DC Think Tankers Testify On That China Space Race Thing
Updated: Congress Hearing: Are We Losing the Space Race to China [Hearing video]
Subcommittee Examines China’s Space Exploration Capabilities and Achievements, House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Democrats
“Now, almost 50 years since that historic event, some are asking if we are again in a space race, but this time with China. Two weeks ago, China successfully placed in orbit its Tiangong-2 experimental orbiting space lab. And that accomplishment comes on the heels of China’s landing a robotic rover on the Moon, with plans announced to do the same on Mars. So, should we be concerned that China is may be closing the gap in spaceflight capabilities?”
Chairman Smith Opening Statement: Are We Losing the Space Race to China?
“China continues to make progress. We cannot resign ourselves to the remembrance of past achievements. It is time for the United States to reassert its leadership. For over fifty years, the United States has been committed to the peaceful use and exploration of outer space. Our philosophical principles of freedom, the rule of law, and transparency are evident in the actions we take. The United States shares scientific data and findings, promotes international cooperation, and maintains international peace and security in outer space. The world has benefited from U.S. space leadership.”
Witness Statements: Dennis Shea, Mark Stokes, Dean Cheng, James Lewis
Earlier China postings
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It’s terrible. We reached out to Russia after the Cold War for ISS, and we should entice the Chinese into a big joint space project as well. I don’t know what that will be, but something important.
Yes, just as we built ISS to prevent the Russians from sharing their rocket technology with Iran, Iraq and North Korea we will need a similar welfare program to keep the Chinese engineers working.
That’s a bit disingenuous, isn’t it? Or stretching the facts at the least. There was widespread concern about Russian engineers and nuclear scientists after the fall of socialism; that part is true. But this concern was hardly a driving force; more propitious timing than anything,
Yea, but it’s been — what, 20-30 years? — and I’ve yet to hear a sincere “Cпасибо” from Vlad Putin, thanking us for keeping his nuclear & rocket scientists warm and fed.
There is no space race with China. China’s demographic crisis and its cooking the books on its economy are catching up with it. When it does it will be ugly, which is why Chinese millionaires are fleeing the country as fast as they are able to buy themselves visas into the United States, Canada and Australia. In a few years folks will be wondering what the fuss was about.
Pity they didn’t invite any Asian economic experts who actually know what is going on. But then this is all about scaring Congress into increasing the NASA’s budget to increase the pork flow. It is what Washington does best 🙂
While the Chinese situation is eroding, it’s not exactly as though China will collapse.
Put differently, consider how North Korea, a nation with little of anything, is nonetheless able to pose a threat.
China, with more resources of every sort, and economic links to the rest of the world, is not exactly a crippled failed state.
I suspect that while China economists would observe that China faces economic challenges, that does NOT translate into China automatically failing, any more than China’s economic rise presaged it automatically winning.
Go to China. Take a ride on the high speed rail network. Visit some labs working on biotechnology, some electronics manufacturing plants. Visit some universities, talk to some grad students. Visit the new space launch site at Wenchan. Then tell us who is cooking the books.
Most discussions of a space race with China (which tends to ignore the toilet paper thin house of cards of the Chinese economy and dictatorship), do not consider that NASA is a rapidly becoming a sideshow. Private space, primarily in the US, but also many other nations, are rocketing (pun intended) into a dynamic future that will leave China, with its bloated Kafkaesque corrupt bureaucracy and skyscraper of debt, in the dust.
The Chinese economy will expand more slowly in the years ahead, and there are some unrealistic elements, real estate bubbles that will collapse, as occurred a few years ago in the US, and overborrowing by the government. But fundamentally the Chinese economy is remarkably stable, based on real industrial production, real infrastructure, real trade, real education, real business entrepreneurship, and real hard work.
The ISS is short on resources. It needs new partners with deep pockets and human-rated rockets. China is the only real choice.