The following is part of an article written by By Brantly Womack in December.
<China’s Space Program Suggests Decoupling Won’t Work Like the US Hopes>
The U.S. has long frozen China out of space cooperation. That hasn’t stopped China from making substantial progress.
China’s space program – a long-time victim of political distancing from NASA – is completing a trip to the moon to bring back lunar samples. As part of the Chang’e 5 mission, a lander gathered rocks from the surface of the moon and then transferred them to the orbiter, which plans to return to earth December 17.
On the same day the Chinese landed, NASA rather peevishly announced contracts for as little as one dollar for lunar soil to be collected by private space companies in the next few years, and a few days later it named the astronauts for future manned American lunar missions.
... in the space race, in 2019, China completed 33 successful orbital launches while the United States did 20. Next year it plans to launch the core unit of its own modular space station, to be finished by 2022 over the course of 10 missions. Further down the road, it has plans for Mars exploration and for a gigantic space-based solar power generator.
China’s progress in space has been achieved in spite of a complete decoupling by the United States. In contrast to NASA’s successful space collaboration with the Russians, the American agency has shunned China....., But the United States kept China out of the ISS. Congress then drove the decoupling home in 2011 with a law forbidding any collaboration between NASA and any Chinese entity, even to the point of barring Chinese visitors from entering NASA facilities. And there can be no U.S. components in any satellite launched by China.
China’s space program is thus the perfect test case for current American discussions of the advantages and disadvantages of decoupling. Is it a good idea to minimize collaboration and to cut China off from high-tech inputs? Can the United States get its allies to cooperate? Can China be isolated? Can its progress be stopped?
The short answer is that attempts to isolate China are more likely to result in American self-isolation and the loss of collaborative opportunities. Clearly NASA has not kept China earth-bound. But China would rather not go it alone in space. It is building its space station modules to be compatible with the docking requirements of the ISS, just in case the American mood changes. Meanwhile, NASA’s space exploration is chronically underfunded. Cooperation with Russia has been essential to ISS operations, despite continuing political tensions. Similarly, China’s enthusiasm as a first-timer could have been coupled with American know-how as an old-timer... ..
The statement or proposition made Brantly Womack may not sound like music to the filthy ears of Donald Trump, but it is valid and its validity has stood and will stand the test of time.
K. Y. Yip(葉啟賢) Engineer
HKFDP
香港建設專業聯會
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