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Originally Posted by Emspak
To TheGalaxyTrio and Russ--
Before we start bandying about words like treason, a few words are in order about technolgy in general. When I studied physics in college, there were a whole lot of Chinese students, and Indian ones, and in fact people from all over the world. While any country is well within its rights to try to prevent transfers of technology where they think it appropriate, I would submit that the whole exercise is not very effective. After all, Chinese people can read. They can subscribe to the aerospace trade pubs. They go to conferences and share ideas with all their colleagues, insofar as they are allowed to.
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Being an engineer, I've worked with many Chines on both standardized and developmental technology. My personal experience is that they excell at copying things, they are really lousy at developing something new. Given the 30 odd years this stuff has been in the public domain, (as you point out) and they still don't have their own version of it, should tell you something. I'll also assure your that what they got from Loral, Hughes and Boing was NOT in the public domain. If it had been there would not have been such a stink about the whole mess.
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Anything they got from Loral might save them time and development money, but little else. And I would further submit that since the actual technology of getting a capsule into space is old (40 years now) and well-understood, and a part of some aerospace engineering course curricula at every university that has it, it would be almost inconcievable to me that the Chinese -- or anybody else with the money (a key point) -- wouldn't develop space vehicles eventually if they wanted to.
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See above response.
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I am not going to get into whether the Chinese are a threat or not, or how to respond or not, that's a whole other issue. I'm just saying that every time any product goes abroad, or even to people within the U.S., somebody has probably reverse engineered it. I mean, you can't tell me that Apple and Microsoft don't do this to each other to figure out what makes the other company's technology good -- or bad, as the case may be -- and how to do it better, even if they don't "steal" from each other.
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:roll: The real truoble with naivete is that it cannot recognize its' own existance. Apple and Microsoft getting into each others nickers is a
WHOLE, WAY, WAY WAY DIFFERENT ISSUE than the Chinese having our missle guidence technology.
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So whatever the motivation, and I have no idea what it is beyond the obvious prestige issues -- the Chinese are planning to be a space-faring nation in some fashion or other, and there is little any other nation could do to stop it. I'd be interested to see how they go about it, and what methodologies for getting to the moon (if that is what they are after) they decide on.
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I can't tell you how much I hope you are right about the inocent motivations of the Chinese. I also can't tell you how much I fear you are wrong. They went to WAY to much trouble to get this technology by neferious means. One would think that if their real intent was a lunar landing that they'd have showed up at the front door.