Guys--

Some things to say first off.

1. I do not think the Chinese are a wonderful democracy.

2. I understand the PLA runs the show with their space program. It will therefore be of military character from the word go.

I submit, however, the Russians operated the same way, and they never put a stash of nuclear weapons on the moon, or suchlike. It was not because they were nice people. It is because it is darned expensive to do that, and there are cheaper and easier ways to do similar things. An ICBM, for instance, takes less time than a satellite to deliver a bomb, and you can launch them from land or sea without waiting for the right orbital positioning.

That said, I doubt the CHinese -- or anyone else -- are able to deny access to space to others or take it as the ultimate "high ground." Why not? Same reason as you can't deny access to the ocean (remember "he who controls the oceans controls the world?") -- it's too big. (Yes I know blockades happen, but imagine trying to do that to all of North America. Remember the Germans couldn't stop every ship from getting to England, and that is an island).

Assuming you could shoot every rocket launched, someone else would do that in short order to you (or bomb your launch facility). Back to square one. Besides, the US was in a position to put up military space stations bristling with weapons all over the place (so were the Russians, pre 1991) no matter what other countries said -- both were superpowers, after all -- and it never happened. There are political reasons, but I think there is the real possibility that in a technical sense it was possible, but not worth doing, just as stationing battleships every ten miles off the entire Asian coastline isn't.

What I am getting at is that the actual transfer of technology in and of itself may not be as big a deal as we think. The internal politics of China and US, and how that relates to the rest of the world is a big deal. There are plenty of potential areas of conflict with China-- but I think space is pretty far down the list of immediate concerns. I'd put border issues with India and Vietnam (remember China had wars with both in the last 30 years), Taiwan's pseudo-independence, Spratlys Islands, trade rules, access to water (all the major rivers in Southeast Asia start in Tibet), democracy in both China and our own allies, et cetera. The US and China are doing a fine job of keeping each other's plates full. Again I stress, I do not think the Chinese are all good Bhuddists. I do think there are a lot of constraints on what they can and cannot do, even without the US being there.

Russ, as an engineer, tell me if I am way out of whack here: is it possible the Chinese have not used radical new designs because it is just easier not to? Not to be flip, but were I running a space program in India or China, or even Japan, I would not spend time and loads of money on trying the fanciest new idea. I would make use of 100 years of accumulated experience on the part of Russia and the US.

Then there is money. There may be lots of cool new stuff on the drawing board in Beijing, but if it costs too much then it won't get funded. If it needs tons of some material that is unavailable except from hostile countries, then it probably won't get funded either. Satellite launch costs tend to be pretty constant -- take a look at Globalstar's annual reports or the ones from Iridium before they went under. So develpoing the empirical knowledge base would be just as expensive for anyone else as it was for the US and Russia, if done from scratch, no?

Anyway, trell me if I am nuts. But I think that rather than naive, I am someone who thinks that different countries have conflicts and interests that often play out in ways nobody expects.



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