Greetings all,

much snipped

"memorandum of understanding" are easy and cheap to draw up, and look pretty for the clueless press.

Bending metal and testing metal is expensive and hard. Getting said bent and tested metal anywhere useful (preferably without killing a bunch of people) is even more expensive and harder.

In short I'll believe it when I see it.

I don't doubt that that China and Russia have the knowledge and even some of the expertise, but realistically:

What has Russia done in space in the last twenty years except build cookie-cutter copies of the Soyuz and Progress, and their launch vehicle, and mostly get them to ISS on time? No great interplanetary probes, no new modules for ISS, no independent space station development.

The Chinese launched a couple of people into space, and even a short lived space station where (I think) 3 astronauts had fun and did experiments for a couple of days. Then??? Nothing on the human in space front. No follow up program, no Chinese astronauts going to ISS.

Musk and SpaceX have a better chance of building a lunar orbiting space station first. Musk probably is spending more money on SpaceX that the Russians are on their space program.

Regards
Frank