What does Russia bring to the collaboration with China?
Ten, twenty years ago, Russia had a clear lead over China in every area of space flight - experience of long duration missions, landing on the Moon, big rockets with enough UMPH! to lift big payloads. But now? China has achieved all of those with its own technologies, and in some cases, exceeded the achievements of Russia and the USSR.
So, apart from possibly slowing the Chinese down, what does Russia have to offer?
(There are similar issues in aerospace where China and Russia have been trying to build the CRAIC CR929 long-range wide body airliner. Proposed in 2014, it might just fly in 2025, but the two partners keep falling out over little things like the engines.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
