since india demonstrated its bomb in 1998, the chinese have been increasingly uneasy. china reacted to the detonation with angry demands that the international community keep india contained. when that got nowhere, china helped ppakistan go nuclear. in retrospect, that was a scary, destabilizing misstep. but now india and china are poised to continue their rivalry on safer high ground - beyond earth's atmosphere.
nuclear india versus nuclear china is kennedy versus kruschev, and reagan versus gorbachev, all over again. now, as then, a space race is a sexy alternative to nuclear annihilation. [.....]
a decade after the end of the cold war, good old-fashioned space programs still matter. not for exploration's sake, but to settle new cold wars. if you doubt it, imagine this scenario: it's 2029, and a lunar mission lands at tranquillity base. a crew of heroic young indians - or chinese - quietly folds and puts away america's 60-year-old flag. if the world saw that on television, wouldn't the gesture be worth tens of billions of rupees or yuan? of course it would.