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Comment by bayesian_horse | Hacker News Reader

50 years late to the space race..

They might be late to join, but when the rest of competition have started racing towards start line... Does it matter.

It matters when people think China is a High-Tech powerhouse. Until 2017 they weren't even able to produce ball-pens domestically. They had to institute a five year long program to figure out how to make the small balls that go into the tip of it.

Also China is unapolegitically militarizing it's space presence, and that should bother you a lot more than any US ambitions in that regard.

The US literally has a space force and probably the most military satellites in orbit

Yes. And they are a basically a democratic country, usually honor their treaties and are allied with my country. Generally countries who are "friends" with the US fare a lot better than "friends" of Russia or China. I do trust the US way more than China.

Also there is a big difference between recon satellites and hunter-killer satellites.

Russia is threatening to destroy Starlink satellites over support for Ukraine. In my opinion that has voided any treaties or intentions of not weaponizing space in a more direct way. The US (and its allies) now need to figure out how to clean up orbits wrecked by Russia and how to disable Russian satellites without wrecking useful orbits.

If Starlink is used by military it becomes legitimate military target including locations it is launched, controlled and manufactured from.

IMO the moon and Mars mean little, the real finish line is asteroid mining and orbital manufacturing.

Mining the moon is way easier.

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