Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "Tiangong: Behind China’s Answer to the International Space Station | WSJ" video.

  1. Russia was brought in primarily to help keep their scientists busy after the Soviet collapse, and prevent them from going rogue with their powerful skills to the highest bidders. It would not have happened had the USSR still existed, and this is reflected in the functionally separate Russian modules of the ISS.
    2
  2. Operating the ISS is expensive. Forcing China to build one itself also forces it to pay for itself, which will be increasingly burdensome for an unchallenged Party whose support (or at least tolerance) rides on the promise of indefinite growth but faces undeniable stagnation and eventual decline with looming effects of its own aging, debts, and pollution.
    1
  3. China could have been part of it, but then 1989 happened.
    1