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Having been offline for a week or so, I don't know if this came up in discussion yet:
http://www.space.com/news/us_china_040428.html]link
It turns out that the Chinese designed their capsules to be able to dock to ISS. They approached NASA to do joint missions but NASA basically told them they didn't know what they were doing and to take a hike.
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Sigh, at least that's a bit more polite than saying: "What do we need a bunch of Nazis running around the space station for?"
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/china-02 … Spacedaily
The nice person that said this was Dana Rohrabacher, original statement comes from an article by Travis K. Kircher, "A Journey of a Thousand Miles: China's Manned Space Flight Effort," Ad Astra magazine, Sep-Oct 2002, p. 29)
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Having been offline for a week or so, I don't know if this came up in discussion yet:
http://www.space.com/news/us_china_040428.html]link
It turns out that the Chinese designed their capsules to be able to dock to ISS. They approached NASA to do joint missions but NASA basically told them they didn't know what they were doing and to take a hike.
*Yes, I saw a related news item last week. The articles (two, IIRC) I saw didn't outline/detail any specifics however (what you relate in your last paragraph: their capsules, ISS).
Apparently NASA told the Chinese they have "immature technology." I guess we'll find out in 20 years, i.e. who is on Mars and who isn't (or who's danged near close).
::sigh::
--Cindy
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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China isn't going anywhere in a big hurry... its taken them how long to go from Russian V-2 copy to a copy of the Soyuz? Fifty years? And they aren't even using their own aerodynamics. Nasa is perfectly justified in not risking the already-flimsy ISS with unproven Chinese hardware.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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Even if China can't make significant contributions to the ISS, and I'm not saying they can't, we need to include them. Why? Because if we don't, they are going to be aboard the ISS anyway courtesy of Russia or the ESA when they have their manned spaceflight program up and running. The sad truth is we don't own the ISS. Are we going to repeat the embarassing situtation before when Russia wanted to bring a tourist to the ISS and our position was 'don't cross this line'?
And GCNRevenger, while I agree that China isn't ready to enter a space race with us today, I'm not sure about the next ten years. All signs point to growing cooperation between China, Russia, and the ESA. If we don't play ball, we are going to be left behind very quickly. China has the funding to mount a better spaceflight program than Russia. their biggest drawback is we have been rather secretive with our technology. Russia has virtually brought them to their level, and in some ways China is doing better. The ESA can bring them pretty much current in a lot of areas.
The next ten years are going to be very intresting for China's space program. If we don't get on the stick quickly, I see them catching us in ten years and then passing us in 15.
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Why does China want to join in with the ISS. Everybody else want to kill it but nobody wants to say it.
Its really the last vestige of international good will that grew as a balance to the cold-war.
I think most of the international goodwill has ben burnt through. Going it alone seem to be the flavour of the day.
The Chinese would stand to gain a lot of tech and space station design, but the ISS is flawed and dated anyway.
Oh well.
Come on to the Future
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