. Not sure what was a bigger threat for our western economies.
Not forgetting the IP minefield. Google's $12.5bn purchase of Motorola Mobility wasn't for its love of phones.
A Space Race is usually a race to be the first at something, like going to the moon was. Unless they plan on racing to put a human on Mars, there is no Space Race worth devoting billions to.
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
China has a short term strategy.
Low Labor Costs, are based on supply and demand. There are a lot of Chinese (A big supply) bigger then their demand for work. However as they grow more, they will get more skilled, and begin to diversify their jobs, and demand more pay. Even in a totalitarian government, if the gap between their actual worth and what they get paid is too wide, there will be increase in under the counter work, or they will go to an other country (Brain drain in china).
Stealing IP, Isn't a strong model to work off of. As the people who they are stealing it from get better mechanisms to prevent it. Sure they can find more ways to bypass them. But as some point you need to figure that you are putting more R&D time trying how to steal Other Ideas, then you could put in making new ones yourself.
Totalitarian rule. Most of China's success has been in their gradual moving away from the communist ideas and embarrassing more capitalistic ideas. With more people who have stuff, they have more stuff they want to protect from someone else. That will lead to more revolts, or less Totalitarian actions from the Chinese to prevent chaos.
Can China be #1? Possibly it is the worlds most populous nation, and has a lot of resources. However just because the US could be regulated to #2 it doesn't mean US will loose out.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That was great and all, but 1975 hardly qualifies as the darkest days of the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis was certainly darker, and was right at the start of the space race. Kennedy had set the goal of reaching the moon just a month earlier, and no one would claim there was any collaboration in space for the next decade. Lobbing humans into orbit and lobbing nukes aren't all that different, after all. There were other dark times during the 1980s, and I doubt anyone would claim that was a great time for space collaboration, either.
It sounds like NASA has a culture problem it needs to be fixed.
However I think if the public/the people who pay their checks, demand more cooperative efforts they will slowly change their mindsets.
But whenever you have different countries working together we always have these types of bickering, but they usually just go on in the higher levels, keep the press going on.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Can anyone elaborate on why the US doesn't want to work with China at this point in time and how that's different from Russia in the past?
You must be young. Thats OK. Just saying. The market is much free-er now. In ye olden days high tech stuff simply did not cross the iron curtain. Occasionally you'd get a client state who couldn't seem to decide which side to ally with. But the idea of Japan or England or France or Australia or pretty much any country with no .ru military base on its soil buying a russian engine in 1970 for a commercial launch is pretty laughable for political considerations, so there were no large scale economic impacts from high level design cooperation.
Sure, .ru (or .ussr at the time, it was the kremvax era I guess), here's the plans to our F-1 engine, for national pride reasons you'll never build and fire one, and again for national pride reasons your client states will never be permitted to build or buy one, so just have fun admiring the plans you have no direct use for. And vice versa. May as well officially trade data because spies would get it anyway at immense waste of money, so its a prisoners dilemma game to agree to trade for free.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
75%-80% of all people earning about $500,000 per year did not come from wealthy backgrounds. Mobility is not as difficult as your make it to be. The bigger issue is that it now takes time and money to move between financial classes. You must have a skill and you must put the time into developing it.You must also be willing to take some risk. Hard work at your job alone is no longer enough.
I am surprised the the parent is modded up. It is unsubstantiated opinion and bordering on pure fiction.
Indeed, USA is nowadays characterized by the lowest social mobility among western countries. The only other country that comes close is the UK.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
with profound implications for America's own interests in space
What are the implications? That China will advance beyond the U.S. in space? That China will do something else first? That China will look superior in some way?
There's one simple way to resolve any such concerns. The U.S. simply has to engage their space program rather than mothball it.
Confucius say; nation that sit on ass get left with egg on face.
Citation needed.
The way social mobility is kept low is because poor people do *not* have time, have no money, have no opportunity to develop skills and cannot afford to take the risk. These problems are far from as trivial as you make it sound. Work a poorly paid 18 hour day, and be forced to decide between medical care, food, and education, and realise that financial failure means starvation, and you will see how easy it is to be trapped in poverty.
China has a one child policy? What are you stuck in the 1970s when it was implemented?
There are so many loop holes in that policy one can drive a truck through it.
There are exemptions if your first child was a girl, many regions of China now have locally implemented a two child policy across the board, Ethnic minorities (there are 55 in China) are allowed 2 Children in urban areas, or 4 in rural areas, with Tibet's Autonomous region declaring there is no limitations to the number of kids one has. These exceptions mean that as long as you follow a birth spacing of 3-4 years depending on the area, nearly 65% of all China are allowed more then one child.
Plus there are exemptions if you want to pay a fine (equal to the average disposable income in the area your living in the year the child was born, and doesn't need to be paid till the child is 5 years old and starts school, WITHOUT penalty/interest for being late), or if your a business owner the fine is larger and much stiffer, and you need to do math based on your income.
20,000×6+(INCOME-20,000)×2 = Fine in Chinese yuan.
I know we bai gui's in the west still act like China is still in the 1970's but Mao has been dead for 34 years, and most of his policies are either totally gone or have been swiss cheesed since then.
It seems to me that the current state of cooperation with China is adequate. It's comparable to cooperation one sees between competing companies in whichever commercial engineering realm. As such, the US is incubating innovative home-based endeavours that will beat competitors hands-down (at least as long as the US leads in innovation of course).
As an overall percentage, it's down. In the 1970s, 36% of US families stayed in the same income quintile. In the 1980s, 37%, and in the 1990s, 40%. That's reduced class mobility. How significant this is debatable, but it's not "unsubstantiated opinion and bordering on pure fiction".
http://www.economist.com/node/3518560?story_id=3518560
A lot of the demographic problem those policies created still exist though, and will until the "problem generations" die off. And even if the child restriction only really applies to the least-fortunate 1/2 or 1/4 of the population that's still an ongoing contributor to demographic imbalance
On the other hand the bulk of their population is still agrarian, and as they industrialize the surge in per-capita productivity will likely outstrip the demographic problems. It doesn't really matter much to the economics of the situation whether the new labor pool is coming of age or immigrating from near-subsistence rural areas.
In fact China may be in a better position than most developed nations in that it's industrialized population growth is phenomenal, whereas in most nations developed it's relatively stagnant if not slightly negative.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Tressury notes will become worthless overnight. If the US can do it to China, who says they cannot do it to others. Being a sore loser never helps.
Not mention that China might very well go to war, if this happens.
I don't agree. Family or school connections make things much much easier but making those same connections without a privileged background is certainly not out of reach. You do have to be arrogant, determined and willing to take risks while keeping your reputation clean (no powerful family to back you up).
The American Dream btw was not that anyone could become an elite power broker. It was that anyone can make their own destiny. There are a million millionaires in America that prove that one.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
If the US really is in a cooperative mood, how about not backing out of the ISS program in 2016 or 2020? It hasn't even been completed yet and they already planning how to deorbit it.
In fairness though our addiction to consumerist culture exacerbates most of those problems dramatically. Immigrants from less materialistic cultures can often do quite well for themselves on the exact same income, and boggle at native-born Americans claiming they have no opportunities while simultaneously pissing away their income on enough housing to hold all the junk they buy. (Illegal immigrants have it worse since they are much more vulnerable to exploitation)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
*relegated
Obviously you're not factoring in the eventual Chinese dominance of international law :-P
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
High income taxes are the primary means the rich use to eliminate competition; they are a huge barrier to anyone trying to raise enough capital to build a small business, while they have little impact on the rich because most of their income isn't classed as 'income'.
They rely on the 'tax the rich!' useful idiots such as yourself, then laugh behind your back at how you're supporting taxes they use to screw you.
Got it.
If China went to war with the US it would be a very short war primarily because China would have to attack US territory. Attacking things the neocon idiots think of as "American Interests", such as access to middle east oil, would only spur innovation in the US and get us to stop the equivalent of a national heroin addiction.
Seastead this.
If you look at actual numbers rather than relative numbers: "Most Americans (84 percent) exceed their parents income at a similar stage....Among sons, 59 percent had higher inflation-adjusted wages and salaries than their fathers." (source).
I 100% agree with your implicit argument that we should tax the shit out of capital gains.
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What China does is considered a fair fight, in the league of nations. US used to do it a lot and still does a lot of bullying.
China doesnt care about US territory, only about resources. It would gladly take foreign resources if it could (and some believe it can). And if there is one thing that really pisses of China, is affecting its economic interests. If you nullfy Treasurly bond, I would expect China to go on a full on war.
And you have no clue about how Treasure bonds becoming worthless would affect the US, do you?
A lot of the demographic problem those policies created still exist though.
Verses what our baby boom generation?
You do realize that our demographics are more screwed up then theirs already right? Under 9% of China's population is over 65, but in the US, the figure is already at 13%, and in Canada 16%. Or look at their close neighbour the Japanese, with a whopping 23% over the age of 65!
And even if the child restriction only really applies to the least-fortunate 1/2 or 1/4 of the population that's still an ongoing contributor to demographic imbalance.
It is not the "least fortunate" who are still blocked from having more then one child, seeing as China's least fortunate populations are rural and they have had easy exemptions and tiny fines for years. Its the upper-middle and upper class who face drastic fines that tend to be unable to have more then one child due to their unwillingness to spend the money. Which is why just about every news article talking about the One Chile Policy in China today always ends up referring to people with "successful businesses" as they take the blunt of the fines.
I'm very confused, a simple look up of population statistics would have shown your argument to be invalid, but it is like I said in my previous post, people have a strange fascination with old Cold War propaganda about China, and its hard for them to change their minds. While we in the west treat our actions as perfect and yet we face the larger demographic problems with out baby boom generation, and our inaction to protect and expand our own industries and resources so that we may continue the life we once had in the 1950's and 1960's.
How does that jive with reality?
Where some of the nations with the highest levels of class mobility also have the highest levels of income tax?
Why can we not classify all income the same way, including investment income for the purposes of taxes?
Tressury notes will become worthless overnight. If the US can do it to China, who says they cannot do it to others. Being a sore loser never helps.
Not mention that China might very well go to war, if this happens.
At some point China might be a match to the US militarily, but that point certainly is not now. China could make life in the US very uncomfortable for a while, they could put up a good fight, and then China would be completely crushed by the US. The only option they would have to win is to use nukes, but then they get taken off the surface of the planet with nukes too. Not much of a win.
Anyway, China doesn't need to start any wars. Just ceasing to buy more US treasure notes would be quite an issue for the US, as would stopping sending goods to the US, though that would also wreck the Chinese economy. As you say, the US treasury would also lose a huge amount of trust from investors everywhere.
the number one resource of a nation is people. And if you have a demographic of population decline (eventually), a lot of single males, and too many old people relative to young people, that's not a long-term trend for success.
Because having billions of starving young people fighting for resources is so much more fun!
it really only raises the standard of living for those at the top.
Fortunately we have The Free Market (tm) or this could be happening here too! Oh, the horror...
Nice try. For a country where you still need to apply for a "permission to give birth"...how can anyone say that tyranny is not still there? Yes, China has this, it's alive and well, and yes it applies when one parent is a foreigner. To say nothing of Americans who think that "breeders" are a huge problem and dream of implementing a similar program here to control the number of new Americans born to the natives. They exist.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
it really only raises the standard of living for those at the top.
The proportion of impoverished Chinese fell from 65% of the population in 1981 to 4% in 2007, during which time more than HALF A BILLION people were hoisted above the poverty line. (source)
The US felt safe until 1957 protected by thousands of miles of oceans. Maybe a few subs or balloons snuck in during the world war. But the first orbiting satellite in 1957 showed there was no place on Earth out of reach. Plus something going over you every hour and a half possibly spying on you. People felt very unsafe then.
Get real.
Seastead this.
Wages have been stagnent for all but those at the very top for decades.
But real total compensation has risen over 100% from 1968 to 2008. You just don't see the increase in real wages because tax laws encourage more of your total compensation to go into benefits such as medical insurance.
Where some of the nations with the highest levels of class mobility also have the highest levels of income tax?
Yes, it is easier for rich kids who go to college become poor kids in countries where income taxes and labor laws make these kids just out of college unemployable. Because they move down in the relative scale, poorer kids who can get blue collar jobs move up the relative scale.
That is why it is better to look at what children are making compared to their parents in absolute terms rather than looking through the viewpoints of class and income relativism.
In Spain only 40% of college graduates get a job in their field.
As an overall percentage, it's down. In the 1970s, 36% of US families stayed in the same income quintile. In the 1980s, 37%, and in the 1990s, 40%. That's reduced class mobility. How significant this is debatable, but it's not "unsubstantiated opinion and bordering on pure fiction".
Measuring economic mobility by using quintiles is incredibly misleading. It punishes more powerful economies where there is more room between quintiles.
In 1971, there was a $25,200 gap between the average income of the 2nd and 4th quintiles in the US (in 2005 dollars).
In 2005, there was a $36,600 gap between the average income of the 2nd and 4th quintiles in the US.
This means the 3rd quintile grew by $5700, or 45%.
Average Income By Quintile
Considering the increased size of each quintile, it is obvious that mobility between quintiles would reduce. Someone at the middle of the 3rd quintile in 1971 would have to increase his income by 15.7% to reach the 4th quintile. In 2005, a similar individual would have to raise his income by 21.8%
That means it takes a 40% greater income increase for the middle quintile to move up in 2005 than it did in 1979. Considering the percentage of people who stayed in the middle quintile only rose by 8%, I would say income mobility is growing rapidly.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Yeah right. We have do something, so might as well stab ourselves. Treasury notes are only as good as the borrower's promise to pay back. If the borrower changes the terms later, even if just for china. They become worthless instantly.
No they don't. There are all sorts of implicit terms. For example, China has the reasonable expectation that the US won't inflate its currency like Mugabe was President. An implicit term that the US can expect from China is that it will not engage in economic crimes against the US at a level that dwarfs the US debt held by China.
Seastead this.
poppycock. First off, there is no league of nations. Long gone. It is the United Nations.
Secondly, China is constantly dumping on foreign markets and constantly being found guilty of such. Likewise, it is know that they are manipulating their money which goes against the 2000 accords, as well as against IMF and WTO. Then they jumped from 90 trade barriers to over 400.
Fair? Not even close. Here, go look for yourself.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yup, it worked well for USSR.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I was just referring to the hypothetical league. I was saying that as much as nations fights go, this is a fair one.
So china is being found guilty and is being punished for it. So as long as this keeps happening, everything is fine right? And didnt the US do the same when it was a rising power? Which again goes to prove that it is a pretty fair fight when it comes to the league of nations.
Do you actually know any mainland Chinese ? I do, they are of course middle class engineers and the like, and they are following the one child policy. It sees pretty real to me.
You dont understand. Treasury notes are not some sort of agreement between two govts. A lot of Treasury notes are privately held. You cannot make implicit terms with something that is as widely held (hell, my city holds some US Treasury bonds) and held by all sorts of people.
And it is funny that you should mention that US cannot inflate the currency to get rid of these notes. From what I understand from current policies, that is pretty much what US govt is currently doing.
The American Dream btw was not that anyone could become an elite power broker. It was that anyone can make their own destiny. There are a million millionaires in America that prove that one.
Tush. Count the hits, ignore the misses. By that reasoning, there are several more million non-millionaires that disprove it.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
If you are talking about Nuclear Thermal, I would not expect any international heat. NASA is also working hard on this (after almost 40 years of inertia).
If you are talking about an (original) Orion type "bombs out the rear" rocket, then, yes, I think there would be a pretty big stink. I don't see that coming.
When America did this, it did not agree treaties or belong to a WTO. China has treaties with us that says that they will not do these things. In addition, they have their agreements with WTO that says that they will not do these things. At this time, America would be wise to slowly raise barriers against China and just say no to them as long as they remain in a cold war.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They could just enforce a national age limit.
Spain is terrible economy no matter what. Has been forever.
Look at Norway then tell me those taxes are hurting them.
Yeah I guess the People's Bank of China doesn't hold any US Treasuries and Chinese government doesn't have anything resembling an industrial policy that might be construed as systematic looting of US IP.
Seastead this.
Yes and that is a lot more likely to render US Treasuries untrustworthy than is lien imposition for criminal conduct.
Seastead this.
Look at Norway then tell me those taxes are hurting them.
Norway gets 20% of GDP from oil, so they can afford to be socialist!
Spain: "Government spending has increased to a level equivalent to 45.8 percent of GDP. The budget balance has fallen into deficit, and public debt has grown to around 60 percent of total domestic output."
Norway: "Government spending has risen to a level equivalent to 46.4 percent of total domestic output, but the budget balance remains in surplus due to oil revenues."
(Source: 2012 Index of Economic Freedom)
Only problem with that: friendly fire. Most US govt debt is held by pension funds and friendly governments -- as much as it would be nice to tell the commies to fuck themselves.
It's NOT a problem with targeting specific contracts since they are held by the liable parties.
Seastead this.
I think some competition is probably good, for both sides. I think most of the advancements we, and the Russians for that matter, have made in space so far are largely based on the competition of decades past. Since the competition ended, both sides have done a lot of stagnating.
BTW, it was not America that started protectionism. It was Europe. From 1500's through mid 1800's, Europe was colonizing all over the world. But, once there, they would pull resources back to europe and make things with them. However, others were prevented from doing any real manufacturing. The American Colonies were absolutely prohibited from manufacturing ANYTHING of value. If we were caught by the king's soldiers, they executed the person. In addition, in Europe, everybody who wanted to immigrate out, had to get permission. If they had ANY trade skills, they were prevented from doing so. Likewise, every business would bring in journeymen, train them, and have contracts that prohibited them from leaving.
America DID have protectionism around late 1800's onwards, until we started pushing FTAs. Sadly, we have done those wrong. We SHOULD have required that all nations come up to at least American environmental and labor levels, if not up to Canadian levels (which are much better than America).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Irish idiot says
Yeah I guess the People's Bank of China doesn't hold any US Treasuries and Chinese government doesn't have anything resembling an industrial policy that might be construed as systematic looting of US IP.
People Bank of China does hold US treasury, and chinese govt does have loot US Ip. Neither of these mean that treasury notes come with an implicit agreement though.
You do realise kid that a dose of Shakespeare will probably cure that year 5 spelling bee fixation? I see your post as an example of a failure of education in English instead of the assertion of superiority that you are attempting, which is even more sad because it's misplaced anyway. This sort of "fuck the topic, I won the spelling bee" grammar nazi bullshit is a waste of space.
I know some Chinese Koreans - see the above post by JimCanuck as to why they could grow up in a family of 5 children in China in the 1970s.
It's more a Senate and Congress problem as shown with things like this really stupid law. Apollo didn't work as a project contained very strictly within the USA alone, and a pile of other things since have had international involvement. I had a small part of my education in Australia in the 1980s paid for by NASA simply because scramjet models were getting tested in the same building by people that were teaching me about engineering. Personally I think if NASA can get some advantage from something in China they should be allowed to instead of some idiot deciding they need to "send a message" by hobbling NASA.
They consider more factors than the ones you referred and place US as one of the worst. The actual research is located here. Do dig into the data (There is a link in the right half of the page)
What do you call when you target enemies and hit friendlies. That correct, friendly fire. Now read GP's post again.
In a sane world, this would be called a "national security threat" and be dealt with accordingly.
Seastead this.
No I am not linking any of these to IP held by US citizes at all. You are linking it. What I am saying is, nullfying US debt held by China makes no sense at all, what so ever. And I dont agree with the statement that US should be scared of China dumping US securities either. Please work on you reading comprehension.
What doesn't make sense is for others, not engaged in an economic attack on the US, to view US securities as any less viable. Indeed, by defending its economic interests, the US would be demonstrating it, rather than China, would be in a better position to repay debt.
Seastead this.
They can always "fix" their demographic problem by implementing the Qin social reforms.
You still dont understand, I am not unhappy about you linking US IP infringement and US debt. What I am unhappy about is you responding to China's IP infringement by nullfying treasury bills. It is better to go to war with China rather than nullfy treasury bills (which I have saying in so many posts that it hurts us a lot lot lot more, which you convinently ignore and go back to saying something else).
The Russians didn't have any choice. We destroyed their economy and have been making sure that it never recovers ever since. In the case of the US the choice was deliberate on the part of the "leadership", no more long-term planning for, well, anything ever again. Just short-term pillage for their political patrons, which is better and more unaccountably accomplished through military spending.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
The Chinese got contracts to launch the satellites they were now building.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Wow, what a racist prick. I can't wait to hear your utterly uninformed opinions on Mexicans, Indians and Arabs, I'm sure it will be entertaining.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Try reading about ITAR and the Space Systems Loral mess to figure out why there are people against collaborating with China in any level on space technology. The collaborations with Russia are sort of different because they are much more advanced regarding space technology so the technology migrates both ways. Some would say it has mostly migrated from Russia to the US. The fact is the Russians are better at some things and worse in others compared with currently available US launch technology. Russia is the world leader in staged combustion engine design, hall effect thrusters, aluminum-lithium tanks, etc. The US is better at doing avionics, solar cells, liquid hydrogen engines, etc.
China is in the wrong continent to start a war with the US and their Navy is not up to the task. Even if they did have a powerful navy it would be hard to invade a 312M people nation a continent away. It is much more likely that the opposite would happen no to mention that the US has many troops stationed in South Korea and Japan plus they could attempt to carry .kr, .jp, .tw into the war. The Chinese are probably more concerned with that than anything else.
It is much more likely that if the US had done it alone the space station would have been deorbited by now. No Space Shuttle.
Whatever...
Seastead this.
The Chinese are useless
Wow, and I never ever thought I would read something like that on a respectable site such as Slashdot
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The Space Race had been pretty much over for nearly 10 years before the Star Wars program (Strategic Defense Initiative) that the Russians overextended themselves attempting to counter.
You don't understand Chinese culture ...
BTW, who the hell makes you the expert on all things Chinese?
This is Slashdot, this is not some KKK-inspired site where you can blast your racial toxic waste
Go back to where you belong, you racist scumbag !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Right, so criticising the Chinese Communist Party and their infectious (and notorious) lack of principle is racist?
Mate, you're a genius.
Not really. We actually had our design and work was started on Space Station Freedom under Poppa Bush. In fact, the first unit for freedom can be seen in Denver. It was to start being put up in 1994 and would have been finished by 1998. It was to cost about 12-25B to America.
In addition, we had multiple rocket systems started back then. In particular the core technology that went into SpaceX's engine. Also, NASA came up with the precursor to COTs and sent it to CONgress to be approved. Sadly, the neo-cons killed many NASA's rocket initiaves in 1994, and told NASA to not back private space.
BTW, it was Clinton that killed Freedom to work with Russia (wanted to keep their aerospace industry going to keep them from going to Iraq, Iran, etc). In addition, we brought Europe on board so that all gained experience in space.
If we had Freedom, then there is little doubt that we would have had a replacement launch system by now. The reason is that with the money saved, we would have used a few billion to produce several different Launch systems by now.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Not a spelling whiz; actually I have a lot of linguistics training at university and personally care little about spelling except for that it permits everyone to read quickly with less uncertainty and by following conventions one doesn't "irk" someone unnecessarily. When I write "please note" it's out of the assumption that you may truly not know--perhaps you're foreign to English? I don't know because it's the web, and it's impersonal, but what I do know is that "errors" like that are used as "tells" (aka Shiboleths) by people when they decide whether they want to interact with or do business with or acknowledge other people, so letting people know about "little" mistakes like that is worth my while: it may help someone significantly whether or not they realize it.
And Shakespaere isn't a good reference authority as he precedes spelling standards of durable fixity: even the King James Bible had varied spelling, and he precedes that. But "then" and "than" represent terms with significantly different vowel sounds, and these terms are now fixed as distinct in writing, in every form of English writing convention, no matter the pronunciation of the vowels in a given dialect. In other words, from an orthographical view to confuse them is a true error: even when fast speakers might vocalize them nigh identically. It's not being a grammar Nazi to point this out, it's a grammar Nazi that (incorrectly) condemns conjugations beginning a sentence, or every case of a dangling participle or so-called incomplete sentence regardless whether a given case is intelligible (therefore grammatical) in its context, or insists upon use of "that" for impersonal objects and "who" for personal ones every time (see "that" following "Nazi" above). A description of my action could consist of that I was simply pointing out the axiomatic fact that on paper these are distinct forms.
Despite involvement with editing projects of centuries-old manuscripts (where one does see "then" used for "than" because spelling was not fixed as much, and vocalization might have suggested "e" to many writers), Latin reading groups, and studies in Ionic Greek, Spanish (include old forms), and whatever else suits my fancy at the time, even I get irked at this! And I "can hardly care" about many kinds of complaint or formalism, so there. I am about the most laid-back guy you would ever find involved in such projects and circles, and yet when I encounter things like this...it's about as bad as the general English reaction to swapping or dropping the definite or indefinite articles by Asians: few even pretend not to disdain someone who does this (though personally I get interested in learning about their psychology from instances like that).
The appellation "Shakespeare" according to the OED is more properly spelled "Shakspere", but we all ignore that because there is a commonly accepted, widely recognized form, i.e. as you and I have spelled it: the same for "then" and "than". Differences like "-ize" and "-ise", however...now those are truly debateable: acceptable standards vary throughout the world on them: they are both etymological and recognizable.
And yeah, I spoke on that and not the topic because this doesn't tend to occur in contexts where people are discussing "then" and "than". I am also sure by the way that this sort of thing can mean the difference between getting a job or being passed over: unfortunately certain formalities matter to people, and ever since the banishment of spelling free-for-alls, written convention tends to be one of them.
"a failure of education in English" -- how trite.
"the assertion of superiority that you are attempting" -- wasn't attempting any. Quite honestly I was just annoyed, queue: http://xkcd.com/386/ I have been dealing with someone with dementia 24/7 for over eight months straight now with almost no help, so I am on edge all the time; and actually I LOVE when people inform me of little errors I make, especially when I didn't know that something was incorrect. Apologies, however, for the tone of what I wrote, with caveat that "Dear Mr. Canuck" was meant respectfully.
: )
http://xkcd.com/386/
Intelligent idiots are we. | Evil men do not understand justice.
I may not be a genius, but at least I do not post the following message:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3014151&cid=40822897
Let me say it again: Slashdot is not a KKK inspired site for you to spew your racist venom
Get back to where you were from and stop spewing your racist diatribe here
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Fair enough, I thought you were just another of the long stream of kids pretending to be English teachers just to put somebody down instead of someone that actually knows what they are writing about. At one point there were dozens attached to every story - I even had one idiot try to correct my spelling of "aluminium". When a programmer called Raster who writes as if he's texting at high speed on a small phone had one of his blog entries linked nearly every comment here was about his spelling instead of the actual subject matter.
My point was really that I do not think spelling and grammar are of great importance on an international site where the language is effectively broken English and IMHO I think corrects here are as irrelevant as correcting something from Shakespeare's time instead of just reading around the different spelling and getting some meaning out of it. That's my opinion anyway and why I reacted to your post instead of just taking it as your opinion. I'm sorry about my angry post above which is really directed at someone else.
The word "corrects" should have been "corrections".
I'm sorry about my angry post above which is really directed at someone else.
You too!!!? : D If you were in the Denver Metro of Colorado I would say we should go get a beer and rant about people who piss us off.
/. and people type on phones, overly quickly as they glance articles at work...Dear Slashdot: apologies for correcting something silly while I was in a foul mood, hope however that further posts added fodder for thought, and even better, perhaps criticism that will say YOU'RE WRONG (and give sources, or things to look up). Speaking of which: as much as we downmod offtopic comments, going off on tangents is what makes forums so great and interesting.
/r/ vs. /l/, and even more when you realize they still can't perceive the difference!!!
As far as broken English, with regards foreign people you would be surprised how many WANT correction. I remember a guy from Mexico who was going around telling everybody who talked too loud (a LOT of people in America) to just "shut up" because that's all he ever heard Americans say on the street (where he learned English, literally by walking-up to groups and attempting to engage them in their own language: he said it took a while...but not as long as his compatriots who can still barely speak it, while he is fluent). People who realized his mistake were too polite to "offend" him by offering correction, which he gratefully received when someone finally spoke-up: from instances like that I don't try to be "nice" all the time, or worry as much about offending people as my time in academia--and then sales--would have me believe should be important.
But I also get it's
But no worries man: I really may become an English teacher, actually. : ) At least while reviewing materials to return to school and finish the medical track. It's always fun to teach Asians the phonetics of
Intelligent idiots are we. | Evil men do not understand justice.
Utterly and completely wrong. You need to apply for Permission to Give Birth for your first child. Otherwise how will they know if you've already had one? Duh. It's a standard step. Doesn't matter if one parent is a foreigner or not. I've never been to Singapore so obviously I can't be confusing things.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Sorry about that. It appears I assumed that you were somebody that is very different from you based on probably no more than the first sentence.