Another space race?

[docmordrid]

Hardly surprising. Given that this is a bunch of politicians you can only look at it from a political perspective and given the current US administration has hardly been friendly towards China it's almost inevitable you are going to get members of the President's party banging the drum.

Apparently many of their proposals were bipartisan.

https://www.rollcall.com/2020/09/30/...san-proposals/

>
“One of my greatest prides in the China Task Force? More than 60 percent of all the ideas in here are bipartisan, the way the process worked through,” McCarthy said.

McCaul cited a bipartisan effort to bring semiconductor chip production to the United States from overseas.
>
“I don’t know of another issue in American politics that united me and Chuck Schumer as closely as countering the Chinese Communist Party,” Gallagher said, also citing his work with Maine independent Sen. Angus King on the Cyberspace Solarium Commission.
>

[selvaarchi]

Now we have , what I see as a very biased look at China vs Japan space capabilities. The article is in ASIATIMES. Would like your comments on it.

https://asiatimes.com/2020/12/china-...race-to-space/

It has been a terrible month for viral infection, but an exciting month for the exploration of outer space.

On December 1, the lander-ascender module of China’s Chang’e-5 spacecraft separated from the orbiter-re-entry module and landed on the surface of the Moon to collect about two kilograms of ground material. On December 3, the ascender returned to the orbiter. The samples are now on their way back to Earth.

Chang’e-5 was launched on November 24 on a 23-day round trip to the Moon, which on average is 385,000 kilometers from Earth. Its re-entry capsule is expected to land in North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on December 16.

Almost simultaneously, Japan’s Hayabusa2 space probe returned from the asteroid Ryugu, dropped off its sample capsule and headed out for another asteroid. The sample capsule was found intact in the South Australian desert on December 6.

The 5.2 billion kilometer round trip to Ryugu took six years and three days as Hayabusa2 had to intercept the asteroid’s orbit, which takes it from just inside the orbit of Earth to just outside the orbit of Mars in a year of 474 days.

[tusenfem]

Would like your comments on it.

And my comment would be that: no we are not going there.
This subforum is about Space Exploration and not whether something in a newspaper is biased or not.

[ToSeek]

I think Japan's and China's space programs are very different, so it's suspect to compare the two. Japan has no ambitions to be a space exploration powerhouse, so it looks to do missions that fill in the gaps of what the major programs are doing. China is working on being competitive with the US in all aspects, so they have a broad space program, including crewed missions, a space station, probes to Mars, etc. To get where they want to be, they need to repeat what's been done before to prove they can do it themselves.

[Roger E. Moore]

2020 was an amazing year in space, with evidence that multiple countries and companies are doing very well.

https://apnews.com/article/space-tou...8a237aa247556e

[Roger E. Moore]

Major changes coming over the horizon for the global space industry. The space industry used to be organized in highly hierarchical industrial chains around prime contractors, most often under public leadership, NASA being a leading example. It now operates like industrial ecosystems budding upstream or downstream around private space infrastructure.

https://phys.org/news/2020-12-major-...-industry.html

[Garrison]

Major changes coming over the horizon for the global space industry. The space industry used to be organized in highly hierarchical industrial chains around prime contractors, most often under public leadership, NASA being a leading example. It now operates like industrial ecosystems budding upstream or downstream around private space infrastructure.

https://phys.org/news/2020-12-major-...-industry.html

It has been a epic year for spaceflight but I do think some people really haven't grasped this see change in the space industry. NASA has probably gone the furthest in grasping a new way of doing things while Roscosmos is still living in denial.

[Noclevername]

"See? Change!"

[Roger E. Moore]

I don't believe there's a space race as there's no shared goal except making the most $$$ out of space, exploring other worlds, and protecting space assets or finding ways to wreck them in defense. Not a race, just everything's come to life.

The real race will start soon for limited resources, like ice on the Moon and Mars.

[Roger E. Moore]

Massive consolidation and acquisitions in world space industries: many become a few.

Raytheon completes acquisition of Blue Canyon Technologies
https://spacenews.com/raytheon-compl...-technologies/

Lockheed Martin confident Aerojet deal will be approved, but it’s not a slam dunk
https://spacenews.com/lockheed-marti...t-a-slam-dunk/

Viasat announces agreement to acquire RigNet
https://spacenews.com/viasat-acquires-rignet/

Ansys acquisition isn’t likely to alter AGI or Comspoc
https://spacenews.com/the-more-thing...gi-or-comspoc/

[Garrison]

Massive consolidation and acquisitions in world space industries: many become a few.

Raytheon completes acquisition of Blue Canyon Technologies
https://spacenews.com/raytheon-compl...-technologies/

Lockheed Martin confident Aerojet deal will be approved, but it’s not a slam dunk
https://spacenews.com/lockheed-marti...t-a-slam-dunk/

Viasat announces agreement to acquire RigNet
https://spacenews.com/viasat-acquires-rignet/

Ansys acquisition isn’t likely to alter AGI or Comspoc
https://spacenews.com/the-more-thing...gi-or-comspoc/

Honestly it looks like some of the 'old space' companies circling the wagons in the interests of survival.

[Roger E. Moore]

Even more consolidation:

Voyager Space Holdings to acquire majority stake in Nanoracks

https://spacenews.com/voyager-space-...-in-nanoracks/

[Noclevername]

I think competition with SpaceX has done more to drive progress than any international rivalries. Now that it's been shown to be practical to have reusable self-landing stages, everyone's working on developing their own versions.

[selvaarchi]

I think competition with SpaceX has done more to drive progress than any international rivalries. Now that it's been shown to be practical to have reusable self-landing stages, everyone's working on developing their own versions.

There I will agree with you. In a few years everyone will be doing it.

[Garrison]

Even more consolidation:

Voyager Space Holdings to acquire majority stake in Nanoracks

https://spacenews.com/voyager-space-...-in-nanoracks/

I'm not sure this is so much consolidation as Voyager putting together all the pieces needed to be able to get into a future commercial space station business.

[cannongray]

Looking at the space race in the 60s, the current space race is much more sluggish, but it is attended by a larger number of participants who set themselves broader goals. China has managed to pose a very serious challenge to US global leadership. Magazines declare that "the transformation of totalitarian China into a dominant space power will be a historical tragedy" for the countries of the "free world" BUT (NASA) signed a memorandum with the US Department of Defense at the end of September, which clearly demonstrates the militarization of the space sphere in order to ensure the overall strategic dominance of the United States. Whoever controls LEO controls near-earth space. The one who controls the near-earth space rules the Earth. The one who rules on Earth determines the fate of humanity.

[Garrison]

Looking at the space race in the 60s, the current space race is much more sluggish, but it is attended by a larger number of participants who set themselves broader goals. China has managed to pose a very serious challenge to US global leadership. Magazines declare that "the transformation of totalitarian China into a dominant space power will be a historical tragedy" for the countries of the "free world" BUT (NASA) signed a memorandum with the US Department of Defense at the end of September, which clearly demonstrates the militarization of the space sphere in order to ensure the overall strategic dominance of the United States. Whoever controls LEO controls near-earth space. The one who controls the near-earth space rules the Earth. The one who rules on Earth determines the fate of humanity.

Yeah I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the current 'space race'. It isn't between the relatively sluggish Government programs, its between governments and commercial space interests. LEO won't be controlled by any government, it will much more likely be largely dominated by commercial concerns.

[7cscb]

Looking at the space race in the 60s, the current space race is much more sluggish, but it is attended by a larger number of participants who set themselves broader goals. China has managed to pose a very serious challenge to US global leadership. Magazines declare that "the transformation of totalitarian China into a dominant space power will be a historical tragedy" for the countries of the "free world" BUT (NASA) signed a memorandum with the US Department of Defense at the end of September, which clearly demonstrates the militarization of the space sphere in order to ensure the overall strategic dominance of the United States. Whoever controls LEO controls near-earth space. The one who controls the near-earth space rules the Earth. The one who rules on Earth determines the fate of humanity.

I totally agree with Garrison on this.

Which magazines are you quoting?

Cheers,

[Roger E. Moore]

The Race for Mars Takes China-U.S. Tensions Into Outer Space. In February unmanned spacecraft from China and the U.S. are scheduled to reach Mars, where both will dispatch rovers to the frigid surface, offering dueling images of its barren landscapes. It will probably be a decade or more before any humans travel to the planet, but both countries want to gain the expertise needed to dominate what lies beyond our atmosphere, with China aiming to catch up to—or outdo—the U.S., which has made eight successful Mars landings since 1976. “Mars has moved into the symbolic role of demonstrating the superiority of technology,” says Alice Gorman, an associate professor at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, specializing in space archeology. Their competition is heating up closer to home, too, as space takes on greater economic and military importance. NASA is working on plans to return astronauts to the moon sometime this decade, and China is preparing an unmanned lunar mission for 2023 in preparation for an eventual trip there by its astronauts. That would follow up a 2019 visit that for the first time sent a probe to the far side of the moon, as well as the Chang’e-5 mission, which returned to Earth in December carrying samples from the moon’s surface, something only the U.S. and the Soviet Union had done before.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-race-heats-up

[docmordrid]

Yeah I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the current 'space race'. It isn't between the relatively sluggish Government programs, its between governments and commercial space interests. LEO won't be controlled by any government, it will much more likely be largely dominated by commercial concerns.

I agree 100%, though in time national militaries will move into cis-lunar space - first in a regulatory role and to keep each other honest under the Space Treaty. The Moon Treaty is rather irrelevant as so few nations have signed on.

[selvaarchi]

"For China, space is both substance and symbol"

https://spacenews.com/op-ed-for-chin...ce-and-symbol/

In December, China successfully conducted its first lunar sample retrieval mission. Chang’e-5 landed on the moon, deployed a rover who then dug up various pieces of the lunar surface, then returned to Earth with about 5 pounds of material. This marked the first return of moon rocks in over 40 years.

During the week that Chang’e-5 departed Earth, the giant radio-telescope at Arecibo in Puerto Rico collapsed. One of the supporting cables had failed in August, and another in November, with damage to the main reflector dish. On Dec. 1, the supporting cables on one tower failed completely, causing the structure to collapse.

While there is no reason to think the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had anything to do with the failure of the iconic Arecibo facility, the symbolism of the two events would seem to highlight the steady shift in space prominence. The Chinese Chang’e missions have not done anything the United States has not done previously, but China’s steady persistent efforts have allowed it to build a firm foundation from which to compete with the United States.