Jonah: I guess that over the next 10-15 years the ChiComs are going to
learn the thing we learned: That there isn’t actually a lot of point
putting people in space. It costs a ton of money; you lose crews and
spacecraft at regular intervals; your people soon lose interest in the
whole business and grumble about all the stuff you could spend the money on
back home; when you get to be a democracy (God willing) there are no votes
in it; you need a whole new vast, expensive, and incompetent govt.
bureaucracy to oversee the thing; you’re better off with Star Trek reruns.
Oh, here comes Ed Burke: “Experience is the school of mankind, and he will
learn at no other.”