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China has a "stunning lead" over the US:
The Biden administration might be limiting China's ability to manufacture advanced chips, but according to an independent think tank, the Asian nation is still ahead of the US when it comes to research in 37 out of 44 crucial and emerging technologies, including AI, defense, and key quantum tech areas.
Insider reports that the Canberra-based Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) believes China has a "stunning lead" over the US when it comes to high-impact research across the majority of critical and emerging technology domains.
[...] The think tank notes that for some of these technologies, the ten leading research institutions are based in China and are collectively generating nine times more high-impact research papers than the second-ranked country, which is usually the US. What could be especially worrying for America is that two areas where China really excels are Defense and space-related technologies. ASPI writes that China's advancements in nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles took the US by surprise in 2021.
How is China so far ahead? Some of it is down to imported talent. The report notes that one-fifth of its high-impact papers are being authored by researchers with postgraduate training in a Five-Eyes country (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States). However, most of China's progress comes from deliberate design and long-term policy planning by President Xi Jinping and his predecessors.
The near-term effects of China's lead could see it gaining a stranglehold on the global supply of certain critical technologies, while the long-term impact could result in the authoritarian state gaining more global influence and power.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @01:34PM (17 children)
The USA did well in aerospace after getting some Nazis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip [wikipedia.org]
But after that bunch retired/died NASA didn't seem to achieve that much really.
The US is a bright beacon because it's one of the few places in the world where you can start a company, lose billions every quarter for years and still keep going.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 05, @01:43PM (16 children)
Intelligence can't compensate for a bad system. NASA turned into a vehicle for transferring public funds to various interests. Perhaps you ought to look at SpaceX instead of NASA for an example of "achieving"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @06:05PM (9 children)
Well that's just psueudo intellectual bullshit. Intelligence is the ONLY way out of a bad system. Dipshit.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 05, @11:26PM (8 children)
And NASA is a great counterexample. There's a lot of smart people in NASA. They haven't fixed this system in fifty years.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @11:32PM (3 children)
They are a military organization beholden to hierarchical chains of command. Not exactly a creative environment.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 06, @12:03AM (2 children)
My point exactly. Once they abandoned a productive path, there was no way to get back from inside the organization.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @01:11AM (1 child)
Well, my point exactly is that whatever positive environment exists anywhere was arrived at by escaping a poor environment. Your position is that there is no way out, my position is that that there is only 1 way out.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 06, @12:22PM
And my point is that won't happen from inside NASA.
There's plenty of ways, they just require outside action. SpaceX is one of those ways.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Monday March 06, @11:58AM (3 children)
Kind of hard to fix something where your funding keeps changing all the time and getting cut and cut and cut: try to have long-term goals with unknown future funding.
At that point, all you get is career bureaucrats.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 06, @12:20PM (1 child)
The thing is "getting cut and cut and cut" hasn't been happening since the 1970s. NASA funding is more than ample for long term goals. And if you look at things like the James Webb Space Telescope, they do carry out long term goals. The real problem is that NASA abandoned their primary role long ago and spends far more on dead end technology development and maintaining funding networks, than doing stuff in space.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday March 06, @09:39PM
Correct: the geeks left (or gave up) and the bureaucrats took over. :(
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday March 07, @12:14AM
Pournelle's Iron Law in action.
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html [jerrypournelle.com]
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday March 05, @09:22PM (5 children)
Perhaps you ought to look at SpaceX instead of NASA for an example of "achieving"?
Space-X has robots on Mars? Vehicles past the heliosphere still sending data? Two space-based telescopes, even the old one is mind-blowing? Granted, they did do better than the Space Shuttle with reusable equipment, but the shuttle was 40 years ago.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Sunday March 05, @11:30PM (4 children)
One thing isn't like the rest. Lowering the cost of Earth to orbit is vastly more important than token missions in space. You can say that the Shuttle was 40 years ago, but NASA hasn't upgraded it since - it has turned out to be a deadend. SpaceX is a genuine game-changer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Monday March 06, @05:39PM (2 children)
> token missions in space
That's a bit unfair. One might argue that developing new rockets is exactly *not* NASA's role. NASA's job is to do interesting things in space, rovers and space telescopes and what not. The rocket is an implementation detail.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 07, @12:17AM
Indeed, but they've spent $40-50 billion on it so far and it'll grow to over $90 billion, if they keep it up as planned. That's 3-4 full years of NASA funding on developing a new rocket that will suck the oxygen out of the room for their other projects even if it succeeds as planned. My take is that with a modest change [soylentnews.org] in the unmanned program (well, aside from just dropping SLS permanently), they can vastly increase the science output from their spacecraft that they're supposed to be deploying. The TL;DR is that instead of massive concentration on R&D for the next mission, they deploy a number of copies of the old mission first - say 5-10 of each spacecraft made.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday March 07, @12:17AM
Perhaps rockets were more interesting to develop when they were tipped with warheads. /s
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11, @08:36PM
Let the for profit companies do the cheap stuff with good enough technology so they can pay their shareholders. Let NASA do the cutting edge dangerous and difficult stuff with public money as an investment in the future of the country.