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Old November 19th 17, 12:56 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Fred J. McCall[_3_]
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Default China wants to catch up to US rockets in 2020 and then get nuclear spaceships in 2045

William Mook wrote:

There are two reasons China signals and then disappears from the radar screen;

(1) economic caution,
(2) geopolitical caution,


In other words, as I said, they talk big plans and then don't deliver
on them.


This does not mean they do not make progress. On the contrary, their progress is steady and inexorable thus far and they have outclassed the USA in many respects in ways that do not threaten the USA.


So they 'outclass' us in things we can't be bothered to shine at?


The quality of Chinese graduate students is legendary in the USA. Nearly 20% of all graduate positions, and the top 20% of the graduate population, are uniformly Chinese. Many of these return to China bearing great knowledge, often after working in US industry, US Space and US military programmes.


Absolutely wrong. There are around 150,000 Chinese graduate students
enrolled at various schools in the US. The graduate school population
is around 1.75 million. Pretty sure 150,000 isn't 20% of 1.75
million. Are you getting confused and switching back and forth
between counting 'ethnic Chinese' and 'Chinese by nationality'?

snip meaningless trade numbers


Yet, if you want to know where the Chinese are in their nuclear programmes, just look at the aircraft carrier programme and their nuclear submarine programme and their nuclear power programme.


They have no nuclear aircraft carriers and no plans for any that I'm
aware of. Their next carrier will apparently be something the size of
the UK's QUEEN ELISABETH. Regardless, marine propulsion reactors and
power reactors have NOTHING to do with nuclear rocket engines.


China outclasses the USA in computing, while US investors own designs and hardware, virtually all the wafer fab capacity America owns resides in Asia.


But not in Mainland China. I think a number of companies will be
surprised to find that their major fabs are in Asia, whether you're
talking Mainland China or all of Asia.

snip usual self-congratulatory MookSpew


On Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 11:51:27 PM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
wrote:

"China plans a fleet of nuclear carrier rockets and reusable hybrid-power carriers by the
mid-2040s. They will be ready for regular, large scale interplanetary flights, and carrying
out commercial exploration and exploitation of natural resources by the mid-2040s.

China plans to catch up with the United States on conventional rocket technology by
2020.

If Spacex and Elon Musk achieve fully reusable rockets with the Falcon 9 or the BFR in
the 2020-2022 timeframe then China would be 13-15 years behind if they hit their
target for reusable rockets in 2035.

By 2030, China will put astronauts on the moon and bring samples back from Mars."

See:

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/1...s-in-2045.html


China frequently 'plans' things that it just can't execute. They
'planned' to build 20 aircraft carriers in 20 years, too. They built
one.

I don't understand why nuclear thermal rockets are 'necessary'. NASA
says it's to get trip times to Mars down to 3 months or so. SpaceX
plans to do that with conventional rockets, where BFR Spacecraft will
have Mars transit times of around 3 months (because they depart fully
fueled from Earth orbit). Yes, nuclear thermal rockets get you a
higher Isp, but why wait for that? As for nuclear electric, you get a
really high Isp with a really low acceleration. Again, I don't see
the point.




--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw