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Compared to china, they are still insanely advanced. China's plans to have their own space station in 20 yrs, this could be easily halved with russian tech.
by Immortalin 12y ago
Compared to china, they are still insanely advanced. China's plans to have their own space station in 20 yrs, this could be easily halved with russian tech.
- trhway 12y agothey are still well behind US pretty much anywhere where it matters. For example Russia still can't produce 5th generation fighter (PAK-FA isn't a 5th gen fighter, it has only body of it so far) - 20+ years after F-22 - so Russia couldn't be of help here even if they wanted, and thus China was forced to steal F-35 plans for their J-20. Beside the space which is still running on half-century old tech, and a few military pieces like new ICBM and some missiles, there is nothing else worth of tech transfer.
- nl 12y agoThe US is very well prepared to fight the last war, and the F22 doesn't matter in any potential US/China conflict. China knows they'll likely never need to fight the US directly. They just need to have enough fighting power to mean that the US cares more about the loses they'll take in retaking the Spratly Islands (for example) that they think it is worth. That means the US will call it a regional dispute and ignore it. But this whole discussion is silly. China doesn't want to fight the US, and the US doesn't want to fight China.
- InclinedPlane 12y agoNot to overly defend Chinese space capabilities, but those timescales are a choice, not a constraint. China's manned space program is a prestige program, not a functional one (though this is typical of manned spaceflight). That means they're being very careful and cautious. If they wanted to put a permanently manned multi-module station in orbit, put people on the moon within a decade, etc, they could. But only at levels of risk and cost they aren't willing to support.