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China just built a new space station by itself in about 18 months. A lot of these rationalizations for going the slow bloated pork route are going to evaporate
by themgt 4y ago
China just built a new space station by itself in about 18 months. A lot of these rationalizations for going the slow bloated pork route are going to evaporate as it becomes clearer we have a great power peer competitor. Hopefully it doesn't take a CCP flag flying on the Moon and people getting arrested for criticizing Xi Jinping Thought on Mars for the USA to finally get off its ass and realize being arrogantly wasteful and inefficient isn't actually a "deterrent to war" against a competent adversary.
- malfist 4y agoTo be fair, their space station is 3 modules and about the size of mir. It is significantly smaller than the ISS.
- AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
- pfdietz 4y agoThe ISS showed large space vehicles can be assembled from small modules that could be launched on the Space Shuttle. This is the major accomplishment of the ISS program. So what does NASA do? Decide (or be told to decide), "oh no, we need a launcher that can lift much bigger things, because OF COURSE we can't put smaller modules together in space."
- adventured 4y agoWe have no idea how long it took the Chinese Government to build their new space station. They lie about practically everything and the record is largely opaque with everything they do. If it took them ten years to bring it to fruition, they certainly would lie about it and pretend otherwise.