> If all this makes you worried about China's long-term cosmic ambitions, then you are not the only one.
I think it's dumb that China is not allowed to participate in the ISS.
"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. But never mind." - [1]
On the other hand, I agree with you.
To paraphrase Andy Weir, scientists can always work together. Things get messy when politics are involved.
I personally trust China with rocketry far far more than I trust North Korea, but "Do we trust this country with knowledge useful for killing large numbers of people?" is totally within the scope of a government to decide.
I too saw that as a weasel phrase. Propaganda isn't limited to countries we claim don't have free speech. Little things like this are probably not due to government's direct control over media, but they're a result of the natural fears people tend to have been given due to their government's political stance and foreign policy.
The western world depends on China to be their manufacturer. Many of our startups and industry that deal with durable goods are dependent on their vast manufacturing power. Yet we use their government as a means to also hold them at an arms length.
Why not let our space agencies work together?
If I was a US military adviser I would absolutely be putting full pressure on avoiding any situation that gives the Chinese or the Russians more insight or access to the space program.
I think war and military stuff is stupid and antithesis to the advancement of the human race, but I can see how someone who's job it is to be concerned about that sort of thing is very concerned about that sort of thing.
What gives? Is USA gearing up the propaganda engine for another cold war?
Peace, please! National conflicts hurt the common people the most, especially so in such a globalized world.
> Most interestingly perhaps for a layperson, the space station will carry an atomic clock ...
> This is expected to make future mobile navigation more accurate, Xinhua cited scientists has saying.
Are they laying the (political) groundwork for reducing the inaccuracy they put into civilian GPS, much as the US did in the 90s (96?).
Classic psyops. A non-manipulative variant would follow up with "So and so nation/organizations have expressed their worry that ..".
So "you are not alone" but do you know the 'company' you keep?
Of course BBC "News" is an old hand in the propaganda business.
I think American decision to not giving China access to ISS is political and knee jerk but might be a very pragmatic one too.
> Yang Liwei became the first Chinese person to go to space
Should probably be the first Chinese national to go into space. The first ethnically Chinese person in space was Chinese-born Taylor Wang.
Interestingly, in a pub-quiz question kind of way, the first Chinese-born woman in space was... Shannon Lucid.
Lucid is CHINA-born...
not Chinese-born.
She's not ethnically Chinese.
What is it you think "Chinese-born" means?
> She's not ethnically Chinese.
Yes, that's why I said Chinese-born and not Chinese.
Uh, as a non-American, not more than America's. Why should it?
On the one hand, China would have the resources to make a far more ambitious showing in space, if they really wanted to. They could easily outpace the early space-age Soviet launch rate etc; this would make a vivid statement about their prowess as a nation, but it wouldn't really do much more than that (until they get to the point of, I don't know, mining asteroids or something).
On the other hand, they could equally take the view that human spaceflight is totally frivolous and they should keep their investments firmly rooted on Earth. This would be hugely short-sighted -- abdicating the rest of the universe to whomever has more vision than them. In fact, China did this already, when they reined in Zheng He, burned the Treasure Fleet, and focused all investment inward. The result was centuries of humiliation, which China is not particularly keen to repeat.
So the path that they're taking seems to be keeping one foot prudently planted in space, without going nuts. When it's strategically important to make a major push in space, they'll have the technology and the experience to do that. Until then, they've mostly got other fish to fry. It seems to be a pretty reasonable approach.
The US went from its first suborbital spaceflight to landing two people on the moon in just over eight years. But that furious pace didn't really work out very well in the long term. Maybe they mean it but are just taking their sweet time.
In addition to that however, sending a human crew to Mars will result in more digging, surveying, water prospecting and life hunting being done within the first month of exploration than all of the rover missions combined.
The added benefit of having humans in space, especially if their reason for being in there is because that particular bit of space is in the way of earth and a planet, is securing the legacy of the human race by putting our eggs in more than one basket.
To that end, I'll flip your assertion back on you: The only reason to send a robot to space is to prove that you can, especially if we don't follow it up with human missions.
Whilst it might be valid that you could launch a more-effective-in-aggregate fleet of rovers for the cost of a manned mission, I'm still a huge proponent of getting people out there to have a look around.
And the US hasn't done a manned flight since 2011, so China a doing great comparatively!
This is possible now?
