American space policy is not like other American foreign policy. It is the USA that is pushing a model of international cooperation and governing treaties. It is China that is taking an approach of unilateral actions and national appropriation.
Isn't China not allowed to "Cooperate" by the Americans ?
Honestly with current american leadership I expect as soon as China will have a decent space station they will also demand that S will have an even bigger and cooler US only one.
China doesn’t cooperate with other agencies largely because they have no desire to. The purposefully shun international cooperation, then turn around and complain in People’s Daily that the international space community has rejected them. When I was at NASA we tried very hard to build a scientific relationship with China’s planetary science researchers, to no avail. We were able to get Saudi Arabia and Israel to come together and sit at the same table together, but not China.
On the US side working with China is not banned specifically, but the fact that the Chinese space program is military not civilian and because of a history of aggressive hacking and stealing of technology and trade secrets, it requires special permission and extra care.
What's your perspective on China's desire to do things unilaterally? Are they "catching up"? Do they pose a threat to peaceful space endeavors? Are they good or bad stewards with respect to space junk?
Does your perspective here give you insight as to other ways China conducts its affairs? How do you see One Belt One Road panning out? Will China own Africa and the developing world? Will they leap frog the West?
I should mention that my opinion of China's government is colored as much by the fact that I married a Taiwanese girl, my kids have Taiwanese passports and I'm personally connected to the struggle of both Taiwan and Hong Kong.
But nevertheless not only is being unbiased in government work A Very Big Deal, but I've also worked more recently on contract proposals related to Belt and Road and you gotta keep personal biases at bay to be successful in business too. I'll try to give you the informed, yet detached answer you're looking for.
First, the Chinese communist party is a kleptocratic, oligarchic organization. All government programs exist to profit and empower those in charge, whom for the most part inherited their privileged position. Second, the CCP maintains their control over their population through stoking nationalist fears and anti-west sentiments. Same as Iran and other autocratic states.
These two facts have a particular bearing on their space policy. The space program is a source of national prestige--when they launched a man into space they accomplished something only two other nations had done (never mind that it was a near exact clone of the Russian Soyuz capsule...). Unlike the Europeans, Japanese, Canadians, India, UAE, and Israel, China doesn't have to rely on anybody to launch their astronauts to space. Each new milestone they reach--landing a rover on the moon, launching a space station--magnifies this point. Once they send human beings to the Moon they will use that as a claim of technical superiority over the west. We saw a glimpse of this when they landed a rover on the Moon, a feat the USA never did on the Moon specifically. To partner with any other nation would be to diminish or perhaps even eliminate entirely the propaganda value to the party.
But the value of the Chinese space program isn't just propaganda. It's also being used as a play for potential power and profit. Jokes aside, military space power really is the dominant domain of the 21st century for conflict between superpowers, whether actual or merely planned for, like air power was in the 20th. I'm not going to adequately summarize military space policy in a HN comment, but basically the analogy to air dominance is very accurate: without satellites most of our modern war fighting capability is neutralized or made ineffective. Anti-satellite weaponry in its various forms is the new ICBM or stealth strike bomber. This isn't common knowledge outside of the military-industrial complex, but that's because our adversaries since the collapse of the USSR have had asymmetric capabilities with anti-satellite weapons consisting of camouflage tents and caves.
The one thing uniquely positive I have to say about about the Chinese space program leads to the final point to be made: profit. Whereas every other human space program is science and/or prestige based, China's is run by a country looking for an exploitative edge over major world powers, and bureaucrats within the party looking for ways to get internal leverage themselves. It turns out that the Moon and near-Earth asteroids are an abundant source of minerals and metals rare on Earth and can be mined for far less than you might naïvely think. So there are young turks within the party who are advocating for a cislunar economic exclusion zone. They are talking about violating the Outer Space Treaty of 1967's prohibition against claims of sovereignty over celestial bodies. The official plan is to construct a lunar base and perform resource exploration, WITHOUT international cooperation. Indeed, while NASA is working to get the Artimis Accords in place to reaffirm the existing cooperative model and try to build a collaborative effort to return to the Moon and go beyond, while opening up cislunar space to private resource exploration, China is laying the ground work for a land-grab. There are serious talks about a Chinese cislunar economic exclusion zone explicitly compared to the South China ...
"Each new milestone they reach--landing a rover on the moon, launching a space station--magnifies this point. Once they send human beings to the Moon they will use that as a claim of technical superiority over the west. We saw a glimpse of this when they landed a rover on the Moon, a feat the USA never did on the Moon specifically. To partner with any other nation would be to diminish or perhaps even eliminate entirely the propaganda value to the party."
Your point here can be easily proven false by simple facts like these below
> China’s Chang’e-4 lander is running on a LEON2-FT microprocessor core, especially designed for space missions by European industry with close ESA support and sold commercially by the Microchip company – marketed as the AT697.
> Lunar lander
> Lunar Lander Neutrons and Dosimetry (LND), a neutron dosimeter developed by Kiel University in Germany
> Lunar rover
> Advanced Small Analyzer for Neutrals (ASAN), is an energetic neutral atom analyzer provided by the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF)
> Note the logos of the European (ESA), French (CNES), Argentine (CONAE) and Austrian (FFG) space agencies in addition to that of the China National Space Agency (CNSA).
"The one thing uniquely positive I have to say about about the Chinese space program leads to the final point to be made: profit."
Is this sincere discussion or sarcasm?
"Whereas every other human space program is science and/or prestige based, China's is run by a country looking for an exploitative edge over major world powers, and bureaucrats within the party looking for ways to get internal leverage themselves. It turns out that the Moon and near-Earth asteroids are an abundant source of minerals and metals rare on Earth and can be mined for far less than you might naïvely think"
It's fairly clear that the difficulties, hazards and costs of space mining make it impossible - let alone economical - with our current technological capability.
"So there are young turks within the party who are advocating for a cislunar economic exclusion zone. They are talking about violating the Outer Space Treaty of 1967's prohibition against claims of sovereignty over celestial bodies. The official plan is to construct a lunar base and perform resource exploration, WITHOUT international cooperation."
"There are serious talks about a Chinese cislunar economic exclusion zone explicitly compared to the South China Sea, and estimated to be worth $10 trillion dollars by 2050 (crazy optimistic numbers, but that is the claim"
These are extraordinary claims. What's your source?
"Regarding Belt and Road, I'm not sure what unique opinions I can offer. It's what most commentators have described it as recently: a debt trap to capture the best ports and enter into lucrative markets with the same sort of unequal treaties the europeans used against China in the 19th century."
Since this is getting into the realm of geopolitics and propaganda. I will leave you and other readers with this
> But a number of us academics who have studied China’s practices in detail have found scant evidence of a pattern indicating t...
Did you read the news and comments when SpaceX did something ? I seen a lot of national pride, I think it is nomral that american citizens would feel pride(or some similar feeling) and I think Trump, Obama and other politicians had something to say. I expect now you will say that american pride is better then chinese pride, and somehow americans nationalistic feelings are superior to everyone else.
My point that started all this thread was that I hope China and US will both get better diplomats and for example we can have international space station on the Moon. And of course you can still have the big guys putting nukes and other secret shit in secret orbits if that is what makes military hard(I am disappointed that space and internet is considered as a military "domain" ).
If US and Russia could find a way to cooperate then the fact US and China can't do it is still a diplomatic issue, incompetent leaders/diplomats (not the scientists).
>a history of aggressive hacking and stealing of technology and trade secrets,
Really? US should not complain about this since they have a lot of secret military satellites/weapons in space, detonated nukes in space, who knows what other covert operations have - but some other countries should not dare test soem anti-satellite weapons or other military equipment since only US is the only one to be trusted with this.
> China doesn’t cooperate with other agencies largely because they have no desire to.
Which nation refuses to sign more international treaties than any other and is actively working to retroactively disengage and absolve themselves of the responsibility they signed up for? Hint: It's not China. [1]
China was explicitly banned from the ISS program[2], you'll let the Saudis who stone adulterers to death in the streets but for some reason China can't possibly participate in the only hope for humanity to unite as one.
China's space program is offering a lot to the scientific world and they keep pushing forward despite US efforts to stop everyone on Earth collaborating with them. Their lunar base and farside radio telescope plans have some in the interantional community willing to give a big fu to those from overseas who demand we ignore what they are doing.
Breaking out of your bubble is a good thing now and then.
Any country taking sides in the coldwarV2.0 game is getting played and you will be left behind. Look after yourself.
> Which nation refuses to sign more international treaties than any other and is actively working to retroactively disengage and absolve themselves of the responsibility they signed up for? Hint: It's not China.
"American space policy is not like other American foreign policy"
As to restrictions against China, blame Congress not NASA. But the bans are not blanket bans, they are actually highly specific.
> As to restrictions against China, blame Congress not NASA. But the bans are not blanket bans, they are actually highly specific.
What does that even mean?
If I am selling food so expensive that no one can afford and start to dying from starving, then I can say: "I am not not allow you to eat, it's just that my price is highly specific?"
Do you really think regulations are not pushing away competitions because of the investment needed to overcome the numerous details? Would that same logic apply to your "highly specific" rules?
Like, you invested 1Billion, oh sorry, I cannot let you have this piece of tech, because of this rules; and I certainly forgot that this rules apply to this tech...
This is full of ... let's say ... misinformation. So sad HN is gradually turning into Reddit these days after the publicity/community has grown.
> In April 2011, the 112th United States Congress banned NASA from engaging in bilateral agreements and coordination with China
> In 2013, officials at NASA Ames prohibited Chinese nationals from attending Kepler Science Conference II.
> China has been barred from the ISS since 2011, when Congress passed a law prohibiting official American contact with the Chinese space program due to concerns about national security. “National security,” of course, is the lingua franca excuse for any country to do anything it jolly well wants to do even if it has nothing to do with, you know, the security of the nation.
The truth is that China is willing and has been actively cooperating with other space agencies.
> The Long March-5 rocket for China's Tianwen-1 Mars mission was transported to the launch area at China’s Wenchang Space Launch Center on July 17, 2020. Note the logos of the European (ESA), French (CNES), Argentine (CONAE) and Austrian (FFG) space agencies in addition to that of the China National Space Agency (CNSA).
This is my industry. I think I know a bit about it :)
Those restrictions aren't as broad as you are implying. There is no prohibition against NASA and the Chinese working together on certain types of projects. It just requires explicit authorization from headquarters to make sure that it doesn't run afoul of the very specific prohibitions in those legislation... which in practice is very hard to achieve, because of lawyers being lawyers, but not impossible when there is a powerful sponsor like the NASA Administrator behind it. My wording in the earlier post was poor: I should have said “broadly” instead of “specifically.” That more matches what I was trying to say, but the edit window has closed.
The prohibition, btw, is against "NASA’s use of appropriated funds for bilateral cooperation with China." Part of getting approval is showing that there is zero added cost to the collaboration, which in the case of things like planetary science research using existing assets, which is usually easy to do.
"This is my industry. I think I know a bit about it :)"
That's great! I understand there are genuine issues and concerns with international space cooperation especially round the sharing of technology. Do you mind sharing your insight and opinions on whether the current legislation is the best solution. And whether there is any alternatives?
-- from someone who is deeply interested in space exploration and cooperation but not in the industry.
The legislation is the work of a xenophobic China-skeptic, and it shows. There was no one willing to lobby against it because IP theft by China is a huge issue, so the big contractors would rather just not be exposed. But the legislation is not as comprehensive as it seems at first glance: it bans using appropriated funds for bilateral relationships involving China. This is actually highly specific: any project which either (a) doesn't involve expenditures (no added cost), or (b) is multilateral is exempt from the restrictions. So NASA can't make bilateral agreements with China, but can totally make a 3-way agreement with China, the USA, and Canada. Or it can let China participate in ways in which there is no added cost from China's participation per se.
Now of course the reality is that to make sure that NASA remains compliant, NASA HQ has instituted requirements that any project with interacts with China must get approval from HQ, and (lawyers being lawyers) it's way easier to just say no than to go through the effort of actually seeing if a proposed collaboration is compliant.
Now I can say that China is not interested in these sort of multilateral agreements unless they are entering as the dominant partner because of my experience at NASA, where I was fortunate enough to be working on a high-profile headquarters project that had an advocate on the 9th floor with the administrator's ear. We didn't have to worry about lawyers shooting down our proposed collaboration just to make their job easier. And our collaboration was both multilateral and zero added cost. However the Chinese space agency declined repeated efforts, and one of our China contacts eventually told us why: China refused to interact with NASA unless they are the dominant partner in the relationship. We, on the other hand, were building a team of equals. They were prohibited on their end from interacting with us for that reason.
Meanwhile I was getting calls to fix a database server backing an internal web service which was having performance issues... which I found was because it had saturated its network connection exfiltrating data from our internal network back to some IP associated with a Chinese research university.
The issues here are very real. A "partner" that is not interested in developing a mutually beneficial relationship, but rather stealing IP and extracting whatever leverage it can to leapfrog ahead of you, is not really a partner. There probably should be restrictions in place. But the current restrictions are rather toothless, and don't prevent the theft, which is happening anyway.
It's kinda important to note why they have been barred. They broke international space laws and were caught hacking JPL. Additionally china's space program is tightly tied to their milliary unlike NASA, ESA, JAXA, CSA, and Roscosmos.
NASA is very strongly tied into the US military. NASA projects are bid on by US military contractors, and NASA flies military airframe all the time. NASA pretty much is an arm of the US MIC, in a way that the ESA or the CSA aren't.
And also, the Soviet space program was also openly tied into their military, and that wasnt an issue.
The real reason is that the US wants to make everything hard and expensive for China, due to perceiving them as a competitor. It's just not interested in cooperation.
As for violation of international law, neither the US nor the Soviets cared about it. It's just politics.
A race to where? First base opn the Moon/Mars ?
I don't follow this topic but it could just be that countries like China, India have a space program and they are using it, hopefully we get better diplomats leading this big countries to avoid any waste on useless military/propaganda missions - a competed US leadership could invite China on the ISS.
> competed US leadership could invite China on the ISS.
And then what, watch the CCP trample HongKong, run massive internment camps, and threaten Taiwan with total destruction? China's (CCP's) values are wholly different from the free world's; I can't think of a way to co-exist when they can get upset for even just news reporting.
The west has pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into a dictatorship and they're building a powerful military with it. And Europe mostly hasn't even woken up to this yet.
The big parallel with Nazi Germany could I suppose be the coziness between the elites; all the way from little details like the Germans copying British foxhunting to King Edward VIII having a fascist spy as a girlfriend.
However, Germany was explicitly trying to be a colonial expansionist. Having run out of unconquered countries in Africa, all that was left to enslave was Eastern Europe. Chinese expansionism seems much more limited.
But that does not correctly describe how the relationship with the Soviets were handled - that's not how I remember it. There was always cognisance of conflict, and there would have been absolutely no chance of a tilted economic relationship pumping hundreds of billions into a military which is fundamentally incompatible with democratic values.
Continuing on the current path will keep things peaceful for now, but happens in twenty years? The belief that China will open up has spectacularly failed.
Try not be blinded by political scheming, China is not trying to conquer the world and US is also not trying to bring peace, the game is not as black and white as you would believe and the "good guys" will be shown as less good in 50 years when the secrets will be reveled and propaganda will switch to something else.
Not cooperating in space related topics is as stupid as US demanding not to use mathematics or physics developed by China. Science should not care about the politics of the current dudes in power.
Us is definitely not trying to bring peace, anywhere, ever. But I am suspicious of you when you say chia doesn't want to conquer the world. Nobody can be that naiive so I wonder how else to explain your statement. I notice you claim to be Romanian but also comment a lot on China related posts (other than this)
Yes , I am Romanian so I have a different perspective then someone from US. I can see better the trends. I am also a Star Trek fan and it pains me that we can't collaborate in space research and it is always a "race" or national security. Are you trying to imply that I am paid by China because I don't agree with US latest politics ? I am for human rights and equality , including to Saudi Arabia where half of the population are property but since they are US friends there are no daily news about the human rights there.
You probably read my TikToc comments, yes I think is not about national security and more about economic and the Trump's ego, I am also against Apple lockdown of the store and I critique Apple collaborating with China and not letting Chinese people sideload applications (if I were a Chinese shill I would kiss Apple ass everything are mentioned)
> China's (CCP's) values are wholly different from the free world's
I dont think so much, CCP/China's value overlaps west a lot:
* They at least value personal fortune, the whole society shows a frenzy higher than US to chase personal fortune. Take an example [1].
* They both believe in market economy. With different flavors. SMBs are both the major employers of the economy in both countries.
* They both put people in internment camp out of perceived external threads, without factual evidence (WWII Japanese, Xinjiang Uygurs)
* They both bully neighbors (US neighbors were historically suffered territory loss to US, and Cuba was shutdown from the international society by US driven effort, China bullied Vietnam and now claiming territory in south China sea)
Yet, you omit the Chinese leadership that's where the problem really lies. The CCP has a Han-supremacy drug problem and President Xi intends to steer towards a singular vision, whether the world agrees with it or not.
> To create power plants that use space as cooling and project power back?
Space is the absolute worst place for thermal power plant. 1) It's not cold unless you are in earth shadow. 2) You need to use EM radiation for cooling, which is like < 1% as good as thermal conductors cooling.
SpaceX just got the short end of the new Airforce launch contract, ULA got the big end for a rocket that’s never flown and won’t fly for another year. That’s after getting 2/3s as much as Boeing for a NASA crew launch capsule.
If SpaceX ever wants large proportions of federal space launch contracts, they have to start building rocket parts across all 50 states, especially Alabama.
Meh, I think SLS will fold after a flight or two. There is no way to justify spending $800M per launch, assuming they launch at least twice, every 1.5-2 years when NASA could spend $150M for a Falcon Heavy launch or less when Starship starts flying. Especially when SpaceX can provide many launches per year.
Then again the US government doesn't really care if taxpayer money is well spent. NASA needs to shift gears to science and exploration. More rovers and deep space probes please and thank you.
The Senate Launch System provides many many jobs and thus many many votes for politicians who support it. If rational thought was at the driver’s seat it would have been cancelled way back.
Can we focus on the technical and strategic value in terms of competition, and put the value system and ideology aside for a moment?...
The international political competition and struggle are among the most complicated and complex human activities. Value system and ideology are just but one part of the driven force, and most of time is even the secondary or irrelevant part.
50 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] threadI wonder how "friendly" this competition is going to be.
Musk was a genius to start SpaceX, or he really timed it right. He's going to get so many federal dollars. It'll probably be worth more than Tesla.
> China seems intent to start a new space race. It's no coincidence that our Space Force was just created.
President Regan started "start war" in 80s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative
China always copy and is reacting to the leading power, dont pretend that China is provoking anyone here...
On the US side working with China is not banned specifically, but the fact that the Chinese space program is military not civilian and because of a history of aggressive hacking and stealing of technology and trade secrets, it requires special permission and extra care.
What's your perspective on China's desire to do things unilaterally? Are they "catching up"? Do they pose a threat to peaceful space endeavors? Are they good or bad stewards with respect to space junk?
Does your perspective here give you insight as to other ways China conducts its affairs? How do you see One Belt One Road panning out? Will China own Africa and the developing world? Will they leap frog the West?
But nevertheless not only is being unbiased in government work A Very Big Deal, but I've also worked more recently on contract proposals related to Belt and Road and you gotta keep personal biases at bay to be successful in business too. I'll try to give you the informed, yet detached answer you're looking for.
First, the Chinese communist party is a kleptocratic, oligarchic organization. All government programs exist to profit and empower those in charge, whom for the most part inherited their privileged position. Second, the CCP maintains their control over their population through stoking nationalist fears and anti-west sentiments. Same as Iran and other autocratic states.
These two facts have a particular bearing on their space policy. The space program is a source of national prestige--when they launched a man into space they accomplished something only two other nations had done (never mind that it was a near exact clone of the Russian Soyuz capsule...). Unlike the Europeans, Japanese, Canadians, India, UAE, and Israel, China doesn't have to rely on anybody to launch their astronauts to space. Each new milestone they reach--landing a rover on the moon, launching a space station--magnifies this point. Once they send human beings to the Moon they will use that as a claim of technical superiority over the west. We saw a glimpse of this when they landed a rover on the Moon, a feat the USA never did on the Moon specifically. To partner with any other nation would be to diminish or perhaps even eliminate entirely the propaganda value to the party.
But the value of the Chinese space program isn't just propaganda. It's also being used as a play for potential power and profit. Jokes aside, military space power really is the dominant domain of the 21st century for conflict between superpowers, whether actual or merely planned for, like air power was in the 20th. I'm not going to adequately summarize military space policy in a HN comment, but basically the analogy to air dominance is very accurate: without satellites most of our modern war fighting capability is neutralized or made ineffective. Anti-satellite weaponry in its various forms is the new ICBM or stealth strike bomber. This isn't common knowledge outside of the military-industrial complex, but that's because our adversaries since the collapse of the USSR have had asymmetric capabilities with anti-satellite weapons consisting of camouflage tents and caves.
The one thing uniquely positive I have to say about about the Chinese space program leads to the final point to be made: profit. Whereas every other human space program is science and/or prestige based, China's is run by a country looking for an exploitative edge over major world powers, and bureaucrats within the party looking for ways to get internal leverage themselves. It turns out that the Moon and near-Earth asteroids are an abundant source of minerals and metals rare on Earth and can be mined for far less than you might naïvely think. So there are young turks within the party who are advocating for a cislunar economic exclusion zone. They are talking about violating the Outer Space Treaty of 1967's prohibition against claims of sovereignty over celestial bodies. The official plan is to construct a lunar base and perform resource exploration, WITHOUT international cooperation. Indeed, while NASA is working to get the Artimis Accords in place to reaffirm the existing cooperative model and try to build a collaborative effort to return to the Moon and go beyond, while opening up cislunar space to private resource exploration, China is laying the ground work for a land-grab. There are serious talks about a Chinese cislunar economic exclusion zone explicitly compared to the South China ...
These are extraordinary claims. What's your source?
Since this is getting into the realm of geopolitics and propaganda. I will leave you and other readers with thisMy point that started all this thread was that I hope China and US will both get better diplomats and for example we can have international space station on the Moon. And of course you can still have the big guys putting nukes and other secret shit in secret orbits if that is what makes military hard(I am disappointed that space and internet is considered as a military "domain" ).
>a history of aggressive hacking and stealing of technology and trade secrets,
Really? US should not complain about this since they have a lot of secret military satellites/weapons in space, detonated nukes in space, who knows what other covert operations have - but some other countries should not dare test soem anti-satellite weapons or other military equipment since only US is the only one to be trusted with this.
Which nation refuses to sign more international treaties than any other and is actively working to retroactively disengage and absolve themselves of the responsibility they signed up for? Hint: It's not China. [1]
China was explicitly banned from the ISS program[2], you'll let the Saudis who stone adulterers to death in the streets but for some reason China can't possibly participate in the only hope for humanity to unite as one.
China's space program is offering a lot to the scientific world and they keep pushing forward despite US efforts to stop everyone on Earth collaborating with them. Their lunar base and farside radio telescope plans have some in the interantional community willing to give a big fu to those from overseas who demand we ignore what they are doing.
Breaking out of your bubble is a good thing now and then.
Any country taking sides in the coldwarV2.0 game is getting played and you will be left behind. Look after yourself.
[1] https://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/26665-us-position-on-int...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_the_International_...
"American space policy is not like other American foreign policy"
As to restrictions against China, blame Congress not NASA. But the bans are not blanket bans, they are actually highly specific.
What does that even mean?
If I am selling food so expensive that no one can afford and start to dying from starving, then I can say: "I am not not allow you to eat, it's just that my price is highly specific?"
Do you really think regulations are not pushing away competitions because of the investment needed to overcome the numerous details? Would that same logic apply to your "highly specific" rules?
Like, you invested 1Billion, oh sorry, I cannot let you have this piece of tech, because of this rules; and I certainly forgot that this rules apply to this tech...
The truth is that China is willing and has been actively cooperating with other space agencies.
https://www.space.com/china-mars-mission-tianwen-1-internati... https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Ex...Those restrictions aren't as broad as you are implying. There is no prohibition against NASA and the Chinese working together on certain types of projects. It just requires explicit authorization from headquarters to make sure that it doesn't run afoul of the very specific prohibitions in those legislation... which in practice is very hard to achieve, because of lawyers being lawyers, but not impossible when there is a powerful sponsor like the NASA Administrator behind it. My wording in the earlier post was poor: I should have said “broadly” instead of “specifically.” That more matches what I was trying to say, but the edit window has closed.
The prohibition, btw, is against "NASA’s use of appropriated funds for bilateral cooperation with China." Part of getting approval is showing that there is zero added cost to the collaboration, which in the case of things like planetary science research using existing assets, which is usually easy to do.
-- from someone who is deeply interested in space exploration and cooperation but not in the industry.
Now of course the reality is that to make sure that NASA remains compliant, NASA HQ has instituted requirements that any project with interacts with China must get approval from HQ, and (lawyers being lawyers) it's way easier to just say no than to go through the effort of actually seeing if a proposed collaboration is compliant.
Now I can say that China is not interested in these sort of multilateral agreements unless they are entering as the dominant partner because of my experience at NASA, where I was fortunate enough to be working on a high-profile headquarters project that had an advocate on the 9th floor with the administrator's ear. We didn't have to worry about lawyers shooting down our proposed collaboration just to make their job easier. And our collaboration was both multilateral and zero added cost. However the Chinese space agency declined repeated efforts, and one of our China contacts eventually told us why: China refused to interact with NASA unless they are the dominant partner in the relationship. We, on the other hand, were building a team of equals. They were prohibited on their end from interacting with us for that reason.
Meanwhile I was getting calls to fix a database server backing an internal web service which was having performance issues... which I found was because it had saturated its network connection exfiltrating data from our internal network back to some IP associated with a Chinese research university.
The issues here are very real. A "partner" that is not interested in developing a mutually beneficial relationship, but rather stealing IP and extracting whatever leverage it can to leapfrog ahead of you, is not really a partner. There probably should be restrictions in place. But the current restrictions are rather toothless, and don't prevent the theft, which is happening anyway.
So no... the US isn’t all that warm and fuzzy about cooperation
NASA is very strongly tied into the US military. NASA projects are bid on by US military contractors, and NASA flies military airframe all the time. NASA pretty much is an arm of the US MIC, in a way that the ESA or the CSA aren't.
And also, the Soviet space program was also openly tied into their military, and that wasnt an issue.
The real reason is that the US wants to make everything hard and expensive for China, due to perceiving them as a competitor. It's just not interested in cooperation.
As for violation of international law, neither the US nor the Soviets cared about it. It's just politics.
And then what, watch the CCP trample HongKong, run massive internment camps, and threaten Taiwan with total destruction? China's (CCP's) values are wholly different from the free world's; I can't think of a way to co-exist when they can get upset for even just news reporting.
The west has pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into a dictatorship and they're building a powerful military with it. And Europe mostly hasn't even woken up to this yet.
Is the threat of nuclear war between China and the US comparable to the threat of nuclear war between the US and the USSR?
Perhaps a more comparable situation is between the UK or US and Nazi Germany in the mid thirties?
It would have been a terrible idea to embark on shared technological and exploratory expeditions with Nazi Germany in the 30s.
However, Germany was explicitly trying to be a colonial expansionist. Having run out of unconquered countries in Africa, all that was left to enslave was Eastern Europe. Chinese expansionism seems much more limited.
Continuing on the current path will keep things peaceful for now, but happens in twenty years? The belief that China will open up has spectacularly failed.
Not cooperating in space related topics is as stupid as US demanding not to use mathematics or physics developed by China. Science should not care about the politics of the current dudes in power.
You probably read my TikToc comments, yes I think is not about national security and more about economic and the Trump's ego, I am also against Apple lockdown of the store and I critique Apple collaborating with China and not letting Chinese people sideload applications (if I were a Chinese shill I would kiss Apple ass everything are mentioned)
Get a grip hey. I'd honestly prefer to be a Uyghur in China then a black man in the US. At least one has a future.
I dont think so much, CCP/China's value overlaps west a lot: * They at least value personal fortune, the whole society shows a frenzy higher than US to chase personal fortune. Take an example [1]. * They both believe in market economy. With different flavors. SMBs are both the major employers of the economy in both countries. * They both put people in internment camp out of perceived external threads, without factual evidence (WWII Japanese, Xinjiang Uygurs) * They both bully neighbors (US neighbors were historically suffered territory loss to US, and Cuba was shutdown from the international society by US driven effort, China bullied Vietnam and now claiming territory in south China sea)
[1] https://medium.com/the-banterbury-times/why-do-chinese-peopl...
Yet, you omit the Chinese leadership that's where the problem really lies. The CCP has a Han-supremacy drug problem and President Xi intends to steer towards a singular vision, whether the world agrees with it or not.
Space is the absolute worst place for thermal power plant. 1) It's not cold unless you are in earth shadow. 2) You need to use EM radiation for cooling, which is like < 1% as good as thermal conductors cooling.
https://www.osti.gov/includes/opennet/includes/Understanding...
SpaceX just got the short end of the new Airforce launch contract, ULA got the big end for a rocket that’s never flown and won’t fly for another year. That’s after getting 2/3s as much as Boeing for a NASA crew launch capsule.
If SpaceX ever wants large proportions of federal space launch contracts, they have to start building rocket parts across all 50 states, especially Alabama.
Then again the US government doesn't really care if taxpayer money is well spent. NASA needs to shift gears to science and exploration. More rovers and deep space probes please and thank you.
SpaceX was founded in 2002, I don't think Musk was timing anything.
The Air Force says the X-37 has a "launch weight" of 4,990 kg. Its first flight was on a Atlas V 501, which has a max payload of 8,123 kg to LEO.
Hmm, it already returned after a two day stint.
The international political competition and struggle are among the most complicated and complex human activities. Value system and ideology are just but one part of the driven force, and most of time is even the secondary or irrelevant part.