political space

In late September, China blasted off the Tiangong-1 (the "heavenly palace", literally) into space. It's supposed to be a space-lab module, which can support the docking of manned and unmanned spacecraft, and a testbed for China's future modular space station Tiangong-3 (I'm oddly reminded of origami here...) which will be launched in 2020-22.

Now, the reason why this is so important is that China was rebuffed, again, from the ISS, which incidentally is actually finished now. China decided on an independent path to space, with construction of a space station scheduled and followed by missions to the moon. Ha.

So this space station, Tiangong-3, will be 100 tons, five times lighter than the ISS. They expect to be the only power that can reach the moon within a few years of launching it. Former NASA administrator Michael Friffin states, "In my opion, China understands what it takes to be a great power. We have written the script for them....They are a near-peer competitor of ours and I would worry very much about the future of this nation if we were not -- and if we were not seen by all -- to be a world leader...When the Chinese can reach the moon and we cannot, I don't see why any other nation would regard us as a world leader."

That is a demoralizing thought. And he has an interesting take on what it means to be a world leader or power. But nevertheless, I think it is true that a lot of people would feel emasculated if the US could not do something China can easily do in the sciences and in advancing human discovery.

This is, even more interestingly, most probably our own fault. Read the second reference article, written in May this year. "A clause included in the US spending bill approaved by Congress to avert a govt shutdown....has prohibited NASA from coordinating any joint scientific activity with China. The cluase also extends to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy."

Wow. That just seems amazingly shortsighted and xenophobic.

Contrary to what our politicians believe, I don't think that there is anything wrong with international cooperation. Actually, note the very specific ban with China, but not the other EU, Russia countries included in the ISS endeavor. I am confounded by this apparent attempt to slow China down - not to mention such a brazen, bold, and very weak and ineffective attempt.

The superficial reasons is the cyberattack/espionage theories that are almost certainly true and almost certainly overplayed.

Hopefully this doesn't lead to too much distrust between the nations. Or terrible wars in space.

References:
http://news.discovery.com/space/china-space-station-launch-110926.html?dtc=nws-hp-ticker-China
http://news.discovery.com/space/denied-nasa-banned-from-working-with-china-110510.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1190721