(December 18, 2022 at 12:30 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote:(December 18, 2022 at 11:54 am)Jehanne Wrote: American equipment will come back with the American astronauts, whatever they can carry. The pukes can have the rest. If the US does not have a space station, so what?? We have the sole 5 spacecraft on hyperbolic trajectories that will leave our Solar System, forever. The United States' legacy as a spacefaring power is secured, forever. We have nothing to prove, to anyone.
We should abandon the ISS, the sooner, the better.
So the US would need to show it can continue to deliver more on each of the areas where China is striving to catch up and out do the US. Ditching a nominally international space station would clearly not serve the greater national goal of power.
The Universe and even the Solar System are so vast that no nation will be able to explore everything, even if that is all that they did. If China wants to be "first", so what!??
