Head of China’s space science reaches out, Nature
“Some think that the Chang’e-3 mission provides an opportunity for China and NASA to collaborate. How has that been going? It is indeed a wonderful opportunity. The landing of the Change’e-3 spacecraft on the Moon kicked up a lot of dust over a landscape that had already been carefully surveyed by NASA’s two Moon orbiters, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer. This is a perfect controlled experiment — by coincidence rather than by design — to study the composition of lunar dust and atmosphere, but it will require data exchange between the two countries. China is eager to collaborate, but nothing has come through from the US side because of the 2011 spending bill.”
Keith’s note: Our Congress goes out of its way to not cooperate with China in space because they do not like China’s internal and foreign policies. Russia invades Ukraine, the U.S. howls in protest, and yet we still operate the ISS together with Russia. Consistency? Of course not.

Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member 🖖🏻

15 replies on “Glaring Inconsistencies in U.S. Space Collaboration Policies”

  1. The difference is that Russia has something we want. IE: A ride to ISS/rocket engines.

      1. American taxpayers paid about 70 percent of the cost of ISS, so having access to the station would be pretty important overall.

    2. Russia charges through the nose. China has deep pockets and man-rated rockets. They want to join ISS and would pay their own way.

  2. And they have a vital role in a 100 billion dollar JOINT space project. We’re kinda in bed with them now. China doesn’t have skin in the game here.

      1. Or congress could get off their butts and fully fund NASA request to get commercial crew transportation off the ground, or even speed it up. No reason at all we should be relying on anyone to get our people into space.

  3. JSC, SpaceX and Masten have all developed engines recently. They could be tasked with developing a new launch vehicle engine for manufacturing in the United States.

  4. One reason for the problems with space cooperation with China stem from China’s decision to destroy one of their old weather satellites with an anti satellite weapon, polluting space considerably. Prior to that, space ties between the 2 countries had been improving.

    1. It was a fragment from the “guaranteed safe” tit-for-tat US ASAT test that nearly hit the ISS. The thing that sabotaged ties between China and the US was a Congressman named Frank Wolf.

      1. You should check your history. If you had checked wikipedia, you might have found this regarding China’s ASAT test

        “The test is the largest recorded creation of space debris in history with at least 2,317 pieces of trackable size (golf ball size and larger) and an estimated 150,000 debris particles.”

        Also

        “In April 2011, debris from the Chinese test passed close by the International Space Station”

        Please provide some evidence to support your claims.

  5. Oh please. What a pointless and naive post. What do you expect the United States to do? Separate our modules from the Russian modules? Maybe we should have our astronauts jump out of the airlock to get home instead of riding down on Soyuz. Hell, let’s just take our toys and go home!

    We haven’t recalled our ambassador or broken off diplomatic relations with Russia. I wouldn’t think that breaking our international agreements with regard to the ISS is warranted either. That’s especially true when you consider that doing so would hurt us just as bad as it would hurt the Russians (and result in the end of the ISS).

    I don’t think even Fox News would sink so low as to publish a commentary like this and I find it very unfortunate that Keith would. Talk about fanning the flames of ignorance.

    1. The problem isn’t that we are working with Russia. The problem is that we refuse to work with China.

  6. The current view held by the Chinese community is that they are not technologically advanced enough to work with glorious NASA, dissent view not counting. It would be a dream come true if all hail glorious NASA would work with CNSA or any of the academies. Just saying.

Comments are closed.