Making The International Space Station More International
Buzz Aldrin: The next giant leap for space exploration, Washington Post
“Thus, taking our trajectory deeper into space is about more than just the United States. We must explore our solar system with the entire community of current and future space-faring nations. To this point, China should be a part of a global space outreach, as should the 16 nations that currently participate in the International Space Station. We should also look to include the emerging space-faring countries, such as India, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates. Nothing will do more to promote international understanding, particularly when it comes to developing norms of behavior in space.”
I appreciate the idea that Dr. Aldrin proposes, but how far should the idea go? Participants in the sense of astro/cosmo/taiko/nameyournauts, or perhaps engage these other countries to produce additional or replacement modules for the station? With all the changes and cancellations, there are plenty of places to add, replace, and grow the station.
Shoot, we have even had talk of partners leaving and taking their modules with them — why not bring in others to soften the blow of losing said modules?
And yes, I fully expect to hear the “oh no you don’t, we want this station to end it’s life in a Pacific dive!” or variations of that theme. Remember, it’s just a thought. 🙂
I wonder too about how far it should go, but I do know one thing: the program should start.
Arthur C. Clarke often pointed out that nations with strong cultural and (especially) trading relationships were unlikely to war with one another. And while our relationship with the Russians and the Russians’ behavior in Ukraine could be seen as proof ACC was wrong, it’s actually just the opposite: we needed stronger ties with the Russians.
Sometimes I think that what Earth needs is a good alien scare! Probably the only area of convergent thought with former Pres. Reagan.
So you are thinking more Orson Scott Card than ACC at this point? I like the US’s approach to foreign affairs in that series.
> “nations with strong cultural and (especially) trading relationships were unlikely to war with one another”
Like Germany and England, each others #1 trading partner in 1914? Or really any of the European powers during their various 17th through 19th century wars, with strong trade, cultural, and even ruling family ties?
There is something to the claim, and it’s possible that changes in the world economy since 1945 make it more powerful than it used to be, but the “trade = peace” argument isn’t all that strong.
Thanks. It appears I was repeating something not quite true.
Clarke would probably respond that trade is only part. A necessary part, but part, as you correctly point out.
Pretty sure I got the Ronnie ref correct.
You did get the Reagan notion correct. In fact, Reagan was so quick to cite the idea even the Soviets were human and we would all unite against an alien threat that some of the hard-line NSC staff tried to get Reagan’s confidantes to nudge R to use it less.
There was even a memo, if I remember correctly, where an NSC staffer said that it wasn’t obvious that a hostile alien force would be *worse* than communism, and that in the unlikely event such aliens arrived we might well want to form an anti-communist alliance with the aliens against the evil Soviets.
It appears I was repeating something not quite true.
Yeah, the trade thing doesn’t quite stand up to empirical examination. It is true, though, that democracies rarely if ever attack one another. But China, of course, is not a democracy.
But war with China would mean an end to cheap microwave ovens. Surely an impossible situation.
We should certainly invite China to joint the ISS. China is the US’s largest overseas trading partner and one of only two nations with the present ability to send humans into space.
Politically a non-starter, but it would be a very diplomatic thing to do. Also I don’t think anyone knows if the Chinese docking system is compatible with the docking systems on the ISS or not.
Several Chinese documents state that the Cinese docking system meets the international standard now used on the ISS, and the mating interface geometry appears identical although the internal components are different. Of course there are details, testing, etc to work out but there doesn’t appear to be any reason it cannot be accomplished quickly if needed.
I’d be surprised if the docking system was incompatible. The Shenzhou is derived from the Soyuz spacecraft; they purchased quite bit of related technology in the early to mid 1990s. I assume they wouldn’t redesign the docking system just for fun.
I was not aware of that, and it’s actually really good news, I think! It at least shows the Chinese are thinking internationally in their spacecraft design.
A bilateral agreement would be nice. China does, after all, have a space station. International visitors might be a friendly gesture. Since it is only a Salyut-class station, that would be mostly a gesture. But gestures matter when establishing international cooperation.
China doesn’t have anything yet.
I don’t mean to be rude… but are you… joking?
First and foremost, let’s work backwards. The United States’ lack of independent manned spaceflight capability is a choice. It was a choice made, back in 2010/2011, to retire the Space Shuttle, to free up funds for Commercial and Orion/CxP/SLS development. The US Space Program could not afford to do those things and operate the ISS at the same time. In a magical world where there was more money, Shuttle could have flown for many years. But in this one, a decision was made. I don’t understand how this choice is ignored. We could have not done it. We could have flown the Shuttle to this very day. We didn’t run out of shuttles. A hangar collapse didn’t crush them or anything. We didn’t forget how to make them. And insofar as China’s ability to put people into space, we’re talking five missions ever, the last in mid 2013 that basically reenacted Gemini. So impressive…
Personally I just can’t wait until Dragon/Starliner/Orion (eventually) fly manned in the next while just so that folks who for whatever reason, this manned spaceflight gap since 2011 has been some kind of terrible thing (spoilers: it hasn’t. It hasn’t mattered at all) can be forgotten about. God forbid this country ever stops something to engage in a direction change again.
Secondly.. China. The Space community’s provincialism is, well, rather appalling. Yes lets tell ourselves that it would be wonderful to engage in this Utopian cooperative endeavour for highly romantic, non-practical reasons where we do things in space with countries, no matter our relations and interactions with them. Because joint space exploration is that important right?
Wrong.
In reality, this is what’s happening. For years China has engaged in a systematic campaign to steal advanced Western technology – everything from computers to agriculture to yes, space technology – in an attempt to close the significant gap they have, and enhance their power. They have done this through hacking, through espionage, and demanding of technology transfers by Western companies doing business in their country.
In the last few years Chinese military technology has focused on developing weaponry and doctrine specifically to push the US out of the Asia-Pacific reason. Carrier killer ballistic missiles. Small boats with anti-ship weaponry. Stealth Fighters from stolen F-35 technology. Simultaneously they’ve engaged in a campaign of island building and claiming vast swathes of territory (the Nine-Dashed Line of the South China Sea) that is patently not theirs. Most of their neighbors, especially the ones in military alliances with the US, are engaging in huge defense spending increases because China has them spooked.
In fact, over at the Pentagon, just yesterday, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter talked about a whole suite of new weaponry and defense spending, ostensibly that is anti-China in nature. Things like “Arsenal Planes”, turning the SM-6 into an Anti-Ship missiles. Swarming micro drones. Building of 10 destroyers over the next 5 years and 9 attack subs. Piercing A2/AD advancements. The US doesn’t need these things to fight ISIS, and Russia’s Navy is a joke. They’re China targeted.
There are also two other developments. As Foreign Policy reports here, the US is contemplating teaming up with the EU to deny China the designation of Market Based Economy in WTO. Secondly most of our Presidential candidates are running on an anti-tight Chinese relations platform.
It is, and again I don’t mean to be rude, disconnected from reality, at this point for anyone to advocate for closer US-Chinese cooperation pretty much anywhere, let alone in space. Your partners don’t develop weapons specifically to kill you, which is what China has been doing. The utopian dream of joint US-Chinese cooperation in space will do nothing but yet again subscribe to the failed belief that if bring China into the fold, it’ll make them a responsible stakeholder and keep the peace.
Exactly how many times do we have to get burned by that delusion? Economic engagement, for example, since China joined the WTO, has seen anti-competitive subsidies by the government, historic dumping on a global scale, and industrialized counter-fitting of western goods, not to mention trade barriers in China that were not reciprocated in the West.
Like I’m sorry, but even if China had something to offer a truly global space program (they don’t- Western rockets are better, Falcons are cheaper, and China has no experience NASA or the ESA doesn’t have), success in that would not be worth exposing ourselves to more of China’s double game.
Space is important, but compared to Earthly concerns, especially of a security and economic nature… it might as well not exist. Until the security and economic situation with China transitions to something more stable and less confrontational, China has no place in anything NASA does. Our differences with China are profound and more meaningful than anything space related, the end.
China will have an economy larger than the US in ten years. In today’s world, wealth defines power. If we choose the path of military confrontation, we will lose. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.
Our only alternative is to understand China. An international program in human spaceflight may help in this regard. Until you work directly with people from another country it is easy to regard them as caricatures.
There are no military secrets of any value on the ISS. If you think we should stop giving our technological secrets to China, you will have to talk to Apple, Samsung, HP, GE, GM, even Walmart. And they will not care in the slightest. They are all going to China because it is the world’s largest market.
China developed its space station plans after its goal of membership in the ISS was blocked by the US. The rest of the world doesn’t have such prejudices and will collaborate with China.
China will have an economy larger than the US in ten years.
Considering that China also has five times the population of the U.S., they have a long way to go to approach U.S. living standards.
In today’s world, wealth defines power.
The relationship is hardly linear, though. Russia is an economic basket case, but remains powerful because it possesses a nuclear arsenal.
China’s economy is still growing, though not as robustly as formerly the last couple years.
Wealth, in any case, is money one doesn’t need to allocate to immediate needs. By that standard, China is not yet wealthy and may become less so even as their economy grows.
China’s elderly population will grow faster than that of any other country over the next quarter century, then the Chinese population will actually begin to shrink. 35 years of the One Child Policy means there will be only half as many working-age Chinese as oldsters who will require care and support. This is unprecedented in Chinese history.
If we choose the path of military confrontation, we will lose.
What we chose is unimportant except to us. The Chinese have already chosen a course of what they see as inevitable military confrontation with the U.S. We can choose to meet that confrontation or shrink from it, but avoidance is not really in the cards unless the present Chinese regime falls to domestic revolt before they feel they are ready to take us on.
Our only alternative is to understand China.
China is readily understandable – except, it would seem, by Western leftists such as yourself.
“The Chinese have already chosen a course of what they see as inevitable military confrontation with the U.S.”
Not true. They would lose their largest customer and have little prospect of recovering the massive amount of money we have borrowed from them.
There are many factions in China and naturally some in the military would like a larger military, but foreign military adventures are virtually non-existent in Chinese history and economics generally trumps politics.
“Wealth, in any case, is money one doesn’t need to allocate to immediate needs.”
If China has no discretionary wealth, please explain how they became America’s largest foreign creditor.
They are currently having quite the adventure in the South China Sea.
So should reaction should be to do everything we can to increase tensions between the US and China by demonizing over a billion human beings? Or to develop common interests and communication, and discover they are not that different from us?
What are we afraid of? That if we allow them on to the ISS they will steal the secret formula for unobtanium, the antigravity metal we are makling on the ISS, and overrun us?
“What are we afraid of? That if we allow them on to the ISS they will
steal the secret formula for unobtanium, the antigravity metal we are
makling on the ISS, and overrun us?”
Wow how ignorant yet refreshingly condescending.
If you deny China’s atrocious record on industrial espionage AND the fact that the ISS is loaded with cutting edge technology AND their record of using it’s technology to oppress it’s people as a police state then you truly are either a sock puppet or just plain hopeless.
Good luck with that.
China has shown much more interest in making their space station the international destination than in joining ours. In a few years it will be China versus Bigelow anyway, so I find this discussion to be somewhat pointless. Of course that didn’t stop me from jumping in. 😉
I’m not sure what the point would be.
Top program management in DC recently announced NASA’s interest in getting out from under the burden of operating ISS just as quick as we can. They feel it is too expensive, and apparently he feels NASA is not reaping any benefits out of its continued use;
The current management’s interest is apparently in building new things, not in using them and certainly not in evolving systems or processes to make them safer, more effective or more efficient….maybe they could offer the US side of ISS up for sale to China?