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> isn't part of a coordinated international project Maybe not "coordinated" but they do have some collaboration with Italian, French, Swedish and Pakistani tea
by gravescale 2y ago
> isn't part of a coordinated international project
Maybe not "coordinated" but they do have some collaboration with Italian, French, Swedish and Pakistani teams on this one.
Chang'e 7 has Egyptian/Bahraini, Italian, Swiss, Thai, Russian and an international lunar group's payloads.
The Wolf Amendment makes it impossible for NASA to cooperate with China at all, so a competitive stance is really the best we can hope for (the worse alternative bring an outright adversarial one), unless the ESA can wiggle a stabilising middle path between the two sides.
> Without clarifying what that would involve
I imagine ASAT weapons around L2 would fit that bill!
- SiempreViernes 2y ago> I imagine ASAT weapons around L2 would fit that bill! Sure, but so far it is only American weapons going there, which doesn't really explain what Chinese actions the weapons are supposed to "defend" against. Like, once someone else has sent a weapon to L2 it is easy to motivate sending your own, but the US is currently bootstrapping itself into sending the first one basically by pretending someone else already beat them to it.
- gravescale 2y agoSure, that's exactly what I mean... They're putting it they're to "defend" against what they themselves are putting there. Their own justification almost entirely is based on "what if" someone is doing exactly what they are trying to do. It's not even particularly subtle, even if you dress it up as debris removal. Which makes no sense in itself.