Message posted by Andre' M. Dall'au on June 30, 2003 at 4:23:02 PST:
Chnia's decision to expand her space capabilities is probably the best thing to happen to the American Manned Space Program since President Kennedy's speech on Urgent National needs in 1961. That's the one where he declared (among other things like the creation of Special Warfare) that we would, as a nation, go to the moon and return by the end of the decade (1970). Actually not bad for a Democrat. If China makes plans to establish a Lunar base, then we'd better make sure that there is joint custody, or they will claim the whole thing and that would be unaccptable. The U.S. will have to follow suite and once again get into the heavy launch business once again. A rejuevinated Space Program is WAAAY overdue, but the Chinese may do just that for us. The last thing we are going to want is watch Chinese astronauts coming back to add moon rocks to the Great Wall, or argue with the Chinese about WHY they don't own the Moon if we don't even have the capability to travel there. If the Chinese do travel there and beam back pictures of the Stars and Stripes being taken down from the Sea of Tranquility and being replaced by the Chinese Communist Red Flag, the same one that fluttered over Teinammen Square (Remember That), then the freedom loving peoples of the world will have to admit we lost that one. As far as China becoming a Superpower, that will be a given seeing how far they have come in the past sixty years, their ability to bypass the need for expensive research (they stole it, or bought it from the west) and their single-minded pursuit of a strong Communist State. To ignore their threat, is to not understand their distain for the West, and their belief that the long term gains outweighs the short term disadvantages, or the expected personal sacrifices of their people are only part of their normal national policy. In the meantime look for a slow restart of the Space Program, with a deemphasis of the silly Shuttle program. We have no choise. He who knows what he doesn't know, but knows half of what he knows, but doesn't know the other half of what he knows, so only Knows... wait, I lost my place. OK, peter piper picked a ...
In Reply to: Re: China's Space Program posted by Evil Demon on June 29, 2003 at 20:10:59 PST:
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