From China to the World – China’s International Space Push Continues to Grow

The past decade has seen an explosion in space activity in both the commercial and government sector. The rise of commercial space has been well-documented, with companies like SpaceX capturing headlines the world over. Somewhat less publicized, however, has been the rise of national space ambitions, and not just among the usual suspects of the US, EU, China, Japan, and a few others. Increasingly, small and medium-sized countries are jumping onto the space bandwagon. Ambitious as their plans may be, though, most of these small and medium-sized nations have no choice but to join blocs of bigger nations for particularly big projects. The obvious example is human spaceflight: Very few countries can justify the cost associated with developing their own crewed spaceflight program, much less their own space station, and so they partner with the ISS.