China just invited the world to its space station
At a time when NASA and its partners are trying to decide how long to maintain the International Space Station, China has taken the significant step of inviting the world to its planned orbital station. The China Space Station, or CSS, could become operational as soon as 2022.
"CSS belongs not only to China, but also to the world," said Shi Zhongjun, China's ambassador to the UN and other international organizations in Vienna. "All countries, regardless of their size and level of development, can participate in the cooperation on an equal footing."
Such an announcement represents potentially the greatest soft power threat of the last six decades to US and Russian dominance of spaceflight. In the public announcement of this policy on China's state news service Xinhua, Chinese officials said the country stands ready to help other developing countries interested in space technology—and in having their own space programs.
This inclusive approach (though just how inclusive an authoritarian government can be remains to be seen) offers a rebuke of sorts to the US government and the International Space Station. By law, the US forbids direct involvement between China's space program and NASA. Some at NASA want to change this, but Congress has established such rules to prevent technology transfer.
Also at The Verge and Popular Mechanics.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday June 01 2018, @05:54PM (1 child)
It's hard to say if the U.S. is on the right side of history or not.
NASA-CNSA collaboration could be beneficial for both sides. You could see both countries dumping a lot of money into building a huge space telescope, for example. But China is still trying to copy as much U.S. technology as possible, and is beginning to ascend to superpower status.
If the U.S. continues its current course, we can still partner with Europe, Russia, Japan, India, and most other nations that want to collaborate on space projects. However, if China runs its own space station and moon colony projects in parallel, they will use them to develop ties with other nations. Expect to see some African astronauts/taikonauts visiting the new Chinese space station.
We could wait it out and hope that China eventually becomes a democracy and loses some will to compete with the U.S. But that might be a decades or century+ long wait.
Even though the U.S. has a long history of space partnership with Russia, the relationship has been strained recently and NASA/Congress will try to use SpaceX and Boeing to eliminate the need to use Russian rockets to send astronauts anywhere. After commercial crew visits to the ISS and other destinations become routine, we may see contact with the Russian space program largely cut off.
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(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Saturday June 02 2018, @02:12AM
I ask this question in ignorance, not sarcasm or jest.
What could they learn from us? Have we innovated in a meaningful way in the last two decades anything that isn't publicly published already?