8/6/2019 Card Wave Idk Anymore
1/2
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010 1Lab File Title
US-China space cooperation Low
By Keith B. Richburg Saturday, January 22, 2011; 9:26 PM
Washington Post Staff
Writer Mistrust stalls U.S.-China space cooperation
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2011/01/21/AR2011012104480.html Sh
BEIJING - China's grand ambitions extend literally to the moon,
with the country now embarked on a multi-pronged
program to establish its own global navigational system, launch
a space laboratory and put a Chinese astronaut on
the moon within the next decade. The Obama administration views
space as ripe territory for cooperation with
China. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has called it one of
four potential areas of "strategic dialogue,"
along with cybersecurity, missile defense and nuclear weapons.
And President Obama and Chinese President Hu
Jintao vowed after their White House summit last week to "deepen
dialogue and exchanges" in the field. But as
China ramps up its space initiatives, the diplomatic talk of
cooperation has so far found little traction. The Chinese
leadership has shown scant interest in opening up the most
sensitive details of its program, much of which iscontrolled by the
People's Liberation Army (PLA). At the same time, Chinese
scientists and space officials say
that Washington's wariness of China's intentions in space, as
well as U.S. bans on some high-technology
exports, makes cooperation problematic. For now, the U.S.-China
relationship in space appears to mirror the
one on Earth - a still-dominant but fading superpower facing a
new and ambitious rival, with suspicion on
both sides. "What you have are two major powers, both of whom
use space for military, civilian and commercial
purposes," said Dean Cheng, a researcher with the
Washington-based Heritage Foundation and an expert on theChinese
military and space program. NASA's human spaceflight program has
been in flux in recent years, fueling
particular concern among some U.S. observers about the challenge
posed by China's initiatives in that area. There is"a lot of very
wary, careful, mutual watching," Cheng said. Song Xiaojun, a
military expert and commentator on
China's CCTV, said that substantial cooperation in the space
field is impossible without mutual trust.
Achieving that, he said, "depends on whether the U.S. can put
away its pride and treat China as a partner to
cooperate on equal terms. But I don't see that happening in the
near future, since the b But while China may still be
an adolescent in terms of space exploration - launching its
first astronaut in 2003 - it has made some notable strides
in recent months and years, and plans seem on track for some
major breakthroughs. On the day Hu left for his U.S.
trip, Chinese news media reported the inauguration of a new
program to train astronauts - called taikonauts here - for
eventual deployment to the first Chinese space station, planned
for 2015. As part of the project, two launches are
planned for this year, that of an unmanned space module, called
Tiangong-1, or "Heavenly Palace," by summer, and
later an unmanned Shenzhou spacecraft that will attempt to dock
with it. On a separate track, China is also working
through a three-stage process for carrying out its first manned
moon landing. The first stage was completed inOctober with the
successful launch of a Chang'e-2 lunar orbiter. In 2012 or 2013, an
unmanned landing craft is
scheduled to take a rover to the moon to collect rock and soil
samples. By 2020, according to the plan, a taikonaut
could land on the moon.
Asteroid Mining key to finding E.T/ alien civilization would
mine space too
Speigel Apr 6, 2011 6:30 PM Lee Speigel Contributor for
http://www.aolnews.com/2011/04/06/searching-for-an-et-scientists-say-look-for-signs-of-
aliens-min/ Searching for an ET? Scientists Say Look for Signs
of Aliens Mining Asteroids
After 50 years of searching the heavens with radio telescopes to
try to contact alien life, so far the attempts of SETI
(Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) scientists seem to
have fallen on deaf ears. So is there another way to try
to find aliens in our galactic neighborhood? Some scientists
suggest looking for signs of ETs mining asteroids.Interesting
concept, because it shouldn't be difficult to detect any outer
space mining operations conducted by
aliens, especially something that would kick up an unusual
amount of dust in the process as they search for
precious metals found in rocky asteroids. "The development of
civilizations like ours into spacefaring, multi-
planet entities requires significant raw materials to construct
vehicles and habitats. Interplanetary debris, including
asteroids and comets, may provide such a source of raw
materials," write Duncan Forgan of the University of
Edinburgh and Martin Elvis of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics. The two scientists have written a
paper to be published in the International Journal of
Astrobiology. "We present the hypothesis thatextraterrestrial
intelligences (ETIs) engaged in asteroid mining may be detectable
from Earth." They
speculate that any alien mining efforts would result in specific
effects that might be seen by Earth-based
technology. The first clue to a possible deep-space mining
activity is that a chemical signature would result in
the debris ring encircling a star. This debris "may be the
leftovers from planet formation, and is expected to be
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/21/AR2011012104480.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/21/AR2011012104480.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/21/AR2011012104480.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/21/AR2011012104480.html
8/6/2019 Card Wave Idk Anymore
2/2
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010 2Lab File Title
common in planetary systems," Forgan and Elvis write. Second, an
alien mining operation would cause detectable
changes in the sizes of objects in those debris discs. Forgan
and Elvis believe that these would be big clues for
finding extraterrestrials. "If technological civilizations more
advanced than ours exist in the galaxy ... andasteroid mining is a
common activity which underpins their existence, then searching for
signatures of
targeted asteroid mining (or TAM) is an appropriate activity for
SETI to undertake," the scientists suggest. Itshould be pointed out
that they also realize their theory isn't the last word in
detecting ETs. It's possible that some of
these asteroid debris changes, whether physical or chemical,
could be caused by the simple natural act of asteroidsbumping or
colliding into each other. "We cannot expect a conclusive detection
of extraterrestrial intelligence by
TAM -- what it can provide is a call to attention. Debris disc
systems with unusual dust size distributions and
locations ... provide astrobiologists with candidates for
further study," the scientists write. The idea of going to
asteroids to find usable materials is one that NASA is already
implementing. The space agency is looking to send
the first manned mission to a nearby asteroid in 2025.
