The Why of Space Program Races

Deinhard writes "USA Today is running a story about the "why" behind the newly rekindled international space race. From the article: 'The science of space raises levels in areas such as computers, space materials, manufacturing technology, electronic equipment, systems integration and testing.' While it is a matter of national pride, China in specific also sees this as a way to increase the reputation of its high-tech exports."

Notice to the rest of the world

[j_cavera]

Bring it on! (BTW, Burt Rutan _is_ on our side, right?)

Re:Simple

[halivar]

Simple; the US is not #1 anymore, China is starting to stand on their two feet, so, this is suddenly an ego thing again. God I love being Canadian.

Hah! You earth-bounders are just jealous of our enormous rocketships! If you had rocketships like we do, you'd be racing, too. But you'd lose, because our rocketships are bigger than anyone else's!

TO THE MOON!!!

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, sure, but how many mega-millionaires has China created? The only true measure of the wealth of a nation is how many ultra rich it has. Anyone who makes less than $1,000,000 per year shouldn't count anyway. What have the poor ever done for us? Everyone knows that all wealth is created by the rich. If you want to be better off as a nation kill all the poor and never make the rich pay taxes. The rich are obviously favored by God, if not actually Divine in some way. The fact is, poor people are not selfish enough to succeed, and as we all know, selfishness is next to godliness, so they are all going to hell anyway.

Sid Says

[focitrixilous P]

Unless one of the countries wipes out everyone else, the only way to win is to get to Alpha Centauri, and the tech tree is not nearly devloped enough at the moment. The space race is just the preliminaries for the real race.