China to sent astronauts to Tiangong 1 Space Lab

[Seggybop]

Unfortunately, it's straight up illegal for NASA to cooperate with China right now. Here's the actual section of law:

SEC. 1340. (a) None of the funds made available by this division
may be used for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
or the Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop, design,
plan, promulgate, implement, or execute a bilateral policy, program,
order, or contract of any kind to participate, collaborate, or coordi-
nate bilaterally in any way with China or any Chinese-owned
company unless such activities are specifically authorized by a
law enacted after the date of enactment of this division.

China was technically capable of contribution at the inception of the project (moreso than many of the participants) but the US was (is) afraid they'd just take it as an opportunity to steal all of the technology they were exposed to. May or may not be a valid fear. The Europeans and Russians do not share these concerns.

[Sarevok]

100 billion per year on space would get us colonies on the Moon and Mars, manned missions to Venus, asteroid mining and more within a couple decades. It could pay for another Apollo in one year, for fuck's sake

And that's what...1/6000th of world GDP?

Space exploration is actually pretty cheap already.

That's an oddly small figure. I think you are grossly underestimating the challenges of space travel.

[PeZook]

No, I'm not. Apollo cost only 120 billion in total, and delivered six 15 tonne vehicles to lunar surface. The ISS cost 100 billion, and about the same for the entire Shuttle program. So...at 100 billion per year we have the principal manned programs of the last five decades paid for in four-five years. Building up a lunar colony over a decade or so would be trivial at that level of funding, even without exponentially increasing in-situ resource utilization reducing dependence on materials shipped from Earth. There's technical challenges to be solved, obstacles to overcome etc - but remember, we're talking about decades here.

[someone_else]

if you re-route some spare change from that (way less than a billion) to develop serious propellant depots you can send 20 tons to moon orbit (not surface) with what, two Proton launches? That's 200 millions total. It can be done in a few years.

There are already designs of reusable moon landers based off stuff there is already. And others are developing the same idea. (for those wondering, this is a way to use cryogenic fuels, with massive performance incerase over LEM, without placing the crew/cargo at 6+ meters from lunar surface, since like the losy hydrogen density would require pretty damn big tanks)

With a moon elevator (doable with modern materials) you can avoid having landers (significantly less wasted fuel), and with water on the moon you can start manufacturing rocket fuel and make any trip beyond LEO cheap.