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China and NASA Shared Data About Historic Moon Landing (nypost.com)
hackingbear writes: "China exchanged data with NASA on its recent mission to land a Chinese spacecraft on the far side of the moon, the Chinese space agency said Monday, in what was reportedly the first such collaboration since a Cold-War-era-like American law banned joint space projects with China that do not have prior congressional approval," reports New York Post. "The Chinese space agency's deputy director, Wu Yanhua, said NASA shared information about its lunar orbiter satellite in hopes of monitoring the landing of the Chang'e 4 spacecraft. China, in turn, shared the time and coordinates of Chang'e 4s scheduled landing. He added that while NASA's satellite did not catch the precise moment of landing, it took photographs of the area afterward."
In response to the question about why would China allow this exchange given that the U.S. has put technological obstacles to China's lunar exploration program and refused to issue visas to Chinese experts, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said, "China could have chosen not to offer the relevant information to the U.S., but as a major country, we should act with the posture and bearing of a major country. I believe what Mr. Wu said has shown the confidence, openness, and broadmindedness of Chinese aerospace engineers as well as scientists and researchers and China's confident and open posture as a major country."
In response to the question about why would China allow this exchange given that the U.S. has put technological obstacles to China's lunar exploration program and refused to issue visas to Chinese experts, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said, "China could have chosen not to offer the relevant information to the U.S., but as a major country, we should act with the posture and bearing of a major country. I believe what Mr. Wu said has shown the confidence, openness, and broadmindedness of Chinese aerospace engineers as well as scientists and researchers and China's confident and open posture as a major country."
good reasons for the recent data exchange.
Reasons for the recent data exchange:
1. It serves the interests of all nations operating spacecraft within an area to exchange basic telemetry so they can, for example, avoid collisions.
2. In this case, it would serve the interests of China to have the US publicly admit and even photograph (if possible) one of their space successes - giving obviously solid proof of a far away event to a wold mostly unable to verify it for themselves, much as the Soviet confirmation of the American moon landings in the '60s and '70s did.
Reasons for the prohibitions:
1. The Chinese science and military space programs are one-and-the-same; they're completely unified - so there's no way any sympathetic politician in the west can offer political cover when encouraging supposedly peaceful cooperation.
2. The Chinese military has a long track record of thresatening to nuke the USA.
3. In the 1990s, several American companies (Loral, Hughes...) wanted their satellite customers to be able to use cheap Chinese launch vehicles (which were failing at an alarming rate) in place of American and European launch vehicles, so they illegally transferred a bunch of launch vehicle tech to China. This had two major effects: [a] it enabled the Chinese aerospace industry to damage the American and European launch vehicle industries, and [b] suddenly Chinese ICBMs became far more reliable and accurate.
An orbital launch vehicle is just a more capable ICBM. As anybody with an aerospace background knows, if you can accurately place a large payload into orbit, you can more easily place a nuclear warhead on a sub-orbital launcher and hit any city on Earth. What that transfer of tech did (in addition to making some executives and share holders of a couple of companies a bit richer) was to enable the Chinese military to more effectively threaten to kill all the American taxpayers who paid to develop the technology. As a military vet, I personally resent the fact that the executives involved were not tried for treason and executed by firing squad. The Chinese military, yet again, threatened to nuke the USA just within the past week - THANKS, Loral and Hughes!.
The Unites States and Russia do not, to this day, exchange complete information with each other. They cooperate with the tech data needed to make systems interoperable (like docking systems, atmosphere standards, and such) and if the cooperation with China could be limited to that then there'd be nothing big to worry about, however too many American scientists and businessmen have spent 20 years proving they will not self-limit their tech transfers to China (see: Apple, Google, IBM, Motorola, etc) Nearly every major American company has sold-out to China, as have most American universities.
All the "peaceful cooperation in space" drivel that is so often spread by idiots usually ignores the existence of nuclear warheads (which in the case of China are not constrained at all by ANY arms reduction or limitation treaties).
They already have a wall.