After last month’s Chinese ASAT test, many people speculated that this would put a damper on potential civil space cooperation between the US and China. Those people appear to be right. The Washington Times reports today that the Bush administration has “suspended” any plans for such cooperation. “We believe China’s development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the constructive relationship that our presidents have outlined, including on civil space cooperation,” a NASA spokesman, Jason Sharp, told the Times. Any talks between the US and China were in their earliest stages, highlighted by a trip to China last fall by NASA administrator Mike Griffin that he likened to “a first date”. It looks like it may be a while before he gets a second date.
It will be interesting to see if ESA or any of its european members support the US by suspending their active cooperation with China (Double Star or Galileo projects)
Good point. But the Euro’s won’t. Can’t afford to. China is integral to the success of Airbus and EADS. Euro’s got a spot of trouble with China. They won’t sell offensive weapons, well outside of Galileo, to China, yet they need to sell high tech to China, as in the Airbus product catalog. How about the US, will we stop Intel, Boeing and many other companies from selling to China dual use goods and technology?
Are you suggesting that we should put Intel microchips on the arms list?
Are we going to start tracking the location of the 100 million + computers that are sold each year, because China might buy them up and use them for military purposes?
How about all the 2-3 year old computers we send to the dump? Are we going to require paperwork to show these were really destroyed?
– Al
PS — FYI, in case my personal opinion is not clear, the most revolutionary thing we can do to China’s dictators is to allow their people to participate in the “PERSONAL computer” and internet revolution. The dicatatorship can TRY to keep the genie in the bottle, and they are trying, but I think it is quite futile in the end, and we should allow them to continue to fool themselves. An educated and empowered middle class that is several hundred million large, which has a rapidly growing discretionary and disposable income and the strong desire for all parts of the American way of life, is a genie that can not be put back in the bottle.
Al: Are you suggesting that we should put Intel microchips on the arms list?
Why not? We (or more accurately, the Republicans) put comsats on the arms list.
— Donald
AI, what i can tell you is the American “dicatatorship” idea is not so popular in China. With “internet revolution” and “PERSONAL computerâ€, the “educated and empowered middle class” start to learn more about the American “free expression” and the American “democracy” in “free world” or you called “American way of life”.
well, i suppose you are not part of “educated and empowered middle class” . since the people what i talk with these years all are smart enough to understand what politics is, on the other hand, they are not smart enough to understand what democracy is.
at the last, you may continue to fool yourself, but please do not regard “educated and empowered middle class” chinese as someone you can fool.