China's National Space Administration budget: $1.3 billion NASA's budget: $17.8 billion
now, some of China's space budget is really shouldered by the military. on the other hand, so is a fair chunk of the US space budget. (That LADEE probe going to the Moon next week, for instance, is riding an Air Force rocket.)
PPP suggests we should roughly double that -- Chinese engineers and astronauts are paid less, so China gets more bank for the buck. So, $2.6 billion. NASA is still outspending China 6 to 1.
let's note that China conspicuously lacks a manned space station, rovers on Mars, orbiters around Mercury and Saturn, a dozen different sorts of space telescope, half a dozen different sorts of Earth-monitoring satellite, or missions en route to Pluto, Jupiter or Ceres. in fact, so far China has shown zero capacity to send anything beyond Earth orbit.
that said, if the upcoming Chinese unmanned moon landing -- currently scheduled for December -- gives a nudge to space spending in the US, sure, I won't say no.
I notice nobody's quoting any actual numbers
China's National Space Administration budget: $1.3 billion
NASA's budget: $17.8 billion
now, some of China's space budget is really shouldered by the military. on the other hand, so is a fair chunk of the US space budget. (That LADEE probe going to the Moon next week, for instance, is riding an Air Force rocket.)
PPP suggests we should roughly double that -- Chinese engineers and astronauts are paid less, so China gets more bank for the buck. So, $2.6 billion. NASA is still outspending China 6 to 1.
let's note that China conspicuously lacks a manned space station, rovers on Mars, orbiters around Mercury and Saturn, a dozen different sorts of space telescope, half a dozen different sorts of Earth-monitoring satellite, or missions en route to Pluto, Jupiter or Ceres. in fact, so far China has shown zero capacity to send anything beyond Earth orbit.
that said, if the upcoming Chinese unmanned moon landing -- currently scheduled for December -- gives a nudge to space spending in the US, sure, I won't say no.
Doug M.