Posted on 03/14/2002 8:30:39 AM PST by RightWhale
Naw, I'm too busy expecting lots of casualties from Afghanistan now, and Iraq in 1990.
The chinese have never successfully orbited in space, they have a few big blunders to make first. They are just making one huge bottle rocket.........BOOM!
Anyone who has dealt with chinese tech knows it is of very poor QC. They may be able to dominate the sneaker market. Nobody concerns themselves with the quality control of $10.00 tennis shoes. But customers willing to spend billions on space hardware would not touch chinese tech with a ten foot pole. They hardly have the concept of a 'clean room' for any manufacturing process in that country.
They tried to liscense building russian fighters once and had to send the finished products to Russia in order to 'fix' them so they could fly.
Comes with the territory; 2000 ton potential pipe-bombs are dangerous. But, it is possible to make rockets that suck for only so long. After a while there is improvement.
We will find something to critize about China's moon-base, just as we criticized Russia's space station and even the Russian parts of the ISS.
A true story:
A Chinese student on a visa bought an older Chevy to get back and forth from school to the apartment. The particular car he owned had something out of balance in the front end so the car would shimmy above a certain speed. He took pleasure in giving rides to his friends and noting their reaction to the ride when the shimmy set in. Then he would start with the jokes about American cars and what trash they are. When asked if Chinese cars were better, he laughed even louder.
China will not give up on their space dreams, and they know quite well that there will be accidents and that men and hardware sometimes fail. But they won't freak if they lose a taikonaut. They will be sad and redouble their efforts.
That is correct.
The new generation is very excited about this, is working hard, and is highly competent. But filling in the infrastructure, such as materials science, takes time. The space program is the tip of the spear. When the space program gets moving, you will know the rest of the industry has advanced as well. Change is coming soon, is already begun.
For China to become a technological power, they need to come into the 21st century at many other levels as well. You've seen the space photo taken in the last year that shows the earth at night. You'll notice that there are no lights to speak of inland of hundred miles of the chinese coast. Contrast this to India, or the US or Europe or Japan. This picture says a world about the econmic might and stability of various countries. Economic power and internal stability are related. That photo shows not only the economic power houses of the world today, it shows where the worlds fault lines are and where regions of economic depression exist. China has to deal with that. We should also be aware that Chinese political stability is threatened by its economic weakness.
Chinese dreams of space domination are just dreams for the foreseeable future (at least the next century).
BTW, if you get to see the photo I refer to, contrast N. Korea and S. Korea. Another flash point that we have to be very careful in handling.
BTW again, contrast the Muslim and Christian worlds in the same photo.
Maybe someone can post it here.
Impossible to have too much Heinlein.
If they use it for the military, we could burn it up on launch with our laser equiped 747's. But the NWO types would be really unhappy with that action.
But history is showing, and evidence is continuing to support the notions that non-free market, non-open societies can not modernize at the rate of their free-market counterparts. The chinese leadership is caught between opposing goals, that of maintaining central control and bringing the country into the modern world. It can not accomplish both at the same time.
For this reason alone, they will never be the super power they envision themselves to be.
As for space development becoming self supporting, you'll have to explain that one to me. The commercial world is such, but just barely and it is highly competitive. So far, and for the near future, no other space ventures succeed with strong national interest and government funding.
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