The Right Stuff

[poliphilo]

The TV journalist was trying to get the former NASA astronaut to say how frightening it was that the Chinese had landed a machine on the dark side of the Moon and he said (in so many words) "I've trained and lived alongside Russian and Chinese cosmonauts- and none of us was interested in national prestige or military advantage; we were doing what we did on behalf of Humanity."

Comments

[tagryn]

If there was a clear military advantage to doing that, either the Soviets or the USA would have done it during the Cold War. The Chinese are looking to get any "firsts" that remain, as a way to demonstrate they are an ascending world power...which also may be why a Chinese scientist was the first to do gene alteration of human embryos, and why it wouldn't surprise me if their space program is the first to put people on Mars.

It's also why the trends towards militarization of space & disregarding the limits set in the Outer Space Treaty should be concerning, too: space is difficult enough to conquer without the different space programs treating each other as rivals.

[poliphilo]

It seems to me it's the politicians who see things in terms of a "space race" while The astronauts and scientists are much more ready to think of us all being it together.