In the United States the space race led to a ton of STEM education, and secondary technology use cases. It would amazing to get similar benefits in those countries.

We need those benefits for the US.

Fix the immigration system

We don't necessarily need to do that. We just need less anti-intellectualism and to reduce the power/influence of the religious right in the US.

People were generally much more religious and conservative in the 1950s/60s than they are today no? How many Black astronauts were in the Apollo program?

No, we need those benefits for the whole of humanity.

Much of humanity depends on the US. You save the US, you save the world.

Oh, Please. Don't put the US on a pedestal. There is a shitload of issues that the US needs to fix and a little humility in accepting that others have better solutions, is one of them.

The internal issues of the US are of no concern to other nations, the only thing they care about is what the US can do for them and the rest of the world.

For all of the US's problems, Pax Americana has been statistically pretty damn successful.

It helps those countries further enhance their own Military R&D (ICBM research often goes hand in hand with Rocket research - that's why India and China started their space programs) while also becoming a PR coup for China+Russia.

Venezuela would make a pretty attractive launch site.

only for retro-grade orbits, meaning you lose the "boost" from the rotation of the earth (in fact, you have to work against it)

there's a reason that there are launch sites in French Guiana and Florida.

Where do you think Venezuela is?

ah. serves me right for geeking out during boring meeting. confused it in my head with Colombia. Visited both, should have known better =)

Venezuela has an eastern coast that, I think, would be suitable for a launch site if you put it south of Trinidad and Tobago.

It’s far from population centers, though (1), so it would require building/growing a city for personnel to live. It also appears to be swampy (not a show stopper, as Florida shows, but not ideal, either), and it has monsoons, so the weather may be a showstopper.

I also would be worried about political stability of the country.

(1) Apple Maps shows Tucupita as about the only thing near that coast. It’s about 100km away and, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucupita has a population of less than 100,000.

In living memory of most of us, China was just a deeply impoverished nation known for little more than exporting cheap unreliable crap. Any achievement they did make was framed as being stolen from somebody else. Yet now, their successes in space, industry, science, and technology are completely taken for granted. Funny how quickly things change! The status quo of the world is constantly shifting. Those nations which strive to advance, will. Those nations which rest on their laurels of achievements past, will gradually find themselves with little left to cling to beyond those laurels.

I think it's awesome to see previously neglected nations beginning to be able to take part in major space programs. They also come with unique benefits. Like somebody else mentioned, for one thing Venezuela is in a dream scenario for launches. Eastern exposure to the ocean and substantially closer to the equator than e.g. Florida. This means ships taking off from there are able to more optimally sort of 'sling shot' off of Earth's rotation - the Earth rotates Eastward, and fastest at the equator. Same reason that in Andy Weir's Artemis novel, Kenya ended up being a world leader in space. And there's no logical reason this wouldn't happen. Countries can be developed, but they can't be moved.

Well said. And one further advantage of Venezuela is that crowds of people looting the rocket on the pad will greatly reduce the launch weight.

  > Any achievement they did make was... stolen from somebody else. Yet now their successes in space, industry, science, and technology are completely taken for granted.

The two aren't necessarily in contradiction, you may notice. Do we have reliable evidence showing Chinese IP theft has slowed?

Many nations "bootstrap" internal industry with organized mass IP theft. The US extensively (and quite intentionally) stole from Britain's industrial IP, for instance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater

Besides the often quoted IP stealing from GB, there are also more recent examples.

At the end of WWII, not only the Soviet Union has moved piece by piece many industrial factories from Germany to Russia, but also USA and GB have "stolen" massive amounts of IP from the occupied Germany.

One of the most notorious cases in how the American industry of making magnetic tape recorders (e.g. Ampex) and of making magnetic tapes for them has been founded based on the samples brought back from Germany.

The case of the liquid-fueled rockets directly connected to this Apollo story needs no further mention.

Whenever they could get away with it, no country has refrained from copying foreign better technology.

While there in no doubt that China must have done this frequently in the past, in recent years there are little chances for them to benefit from this, because now in many domains their products are much more innovative than anything made in USA, and also in research publications they have many that are also more innovative.

I do not believe that sabotaging the Chinese companies that were on the brink to take most of the market share from US companies like Qualcomm and Micron has been the right strategy for counteracting the Chinese threat.

This is just a temporary setback for them and there is the risk that they could emerge from it stronger, no longer fearing any US blackmail.

This should have been either saved for a more critical moment, when it could have a greater effect, or the so-called "sanctions" should have been real sanctions, and not just anti-competitive measures, i.e. they should have been tied to some political demands made to China, e.g. to recognize Taiwan as an independent country, or to give up their claims to extend their maritime borders.

>not only the Soviet Union has moved piece by piece many industrial factories from Germany to Russia, but also USA and GB have "stolen" massive amounts of IP from the occupied Germany.

Not just the Soviet Union. The USA also moved factories piece by piece.[0]

The reverse example occurred during inter-war period, when US companies extensively outsourced to (cheap labor in) Germany. The US companies who exported their factories all made huge profit on paper, which promptly evaporated the moment war broke out. A lesson for the modern age, perhaps?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Press_Program

China faced a significant deficit in fundamental science infrastructure and knowledge during the transition from the Qing dynasty to modern times. Couple that with Africa-tier GDP and some truly horrendous setbacks (civil war, cultural revolution) they had no choice but to absorb knowledge from foreign nations (legally and illegally - copy, steal, learn) if they wanted any chance of competing with them.

They've made a lot of progress but still lag behind in these fundamental areas, for example bulk, precise fabrication of exotic materials for more complex items (jet engines). There is an enormous gap between having the specifics of the design and implementing it effectively when it comes to advanced fabs. There is a bit of 'arcane magic' to it unfortunately.

>I do not believe that sabotaging the Chinese companies that were on the brink to take most of the market share from US companies like Qualcomm and Micron has been the right strategy for counteracting the Chinese threat.

I knew a lawyer in DC who was part of a defense team for a US aerospace company accused of assisting China with their missile and space program. Among the things he learned were: 1) China is working pretty hard on improving its technology without necessarily relying on tech transfers (although they still at the time required certain Western machining tools), 2) sincerely concerned US members of Congress have no understanding of the technologies involved so they messed it all up and 3) there are many who are not so sincere and are just grandstanding and most importantly 4) it's never going to be a matter of stopping China's progress, just a matter of saying a couple of years ahead of them (ie. does it matter if they have 7nm chips when we have been using them for a decade already?)

Russia seems to be moving ever so slightly to the west and south as of late.

Aehm… living memory of an impoverished nation that didn’t export anything else than propaganda - not even cheap crap yet. It’s been incredible to watch Capitalism and hard work rescue and empower a nation that was literally completely destroyed by communism in the past 50 years.

> Countries can be developed, but they can't be moved.

Ever heard of Poland? It moved quite a lot.