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Excerpt from article towards the end: "China was excluded from the 420-ton International Space Station mainly due to U.S. legislation barring such cooperation a

by qiqing 9y ago

Excerpt from article towards the end: "China was excluded from the 420-ton International Space Station mainly due to U.S. legislation barring such cooperation and concerns over the Chinese space program's strong military connections. China's space program remains highly secretive and some experts have complained that a lack of information about Tiangong 1's design has made it harder to predict what might happen upon its re-entry." I guess it makes sense that they'd be secretive if someone excluded them from the club based on concerns that also apply to existing members.

sametmax 9y ago
Exactly. > China was excluded from the 420-ton International Space Station mainly due to U.S. legislation barring such cooperation and concerns over the Chinese space program's strong military connections. This is such BS. All our space programs have strong military connections. We literally created our first spacecrafts from German missile designs. China will do great without us. They don't need us. They have the money and the talent now. They already got planes, boats, nuclear plants and bombs, satellites... So the only thing this achieves is decreasing trust and cooperation among powerful countries in the world, and duplicate efforts and resource spendings. We managed to cooperate with Russia. We should try to do the same with China. I'm going back to listen again to the audio book of "The Martian", at least it will makes me smile and in there, Chinese and American scientists bypass politics to help each others.
- sethammons 9y ago
  One potential bright side: perhaps China is avoiding dogmatic group think and innovating in ways that have not occurred to the rest of the space community and one day, we might be able to fold their unique insights into our own. Probably not. But maybe.
  - sametmax 9y ago
    They do have an entire different way of doing things, and also different views on ethics and environmental issues. This can be good and bad, but it will definitely be different.

by qiqing 9y ago

sametmax 9y ago

Exactly. > China was excluded from the 420-ton International Space Station mainly due to U.S. legislation barring such cooperation and concerns over the Chinese space program's strong military connections. This is such BS. All our space programs have strong military connections. We literally created our first spacecrafts from German missile designs. China will do great without us. They don't need us. They have the money and the talent now. They already got planes, boats, nuclear plants and bombs, satellites... So the only thing this achieves is decreasing trust and cooperation among powerful countries in the world, and duplicate efforts and resource spendings. We managed to cooperate with Russia. We should try to do the same with China. I'm going back to listen again to the audio book of "The Martian", at least it will makes me smile and in there, Chinese and American scientists bypass politics to help each others.

sethammons 9y ago
One potential bright side: perhaps China is avoiding dogmatic group think and innovating in ways that have not occurred to the rest of the space community and one day, we might be able to fold their unique insights into our own. Probably not. But maybe.
- sametmax 9y ago
  They do have an entire different way of doing things, and also different views on ethics and environmental issues. This can be good and bad, but it will definitely be different.