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It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

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Commission: U.S. should increase its severe limits on Chinese space contacts

A new report by a congressionally-mandated commission has concluded that practically all of China’s space effort is tightly linked to its military, and that the U.S. should significantly tighten and reduce its space interactions with China, in numerous ways, to avoid that country’s theft of technology.

[T]he commission urges Congress to smack down almost any interaction by any US entity — including private companies and universities — with China on any aspect of space activities.

For example, the commission raises its metaphorical eyebrow at the bilateral research agreement between Beijing Institute of Technology’s (BIT) Institute of International Law and George Washington University’s (GWU) Elliott School of International Affairs. The two organizations signed a cooperation agreement in September 2013, and their joint study program largely focuses on the development of norms and international space governance.

The study characterizes BIT’s involvement as “actively working to shape research and promote PRC standards in international space law,” and ominously notes that GWU’s Space Policy Institute has support of a wide variety of “important U.S. defense contractors and federally funded R&D centers.”

The report can be downloaded here. It does not mince words, outlining in great detail the fusion between China’s military and all of its space efforts, while using science as a cover to develop ties with U.S. universities and research facilities.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

6 comments

  • commodude

    I hate to beat a dead horse, but with the ChiComs, there are NO “privately held” corporations, they are all part and parcel of the PLA.

    Boeing and the rest of the US aerospace industry should be… encouraged… to end all manufacturing in China, and destroy any manufacturing facilities and equipment which cannot be moved out of the country.

  • James Street

    How does China still even have a space program? Their economy is in shreds.

  • Dick Eagleson

    Yes. It’s well past time to impose “Containment 2.0” on both China and Russia. Being an enemy of the U.S. is a choice. Having made that choice, these nations need to feel the maximum consequences of that choice short of war. Within five years it should be made illegal for U.S. businesses to have any supply chains in China or to sell China anything except, perhaps, foodstuffs.

    The U.S. should also cancel all Treasury securities currently held by China and cease any future sales of such to China.

    Too bad about Tesla’s Gigafactory 3, but it has to go too.

    I would not be averse to a government program to compensate U.S. businesses for at least part of their losses incurred in disentangling themselves from China. Think of it as a different sort of defense expenditure.

  • sippin_bourbon

    This conclusion should be obvious, and yet too many wanting to make a quick buck, be they corporations or politicians, are too willing to overlook the willingness of the Chinese to outright steal any bit of knowledge or tech to catch-up or get ahead.

    Quite plainly, they do not care about the concept of intellectual property, and anything marked secret is merely a challenge to acquisition.

  • A. Nonymous

    Move the supply chains out of China, and the One Child Policy and the mountain of fake loans they gave to each other will collapse the whole thing.

  • Wodun

    How many countries are involved in a decoupling? The problem us larger than the USA vs China. Refusing to do business in China still puts put businesses at a disadvantage to countries who do work with China. There needs to be a clever solution rather than one that makes us feel good in the short term.

    Also, many in the science and space community are more than pleased with China.

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