China and Russia to build lunar space station | Hacker News Reader

China and Russia to build lunar space station

bbc.com

48 pointsbillyharris25 comments

I see some comments critical of China’s and Russia’s tech abilities, something that I disagree with.

When I worked as a contractor at Google, there was an ocean of Russian and Chinese speaking people around me. I used to get into work around 5:30am, or a little later, ever day (my usual habit, no matter where I am working). Anyway, there was a manager who also was an early starter and one day I asked him about the diversity of co-workers. I was told that except for people graduating from premier US universities, it was fairly rare to find new graduates with deep math and reasoning skills. He told me that Chinese and Russian graduates were simply better prepared. This is just one data point, but it makes sense to me.

I have been working in the field of AI since 1982, and back then almost all AI published papers were from the US. We still kick ass in basic research, but other countries have caught up, and to deny that is simply not seeing the world for the way it is.

This is going to end with a full on 'the moon is a harsh mistress' vibe.

This thing has 'not going to start' vibes to me :)

New space race riot? I'm in

Serious: where will Russia get the money? Is this feasible for them?

Their GDP, in my opinion, is way too small for financing halve of this mission.

It was 2,66 trillion in 1989 and it was 1,6 trillion in 2018.

At average, 6% of that is reserved for military research.

By reference: Europe is 20 trillion gdp.

In a rare occurrence I agree with the saying "money isn't everything". Even if China paid the whole bill Russia could still "do half". In projects like this knowledge is at least as important and Russia do have a lot, even though it isn't what it once were in space tech and knowledge.

For comparison, Italy's GDP was 2 trillion in 2019. 20% more than Russia. Obviously Russia is going to be a junior partner. However, they got much more technical expertise than China.

Russia is extremely efficient. Look at what sort of military they have with their defense budget vs the USA.

Efficiently running away from Turkey?

Wouldn't the obvious constellation be that China provides the money, and Russia provides the know-how? Russia might desperately need the money to keep the remains of their space program alive, while any interesting technology they still might possess will be transferred to China.

The Chinese landed a rover on the moon, which is as far as the Russians got. And they did so with up-to-date tech.

Regarding Space exploration, the Chinese are not going to learn anything from the Russians.

The Russians didn't stop at the moon though:

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

They didn't have much luck with their Mars missions unfortunately:

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

Also, the Chinese manned space program was essentially bootstrapped by Russia:

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

Chinese prefer their own way. Not being content with others failed attempts, they now want to create their own modern autocracy story. Russian warnings about stalinism aren't heard in China.

Good points, but when it comes to space launch and space technology, Russia still has a lot to offer.

For a while, until China learns everything it needs from them and then discards them.

This scenario has been played over and over.

Not a problem for the current government ministers. It'll be someone else's problem when that happens in a couple of decades.

Adjust for PPP. Russia is poor but not that poor.

Unadjusted: $1.4Tr

Adjusted: $4Tr

I guess that whether or not it makes sense to adjust, in this case, depends on whether the expense will leave the country or not.

If you imagine that Russia's contribution to the project will be providing scientists and technology, maybe it makes sense to adjust.

PPP doesn’t work when you need import goods from 40 other countries to build rockets.

> If you imagine that Russia's contribution to the project will be providing scientists and technology

Can't read?

Translation: China will build it, and Russia will claim "serious involvement".

With the current leadership Roscosmos can only claim big great things in the future. I mean, they'd already claimed they will have reached the Moon by 2014. 7 years later, and here we are.

And in the current political climate Russian leadership will claim "us and China" for anything. Even if the participation of either side ends with signing a meaningless piece of paper.

Edit: China may want access to technical info they are still lacking, and Russia will happily sell that info at a large discount just to claim cooperation with China.

Citation needed.

Cold war is back baby

As a US taxpayer, I hope not!

Russia has a lot in common with China than any other country .. common theoretical basis of the past (communism) So they will perfectly find a common language. Russia and China have strong American pressure, in the form of an embargo and so on. So they will try to minimize their dependence on the USA .. Considering the addition of the economic power and intelligence of the two countries .. Most likely, the USA is in a winning position now, and will start losing in the medium term.

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