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cjameshuff t1_iv0scr6 wrote

..."now"? They've pretty consistently been coming second only to SpaceX in launch rate and mass to orbit, and have been regularly flying astronauts to their own space stations.

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pompanoJ t1_iv0wats wrote

No, it wasn't official until Wired said so.

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nova9001 t1_iv0uccl wrote

>NOV 4, 2022 8:00 AM

That's the date/time author wrote the article. So yea at that point of time China just became a major space power.

Jokes aside, its funny how clickbait titles work.

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EventAccomplished976 t1_iv4z3y8 wrote

China was launching more rockets than the US for the past four years and is getting beaten this year only due to starlink. Mass to orbit is indeed a different story since most of the currently in service chinese LVs are smaller than their western counterparts.

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TheCriticalAmerican t1_iv0pcnc wrote

Competition is always good. I feel the U.S and China are heading towards and All Mankind type of timeline.

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[deleted] t1_iv0zjuc wrote

[deleted]

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stanton98 t1_iv116m1 wrote

What do you mean? What does one have to do with the other?

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[deleted] t1_iv144rv wrote

[deleted]

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stanton98 t1_iv18qto wrote

Yeah but what does that have to do with the speed of their space aspirations? If anything I feel as if it would embolden them. Or him I should say, lol

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Ok-Fox966 t1_iv26vtn wrote

And how does that have anything to do with Space?

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nova9001 t1_iv0uwyn wrote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_the_International_Space_Station

>While ESA is open to China's inclusion, the US is against it.[45] US concerns over the transfer of technology that could be used for military purposes echo similar concerns over Russia's participation prior to its membership.[46][47]

12 years ago US banned China from ISS and today China has completed their own space station. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

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InsGadget6 t1_iv103ej wrote

I don't think the US considers this a mistake.

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chriswaco t1_iv10ssh wrote

The US rarely admits mistakes unless they were made by the other political party.

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InsGadget6 t1_iv10xla wrote

But not having China involved with the ISS is not exactly something anyone within the US is losing sleep over.

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stanton98 t1_iv11aq2 wrote

That’s not true, just last night I lost 23 minutes of sleep just thinking about our Chinaless ISS

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chriswaco t1_iv125s5 wrote

Right, but now China has the complete start-to-finish expertise to create their own station. Soon they’ll be better than we are at it, just like manufacturing.

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poopmaster79 t1_iv4wzwg wrote

In my opinion it would have been better to just have a single ISS for all nations doing space programs, all these resources to build a separate space station could have been utilised somewhere else, this just seems like a baseless competition to do the same experiments in the same kind of environment but in two different places, humanity can't look past it's own differences, how does one expect us to reach the stars and look beyond what's discovered?

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[deleted] t1_iv1ew3x wrote

[removed]

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chriswaco t1_iv1puyv wrote

It’s not pride. It’s reality. My US-based engineering school is now 25% Chinese. The first generation of US-trained engineers has returned home and China is now training more engineers than we are.

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Analyst7 t1_iv5an5x wrote

But if they are so capable why are they using Russian designs?

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chriswaco t1_iv5zqfq wrote

The same reason our rockets used German designs. It’s the fastest way to get started. If not for the private company SpaceX, the US would be way behind Russia and China in launch capacity right now.

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greatestmofo t1_iv4i40r wrote

The US stole British tech in the past, then took over and become a manufacturing prowess.

China stole US tech, and is now a manufacturing prowess.

In the next few decades, India will steal Chinese tech and become a manufacturing prowess themselves.

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chem-chef t1_iv4iqv5 wrote

I really doubt the india statement. In the last several thousand of years, they developed a lot of thoughts, but not much physical accomplishments.

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Analyst7 t1_iv5a8bq wrote

Actually we became a powerhouse in response to WWII, which was driven in US based tech.

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quadrangle3136 t1_iv3jr8h wrote

Think global. We're all one species. Trumpism is obsolete.

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Analyst7 t1_iv5ag8j wrote

Spoken as a true socialist, so we should all live in mud huts as the elites sip champagne? I like nationalism and Love MY country.

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[deleted] t1_iv1iq6j wrote

Good thing the chinese space station is basically a smaller less capable skylab, which launched in the 70s.

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[deleted] t1_iv3jtnv wrote

[removed]

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[deleted] t1_iv3mza1 wrote

No, I live in this place called "reality" where the chinese launched a shitty skylab clone and are performing experiments the rest of the world did 40 years ago.

It's not even a science station, it's a propaganda station.

Edit: found the wumaos in the thread

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Tuo_Larips t1_iv48chf wrote

You are a propaganda station

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[deleted] t1_iv495lx wrote

Nope, I'm telling you the reality, not what your tankie overlords tell you.

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Radiant_Nothing_9940 t1_iv1ap0v wrote

And it has been for a while. Thanks r/space for something that everyone already fucking knew. Posts like these ruin Reddit.

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Cless_Aurion t1_iv0xglb wrote

Funny to read this now, hours after one of China's space rockets made Spain close off part of their air traffic because they lost control of it...

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Dragon___ t1_iv0y9j1 wrote

They never had control in the first place. Their launch architecture is to intentionally sow chaos and terror as their expended stages randomly tumble back to earth. You can watch the reentry prediction and the trajectory pretty much always has a nonzero probability of crashing into the US or Europe. It's insanity.

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Bensemus t1_iv1rgwc wrote

> Their launch architecture is to intentionally sow chaos and terror

This isn't true. They aren't trying to cause a panic. Some of their rockets uses a sustainer centre core that makes it into a very low orbit. They haven't invested in the tech to relight the engines or add deorbit motors to deorbit it in a controlled fashion.

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toodroot t1_iv44wxh wrote

The easiest solution is what Energia and Shuttle did: don't put the big thing into orbit. People even talked about this before the first CZ-5B launch.

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scunglyscrimblo t1_iv11cth wrote

Look I don’t think China fear mongering is good but I think it is very fair to have some worried regarding them becoming a space superpower. They haven’t had the best track record with making sure debris don’t fall right next to schools lol. I’m sure they’d pollute the moons sphere of influence in a heartbeat

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EventAccomplished976 t1_iv4z9sf wrote

Now imagine if the US had been wiling to cooperate with them and made space debris avoidance part of the deal…

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cjameshuff t1_iv25yli wrote

They may not be about to conquer space and then the world, or even grab any unusually valuable territory, but:

  1. they are genuinely growing in capability at a rapid rate.
  2. it would be better to overestimate them than underestimate them.
  3. there's a sizable group of people who are more motivated by national competition than by anything else. It's not my reason to support space, but it gets support for space. And frankly, peaceful cooperation and "common heritage of mankind" blather isn't getting us anywhere.
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Analyst7 t1_iv1fd1l wrote

Well at least they can't build coal fired power plants up there.

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Decronym t1_iv4zidq wrote

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

|Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |ESA|European Space Agency| |ETOV|Earth To Orbit Vehicle (common parlance: "rocket")| |LV|Launch Vehicle (common parlance: "rocket"), see ETOV|

^(2 acronyms in this thread; )^(the most compressed thread commented on today)^( has 55 acronyms.)
^([Thread #8226 for this sub, first seen 5th Nov 2022, 10:23]) ^[FAQ] ^([Full list]) ^[Contact] ^([Source code])

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ekkidee t1_iv254r8 wrote

Welcome to the club, China. Please properly dispose of your space junk. Thank you.

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koebelin t1_iv347vn wrote

In a serious WW3 effort, the first step must be to knock out the satellites.

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DevoidHT t1_iv214f6 wrote

I won’t consider them a space power until they stop dropping used boosters uncontrolled. It’s lazy at best, incompetent at worst.

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KitteNlx t1_iv21x3y wrote

Now if only they could stop dropping space trash onto people.

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earsplitingloud t1_iv2g89h wrote

American politicians let China get the technology to get payloads into orbit. The Chinese will use that technology against their neighboring countries and America one day.

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Mountain-Author t1_iv2oo4b wrote

Actually this was mostly Russia, Soviet technology is basically their only export

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PurpleSupermarket835 t1_iv2zyjl wrote

So is MUSK. He is singlehandidly decreasing launch cost. What's your point?

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fish_taped_to_an_atm t1_ivq5i4h wrote

*the actual smart people musk hired with child slave money are decreasing launch costs. musk is getting mad that people won't pay $8 to add a check to their name on twitter.

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Yumewomiteru t1_iv17l2v wrote

Indeed, and the whole world will benefit, e.g. China will help launch a moon rover for the UAE. Well, aside for the US that is, who foolishly banned themselves from corporation with China's space program.

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Bensemus t1_iv1rud3 wrote

The US banned China over concerns of intellectual property theft. In the last decade China has done nothing to show that they respect international patent laws to the same degree as the West. They've recently been accused of stealing trade secrets from TSMC to get their own chip fabs up to par.

The US doesn't see that as a mistake.

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Yumewomiteru t1_iv1wtil wrote

The US has been caught this year hacking into Chinese universities to steal IP, don't throw rocks in a glass house.

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WeirdAlYankadik69420 t1_iv2f4xq wrote

Lol we’ll throw rocks all we want because there really is no competition between the USA and China in space. USA NUMBA 1

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