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Comment by gburt | Hacker News Reader

Title is misleading. The clause prevents some sources of federally funded science from collaborating with China.

"The clause prohibits the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) from coordinating any joint scientific activity with China."

That said, this seems pretty crazy to me.

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We ban NASA from collaborating with China, meanwhile NASA collaboration in the past with the Soviet Union and Russia has proved very beneficial (scientifically and politically).

While Russia has tons of innovations on aerospace, what about China?

People in the US used to (and still do) commonly say similar things about the russians.

What, that the Russians haven't innovated in aerospace?

Yes. Obviously that is false, but you still hear people say it.

That's amazing - not only because of the obvious history (Sputnik, Gagarin etc.) but also because of the fantastic ongoing success of their launch vehicles - Arianespace will be starting to launch medium loads from Guiana later this year using Soyuz launchers (in addition to the Ariane 5 heavy launcher and the Vega lightweight launcher):

http://www.arianespace.com/launch-services-soyuz/soyuz-intro...

It launched people into orbit, hasn't it? It's been much more successful than India, for instance. But you're right that compared to Russia its accomplishments are fewer. Perhaps it's just a matter of time.

It's been much more successful than India

I will appreciate some data here!

Mars doesn't tell nearly the whole story, but this sticks out in my mind as an interesting infographic, notably devoid of any "India" lines. http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/images/4/2009/10/GoCGR.jpg

Note that China's mention is with Russia in that info-graphic. And here is the wikipedia page of that mission which clearly states that Chinese Mars obiter will be sent with Fobos-Grunt. While I don't discredit China of that but its a different thing to launch a satellite as opposed to sending your satellite on vehicle launched by some other country. FYI:

India's 'independent' mars mission is not far - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Space_Research_Organisat...

India's moon mission was the first one to prove the presence of water on moon - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-1#Water_discovered_...

For example, KITP in Beijing has some excellent Chinese astronomers. I am sure they can have collaborations with NASA scientists that would be mutually beneficial.

I realize this is not aerospace, but NASA is not just aerospace.

As written the policy can be read as very far reaching, banning for example NASA from sending anyone to a scientific conference at which a Chinese national or employee of a Chinese company is also attending. it would also ban them from buying anything from a Chinese company other than ordering off-the-shelf parts.

That's not what the wording of the linked article indicates. Do you know more information on this that supports your interpretation?

Because your interpretation would prevent anyone from NASA attending, for example, the American Geophysical Union conferences, which is ridiculous.

> the Obama Administration has taken the position that the ban does not apply to any U.S. scientific interactions with China conducted as part of foreign policy. This interpretation will likely allow the President to continue current activities until the spending bill expires in October.

Not if the American Geophysical Union conferences were declared to be part of a foreign policy initiative by the White House.

I agree: from reading the title I thought that companies and individuals were banned also.

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