A Detailed Look At China's Space Ambitions
2019 Report to Congress of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission
“- China’s goal to establish a leading position in the economic and military use of outer space, or what Beijing calls its “space dream,” is a core component of its aim to realize the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” In pursuit of this goal, China has dedicated high-level attention and ample funding to catch up to and eventually surpass other spacefaring countries in terms of space-related industry, technology, diplomacy, and military power. If plans hold to launch its first long-term space station module in 2020, it will have matched the United States’ nearly 40-year progression from first human spaceflight to first space station module in less than 20 years.
– China views space as critical to its future security and economic interests due to its vast strategic and economic potential. Moreover, Beijing has specific plans not merely to explore space, but to industrially dominate the space within the moon’s orbit of Earth. China has invested significant resources in exploring the national security and economic value of this area, including its potential for space-based manufacturing, resource extraction, and power generation, although experts differ on the feasibility of some of these activities.
– Beijing uses its space program to advance its terrestrial geopolitical objectives, including cultivating customers for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), while also using diplomatic ties to advance its goals in space, such as by establishing an expanding network of overseas space ground stations. China’s promotion of launch services, satellites, and the Beidou global navigation system under its “Space Silk Road” is deepening participants’ reliance on China for space-based services.”
– Earlier China postings
A fairly standard review of what China has done, so far, as far as
strategy and policy. The interesting interactions of parts not yet
clarified will come in the Policy and Strategic interactions with
Logistics levels. People may be rushing too fast to perceive what a
future tactical clash may look like, while neglecting policies that
enable Logistics, …or don’t.
One thing still obscure is how successful the current policies will be in providing a firmly economical logistics basis for PLASSF operations, beyond trying to pot off the current 60-70 operational assets the US has today. The mention of the “Military-civil fusion” policies may allow us to see the beginnings of what *could* produce an economical logistical basis for larger scale PLASSF activities. Their engineers are quite as capable as anyone’s. The question is whether the engineers will truly be given the freedom to innovate after having general objectives mapped out for them. The largest thing China has even close to flight is an expendable with 25,000 kilos to LEO as a launcher baseline. Will the sponsors of “military-civil-fusion” have the willingness to be embarrassed by the sort of early and fast failures that SpaceX has endured and learned so much from? Can they
stand enough embarrassment to get to the SHS levels of reusable launch capability? I dunno.
All the approval from Beijing’s Military Affairs Committee in the world won’t help if they cannot keep political influence on engineering concept selection as low as the case in New Space activities in the US. At some point, they will encounter resistance to “purely engineering decisions” from their equivalents of Senator Shelby. How they deal with that will be a crucial to their efforts. On the other hand, they may find that a truly innovative group of engineers will grow into as much a problem for the current political hierarchy as Sakharov was for the USSR hierarchy, or far worse.
In the past the USSR and the PRC both have used espionage to ameliorate what was felt to be too great a dependence on their technical people, leading to opposition like Sakharov’s. Will they truly be able to let networked teams of engineers have so much freedom as to innovate like New Space? I dunno.
The general goal, to produce a China that utterly dominates its cultural sphere, which is all the Earth in this information/communications era, seems to me more than a little too much like, if you will, “intellectual autarky”, where stability inside China is guaranteed by making sure that there are no inputs to China that bring, …”turmoil”. They have awoken to the long-term point that the cultural sphere, within a century, will expand to the entire Solar System, or the Inner System, at minimum. It is notable that they have selected *just* the Cis-lunar sphere as a “sufficient bulwark” against cultural “turmoil”. Whether that remains the policy choice will be an interesting question.
China can have all the ‘space dreams’ it wants. The fact is nothing substantial is possible without cheap (really cheap) launch and US private industry has a considerable lead here.
SpaceX with partially reusable F9 and FH and development well under way of the fully reusable Starship. As well Blue Origin is tackling reusability with New Glenn.
Taken together this is a lead China may struggle to match.
Time will tell.
The point about China going from first human flight to first long-term space station in 20 years versus 40 years for the US is interesting. SpaceX produced the Falcon 9 in about twelve years, depending on how you could it, and starting with less than heritage than China currently has. Combining those two things, that lead may not be as big as you suggest.
Put another way: what took them so long? And even leaving aside the merriment surrounding charges of espionage, the science and technology surrounding the space business is stunningly ubiquitous.
Sure, there are finer points not widely known, one assumes; but space exploration benefits from a principle once noticed by a Famous Science Fiction Writer (the name escapes me!), which is: once we see that FTL (insert your favorite meme here) is possible, just count the years until we figure it out. Surely this accounts for the proliferation around the world of rocket and other space designs?
And of course there are the countless meetings and such that you scientist-types attend, in order to learn from one another?
“Put another way: what took them so long?”
What took them so long was waiting for their first fully fledged reactionary in Xi Jinping, against the idea that the State might not command the whole of the economy and society. He’s been crafting means to put his hierarchy back in charge since long before him becoming “President-for-Life”. If need be, he’d march all the way back into Maoism. Space seems to be a prospective propaganda and cultural barrier against the idea that people outside the State could do things better than the Sate. After all, … “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”
Terrifying, and thrilling, all at the same time.
Terrifying? Yes. There are several examples illustrating the efficacy of the Chinese ‘hare vs. tortoise’ philosophy, with is one of the chief benefits of a command-driven system. In other words, small amounts are compounded overtime, producing consistent results…
In the US, each administration brings policy changes. Keith has been documenting these for many yers/decades, along with the accompanying inefficiencies.
The American thinking is easily explained: stunning resources and overwhelming exuberance. Put another way: we are both too rich and too young. Meanwhile, patience drives the Chinese, rooted in the self-confidence that can result only from 5,000 years of history.
Now comes the ‘thrilling’ part:
Leadership in this arena has been sorely lacking. The Chinese are no blowhards and they are not to be dismissed. Even demonstrably small efforts, even efforts reminding us of ‘shoo fly’; even failures along the way are to be taken seriously. When the Chinese show lunar “industrial domination”, the future direction of humanity will be set.
I feel a sort of melancholia, when I consider Apollo, the Grand Prize in episodic thinking. And in the same way that Apollo has acquired an invisible and sad patina of pathos, so 2070 Western space efforts: “You shoulda seen our rockets!”
Thrilling.
For better or worse; I am watching China’s space ascendancy with great interest. They are expending great effort to raise the awareness of technology among it’s citizens. Chinese people should take great pride in their achievements. The other side of the coin over here in the western world? I’ve just seen a new bunch of historic space documentary films put up on YouTube, mercilessly trolled by Flat Earthers and similar imbeciles. There is an organized campaign to dumb down and stupify people about science and space here, in the ‘Western World’. That aspect is getting out of control.
Exactly. We see China going all out with 5G. We constantly talk about promoting STEM but yet looking to “make things more efficient and reduce costs” (meaning cut budgets and reduce spending). Also reminds me the interview with Gen. Kwast saying Chinese don’t need to build better rockets or satellites, only need to be able to deny RF spectrum.
Its kinda funny how in the early days of both China and Russia’s space programs women flew without any thought as to if they could or could not, Yet we waited years for that to happen with the Western Nations. STEM is given a lot of talk in the West but are we really promoting it?
I suggest you check just how many women the Russians flew in space. Especially the number flown for a purpose other than merely to claim they have done so.
Turns out the list its not much shorter than the American list 🙂
Four Russians women versus fifty-three Americans, if I counted correctly (there is a list on Wikipedia that’s up to date.) And at least two of those Russians were flown for the very transparent reason of letting the Soviet Union claim a “first.” NASA never did that. They just got rid of a ridiculous requirement for being a military test pilot, started hiring women as mission specialists, and through the normal selection process ended up flying a woman on the third flight to include mission specialists. Tereshkova has gotten to spend the rest of her life listening to “just because you’re a woman” remarks; Ride didn’t, or at least not from anyone who knew what they were talking about.
The Russians have about 27 active cosmonauts of which only 1 is a woman. There are no women in their most recent trainee class. Of the 38 active astronauts on the NASA website 12 are women and half of the latest class of astronauts are women. Not perfect with lots of room for improvement, but far better than for any other space power and it is going in the right direction at NASA, not going in reverse as in Russia.
Send us some links so we can downvote some flat earthers 🙂
Too many links but the first batch: look up ‘Periscope Films’ on YouTube.
Who on Earth could be down voting this and some of my other comments on NASAWATCH? It’s never happened before. I have my suspicions…
And China is still launching over populated areas and in the process killing it’s own citizens.
https://arstechnica.com/sci…
It may sound irrelevant at first, but I think the scoring system for the game, Go, is interesting. There are two ways to decide who won the game. The system commonly used in China is about how much territory on the board each player controls at the end of the game. The system commonly used in Japan and Korea is similar but with penalties for how many pieces the players lost during the game. I think the difference is culturally interesting.
“If plans hold to launch its first long-term space station module in 2020, it will have matched the United States’ nearly 40-year progression from first human spaceflight to first space station module in less than 20 years.”
Yeah, only because the US used the extra time to build a super heavy and went to the Moon, then built a gigantic reusable spaceplane. China only reduced the interval because they’re not doing all the things US did, their speed is not fast at all, there is already a 3 year hiatus of Chinese manned missions.
These are excellent points that illustrate our (my) propensity for self-flagellation; at the very same time that these marvelous machines were conceived and built we were (I was) busy pointing to rapidly changing policy directions.
We’ve accomplished a hell of a lot, despite naysayers.
I’m glad you pointed out that quote. I was going to say that is a really odd way to put it, and it obviously leaves out a LOT.
Actually if you count the time from John Glenn to Skylab it was only 11 years. But than NASA did have the distraction of going to the Moon in between the first American in orbit and the first American space station.
The article’s statement was poorly written. But the sentence said “long-term” space stations. I’d take that to mean ones occupied on a continuous basis (Mir, ISS and the planned Chinese station) not ones which were occasionally visited (e.g. Salyut or Skylab.) That makes 40 years for NASA the correct number.
By that measure than they are doing good as it took the Soviets 25 years to go from launching the first human into space until Mir. As a footnote, I read all reading somewhere that NASA was hoping to visit and extend Skylab’s stay in orbit by visiting it with the Shuttle, but a combination of Shuttle delays and extensive atmospheric drag made that impossible. But Skylab surviving into the Shuttle era is one of those interesting “what if’s” of history.
Yes, there was supposed to have been a Shuttle mission to Skylab. I think there may even have been plans for the Shuttle to boost it to a higher orbit. That, obviously, didn’t happen. Shuttle delays were part of the problem. The other problem was solar activity. It have very little impact on the lower atmosphere, but a very large (and still pretty unpredictable) on the upper atmosphere. That includes drag on spacecraft in low Earth orbit, and there was a fairly strong solar maximum in the late 1970s.
Skylab if you recall was kinda broken from the beginning and was never meant to stay long term , like ISS is needs a push every now and then and not real plan was made to give it one!
This isn’t going to be popular, but so what? Apollo was spectacular, but it was also a dead end (i.e. unsustainable by virtue of being spectacular and using an incredibly expensive, super heavy lift launch vehicles.) The Shuttle was an impressive technology program, but as a “Space Transportation System” it was basically a flop. So NASA spent those extra two decades doing things which, ultimately, were not a step forward. China apparently took a longer view and didn’t do those things. I have trouble honestly saying they made a mistake.
And in terms of a three-year hiatus in flying astronauts, what about the hiatus in NASA’s human spaceflight program? We haven’t a launched an astronaut into orbit in seven years. Hitching rides with the Russians doesn’t show NASA is more capable than China. It could be that they don’t see a whole lot of work for astronauts in low Earth orbit, and don’t feel a need to send them up just to prove they can. The efficiency of ISS experiments and the value of having astronauts up there to preform them has, in fact, been widely questioned.
I happily claim the moniker of Shuttle Hugger but the facts are clear that the Shuttle was a success – the organization that flew it was the problem. We did do a lot of science and proved the value of a winged vehicle, hopefully the DreamChaser will be a step back to where we were.
Given some time we hopefully will be able to be able to do maintenance and assembly at locations other than ISS.
When the Chinese demonstrate the ability to do complex maintenance and assembly in space we should get worried.
I think we’re defining success differently. The Shuttle did accomplish a number of impressive things. But did it accomplish the program’s goals, as stated at the beginning? It did not, either in terms of flight rates or launch costs.
Nor did the Shuttle serve as a stepping stone towards lower cost or more readily reusable launch vehicles. NASA and American companies are developing capsules not space planes for human spaceflight. Reusable launch vehicles take the form of vertical takeoff and landing. And even DreamChaser is sufficiently different from the Shuttle that I’d rave trouble calling it a linear successor.
I’d also question the value of “the ability to do complex maintenance and assembly in space.” Maintenance and assembly are not goals in and of themselves. You don’t build something purely for the sake of building it (sculpture excepted.) Complex maintenance and assembly only have value if they allow you to accomplish some other goal. If China finds a way to accomplish those goals without assembling complex, orbital structures, and we can’t, I think that would be something to worry about.
Dreamchaser is basically what the shuttle should have been. No one really needs a Space Shuttle to build a space station. Mir was built without a space plane and Tiangong 3 will be built without a space plane. The shuttle was far more expensive than it should have been mainly because someone gave it that huge cargo bay !
Um China has multiple Launch vehicles and don’t need a space plane anymore than the USA really needed one !! We have got to stop looking at the victories of the past as being beyond reproach. Its a new Century the western world needs to get some Victories for the future , because you can bet China will!
What kind of heavy-lift capabilities does China have currently, and what will they have in the future? And how will those compare to SLS, Falcon Heavy, and Starship?
Your questions are easily answered, from Wikipedia to YouTube. And on YT, The Everyday Astronaut has done yeoman’s work explaining all sorts of things.
China is considering a Saturn V class launcher with the Long March 9. But if they worked on a 50 or 60 ton class launcher instead they could move more quickly to doing Lunar missions with twinned launches. In fact a few years ago, a set of PowerPoint images of just such a mission architecture made it to the interwebs. Have a Google and you may find it.
I have a question that’s been nagging for years. It’s a bit off-topic, but:
Creating/ maintaining any off-Earth outpost requires huge amounts of mass moved among gravity wells.
Is a bigger booster always the best approach?
Perhaps there’s a cost/benefit analysis that says a booster lifting XXX tons is efficient, and desirable, and that a booster lifting XXX+1 tons is no longer efficient, nor desirable.
Keeping to the physics, and science (ignoring cultural elements): the question is so fundamental that surely reports and studies exist, somewhere; or maybe the thinking is very obvious?
Reusable surely is the direction the worlds booster fleet should be moving in. Reliable ‘Salvo launch’ of medium-heavy launchers from multiple pads with in space assembly could work, too.
The key to remember is that Earth is by far the deepest gravity well with the rest of the Solar System (Moon, Mars, asteroids, moons of the outer planets, Pluto, etc.) have by comparison quite shallow gravity wells. The only thing that comes close is Venus and it’s difficult to imagine any reason to send anything but robots on one way missions there.
I haven’t done the math since I don’t have the software, but I suspect the F9R booster could serve as a SSTO RLV on the Moon and just about everywhere else of interest. And that of course is the goal of the Starship with the Super Heavy booster only needed for Earth.
Not quite. For the outer moons, getting into orbit (or to escape velocity) isn’t the whole problem. After escaping the moon’s gravity, you’re still deep in the gravity well of a gas (or ice) giant. Less a large number of inefficiencies, I get 7.6 km/s to go from the surface of Io to solar orbit (i.e. jovian escape velocity.) I don’t think even the optimistic estimates for Starship can manage that without tanking. Of course, Io would be the worst case, and I can’t see why anyone would want to go there. (Other than science, which, given the radiation, is probably better done with smaller, robotic missions.)
True, but being in space you could use an ion drive to get out of the gravity well of Jupiter. But I was thinking of just going from the surface into space. In terms of interplanetary flight I expect either nuclear-electric or solar electric to dominate. In terms of moons I actually think the ones around Uranus and Neptune are more interesting places to visit, although the Saturn system is very rich in terms of the resources needed for an industrial society.
Ion drives (and other sorts of low acceleration propulsion) are extremely inefficient in a gravity well. For the jovian system, I think it’s safe to rule out Io and Europa for human visits (due to radiation), possibly Ganymede as well. But that leaves Callisto, with plenty of water ice for refueling. And some carbon or carbon rich material for making methane as well.
In the Saturn system, I just realized it’s even easier than I’d thought. The atmosphere on Titan is a great assist in terms of aerocapture, landing and flight in general. But it’s also got a significant methane abundance, and the equivalent of bedrock on Titan is water ice. So it’s really one stop shopping for spacecraft operations.
I don’t think we know enough about the satellites of Uranus and Neptune to really asses them.
Yes, the Saturn system would be ideal for a space based civilization as everything you need are either on its moons, its rings or its atmosphere.
Triton seems to be basically a Kuiper Belt world like Pluto and likely has most of the elements needed for a space society to survive. It would be an interesting world to explore.
The entire solar system is ripe for the picking. And as we learn more about exo-planets it’s becoming clear the we are indeed quite lucky: abundant energy and abundant mineral resources. The future is quite bright indeed.
There are many studies on that, but there are also so many uncertainties and assumptions that the studies are inconclusive. At one extreme, you don’t want to send up bolts and circuit boards on very small launch vehicles, and then let the astronauts assemble everything in orbit. (In fact, Asimov wrote a good, short and funny story around that idea.) But, at the other extreme, it gets to the point where multiple launches are necessary. With current or near-future technology, we aren’t going to be able to launch a real, interplanetary spaceship, fully fueled, in one shot. But I don’t think anyone really knows where between those extremes the optimal solution lives.
“I don’t think anyone really knows where between those extremes the optimal solution lives”
Which is the answer to my question, thank you: “Who knows”?
Listening to Hamilton’s “Salvation”, in which it’s noted an even small incremental increase in gravity would tie us forever to the surface of Earth. I have no way to assess the point, which was partly why I asked the question.
Which is probably one of the answers to Fermi’s Paradox. Where are they? Either trapped on a high gravity world or under kilometers of ice. The Earth is fortunate to have such a stable surface environment on a world with enough gravity for a thick atmosphere, but not too much gravity to trap us here.
“If plans hold to launch its first long-term space station module in 2020, it will have matched the United States’ nearly 40-year progression from first human spaceflight to first space station module in less than 20 years.”
Doesn’t matter they will not acquire the 2o years of living and operating in LEO over night ..
As usual, Scott Manley has a timely video:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Perhaps finding this conclusion non-obvious makes some sort of point, but what?
It seems some foreign power always has plans to dominate space. First it was the Soviets before their economic meltdown, then the Japanese before their economic meltdown, and now its China, or at least it will be until their economic meltdown. But than they were suppose to also pass the U.S. economy in terms of GDP in 2010 and they are still a distant second.
That’s apparently true. It’s not the numbers that bother me, it’s the softer, more qualitative issues like motivation (and others).
Ever see a cartoon version of, say the Big Bad Wolf? And he’s standing in front of the house built by the little piggies? And, as cartoons allow, he’s gathering himself up with a huge breath? So much so that his entire chest is gigantically magnified, so full of air; when he lets the breath rip the entire building becomes a pile of sticks?
That’s how I’m viewing the Chinese, to a greater or lesser extent: gathering themselves, mostly because that is all they can do at the moment, but watching you just know that there’s a hell of a storm coming…
Yes, but America is more like Practical Pig who built his house out of brick. Foreign powers have been blowing for nearly 250 years, (UK, Germany, Japan, etc.) and we just come out of the contest stronger than ever.
It’s off topic, but I think you are neglecting some events between 1812 and 1815.
True, but I tend to agree with those who regard the war of 1812 as mostly a draw, which was good as King George did have hopes of bringing his wayward colonies back into UK. But the price of the English victories were just too high.
I’m not so sure that I’m willing to jump on that wagon, Professor. The future isn’t predicted from the past; and nowadays, just about anyone can point to deep structural issues that threaten the future.
My generation is living at the peak of civilization. In the context of world history, life in America is beyond sweet.
Many of us, particularly early Boomers, have marketable professions that require laughingly little effort in return for laughably huge rewards. So, too, a scientist, or college professor.
For many reasons, far too many to list here, the future that I had at age 20 isn’t available to kids now; $1.5 Trillion in student debt is a sufficient exemplar.
So, no, we’ve not built a strong house on a strong foundation. We’ve simply sucked out the marrow at the expense of many, including the future.
Perhaps, but considered how the world looked to American kids in the 1930’s when President Roosevelt reminded us “The only fear we have is fear itself.” or in 1941. And few Americans today realize how bad the future looked during the “Long Depression” of the 1890’s.
The basic problem is that the media has been feeding us a diet of doom, gloom and guilt for the last decade. Folks are sick of doom, gloom and guilt and are ready for a message about hope for the future, which is why Elon Musk is so popular.
Adding to debate of Matula and Spencer, after WWII and beginning of Space Age the US had considerable infrastructure and many got excellent education from the GI Bill (later applied to Apollo program). Soviets were devastated after WWII but surprisingly was able to be a considerable power after and able to put up first satellites quite large. In response US invested much more in space infrastructure and education (boomers taking advantage of this got an excellent education for dirt cheap, concept of student debt was unheard of). And US had “hardware store on every corner” Soviets did not so if someone needs lubricate that works in a vacuum, there’s probably some company in southern California that already developed it and is available for sale. Soviets did not have such an economic system so their engineers had to make it from scratch (story from Matula).
Over the years we have been operating on the same infrastructure, de-industrialized much of it. Along comes the Chinese which we willingly transferred much of our industrial base, now we’re bitching they will dominate us. For starters lets invest in ourselves. But yet that’s a whole debate in itself.
The first step to doing so will be to raise tariffs to mirror those of nations production went to. With the U.S. tariff on imported automobiles being 2.5% and China’s being 25% it’s not surprising there were few American imports to Asia. Add to that China’s policy of keeping an artificially low rate of exchange and burning tons of coal to make energy prices cheap and its no wonder production fled to China.
Raising tariffs to mirror those of China and adding an import fee to counter the environmental damage from producing in China and another to offset China’s currency manipulation will result in those firms bringing those jobs back to the U.S.
The decline in exports this would generate for China, combined with their high debt levels would hit their economy hard and as Hong Kong shows the unemployed youth will quickly go to the streets when things start going bad. Together this would force the Chinese to rethink their space policy and ambitions. “No bucks, no Buck Rogers”.
In terms of education, the core problem is that a lot of students are getting bachelors and graduate degrees in fields with little prospect of employment. Bringing those production jobs back would steer many into good paying vocational careers. Redoing High School to require that graduates have skills in a trade, as used to be the case, will also address that issues. Few realize how desperate railroads, mining firms and oil firms are to find workers because of the focus of education on college and high level STEM fields making most feel overqualified for such jobs.
A national focus on space industrialization and settlement, not just through NASA but beyond NASA at the Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy and Department of Commerce would also generate spinoff industries like vertical farming, communities self-sufficient in utilities, and addictive manufacturing that would also move the American economy forward. Most economic benefits would appear long before the first 1G lunar settlements are built. It should be noted these are also the same technologies that will be needed to harden the U.S. against the effects of climate change by insulating key economic sectors like manufacturing, transportation and agriculture.
Of course many will object to this type of hard ball geopolitical warfare and national strategy, but it’s what China and other nations have been doing for decades. It is what is driving the China space strategy this thread is focused. It’s time for the U.S. to join in.
Actually the lack of American Imports to Asia is mainly because you don’t manufacture anything they need. China, Korea and Taiwan can supply most of asia’s tech goods , they get natural gas and iron from Australia as well as some food stuff. This means they are free to export to the USA which see’s them as a cheap way of producing electronic equipment. Also when you Tariff a nation like China which produces the vast majority of your consumer goods the people you hurt most are well the US consumer. China pays nothing and doesn’t get anything from it. They mostly likely don’t even see a downturn in consumption , because well who builds TV’s or cell phone in the USA ( NO ONE ) !!
You underestimate the strength of the U.S. in manufacturing and that China needs U.S. markets far more than the U.S. needs goods from China as over a quarter of their exports are shipped here. As for America consumers, the increase in incomes resulting from more manufacturing jobs will offset the increase in costs from buying goods made in the U.S.A. Two weaknesses with Free Trade theory is it assumes small nations with limited resources and fails to take into account labor incomes from producing the good.
At the rate China is catching up in 5 years time they will have surpassed all other nations and be on the way to Mars !
The only way I see that happening is if both Starship and New Glenn fail. China doesn’t have anything to compete with either one until the 2030s.
I would have to see NEW GLENN launch to even bother considering it an contender, even starship at its most primative point is more likely to be seen and launched than New Glenn. Bezo’s deals in Vaporware !
Why do you think free or not free matters with regards to human exploration and advance. May as well have said I prefer Yellow People be last !! Are Americans actually free ? We are all governed in someway, all governments exert control of people , the Chinese are just more overt about it and whilst i don’t agree with them they won’t be sitting back and going “I might just wait for a FREE people to land on Mars first!” Want it go take it !
These will be interesting times indeed of leapfrogging by countries and private enterprises endowed with the wealth and material resources to place a stake on outer space assets, beginning with the moon. The template for growth ‘out there’ has been hammered out on Planet Earth, with political, military and ownership for ownership’s sake entities, dictating which country or enterprise lands exactly where. The underlying reasoning for doing all this, of course, is that everyone else is!
In my mind, every entity/enterprise that can, has to join in this pursuit as quickly as possible, whether singly or bundled with like-minded members that can be trusted to stick to an agreed-upon purpose. Once the initial step of permanently residing on an outpost like the moon long enough to prove that it’s possible to be essentially self-supportive, the greater ventures out into near space will become less of a perceived risk or, in the eyes of naysayers, waste of time and resources. In fact the real math for determining the next journeys will be viewed with an entirely new set of rules and concepts, an exciting time in humanity’s first real steps away from home base.
I think it’s safe to say that in the case of China and their intended goals beyond earth, there is more than a little political emphasis in the way they express reasons for going. But underneath it all lies the same exact rationale that makes us all go–it’s there. It’s not owned or managed by anyone–yet, so the sooner, the better. All the platitudes about ‘why’ are overshadowed by this fact.
Just like the actual specs on electronic components made in China, their
claims of achievements are far from reality.
They have major quality problems. Just think of the massive numbers of
things that say “Made In China” lying there rotting in our landfills.
Remember “Made in Japan”?
Yes – Japanese made goods are usually of fantastic quality. China is moving in that direction steadily.
Matt: I think my reference might be far too dated! I was reminded of Japan’s initial reputation for manufacturing dramatically poor products and earning the appropriate reputation.
The Japanese learned, and learned fast; many nowadays have no idea of just how poor Japanese products were initially. And I mean really crappy, back in the 60’s and early 70’s. I don’t know when the tide changed for them.
They simply had to learn what worked in the US market. A friend of mine bought Honda’s first US car import, which we all called “The Green Pea”. Its drive train in that first year included the drive chain from their largest motorcycle! But it got Kenny from one place to another, …most of the time. By the time I bought a Honda Civic, in 1976, Their cars were a transformed product, and of excellent quality. My brother, who worked for a company that was a Detroit Iron molding machine supplier, still razzed me about getting parts for it, …until I told him that Portland was going to be the sole point of import for Honda products. He still grumped a bit, …occasionally.
Yes. Japanese motorcycles have been very good since the late 1960s and their cars very good since the early ’70s. And I have Akai and TEAC audio gear from the early ’70s that are still going!!
It started in World War II when they were shocked by the power of American manufacturing. After the Japanese firms started co-ventures with American firms to rebuild and hired quality consultants from the U.S. like Dr. Deming. They than applied and expanded on what they learned. By it still took a couple of decades for a culture of quality to take root in their manufacturing industry.
That doesn’t seem to have affected their space efforts. I don’t see an unusually large number of failures. Admittedly, they are a bit vague on the planned results until after the fact. But from the outside, I’d say the current state of the Russian space sector screams quality control problems, while the Chinese space sector does not. (By the way, the cheap junk in American landfills is mostly there because we wanted to buy cheap junk, and they gave us exactly what the market asked for.)
All’s i can say is then that you best have the USA get its self in first gear because the next 10 years might be a long and bumpy communist dominated ride !! Many Chinese would consider themselves free by the way , they have jobs and earn money they have a middle and upper class , they travel and they live in a very similar manner to American’s day today. They just have a different governance and view of the world.
I wouldn’t have put it that way, but there is a certain bias in terms like “free” people and “oppressive” governments. It is a matter of opinion and culture. Some people don’t mind the restrictions of an “oppressive” government and actually like some the security and stability those governments often provide. There are those who actually like the idea of “a place for everyone, and everyone in their place.” And there are also people would be appalled by some of the restrictions a “free” people take for granted. For example, the health care system in Europe or having to work over 40 hours a week in the United States just to get by.
Personally, I agree with you about the governments of the United States and China. And I’ve got opinions about what sort of government I’d rater see in some future space colony. But I’m more than willing to say that’s my personal preference and bias, and I wouldn’t want to impose it on someone who thought otherwise.