Mark Whittington has a long rebuttal to Jeff Foust’s commentary at The Space Review, about the “coming space race with China.” It’s worth reading, though I still believe that such a race, now or in the future, is a mirage.

I do need to respond to one point in particular:

One interesting point against the idea of a Chinese space threat was made recently by Rand Simberg in his Transterrestrial Musings weblog. He stated, ?a true free- market approach (of which, under the current regime, I suspect they?re incapable) will leave them in the dust. That?s why I don?t even consider them relevant to our species? future in space, unless they display some dramatic change in approach.? The problem is that the United States is not following a free market approach in space flight. NASA is still insisting on running its own space line, rather than going to the private sector for launch services, for example.

Mark hasn’t been paying attention. Certainly NASA isn’t taking a free-market approach, but the country is increasingly doing so (note the rising number of stories of dot commies finally putting their money where their mouths are).

At this point, I still consider both China and NASA irrelevancies to our future in space. But by the third and final page of his piece, I think that all three of us are ultimately in agreement.