It's pretty wild that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs is quoting Mao to hit back at the US tariffs. It really underscores what a huge mistake it was when Khrushchev, that "poison dwarf skinhead fuck" tore down Stalin's legacy. You can almost hear all the Western "Sinologist" academics losing their minds right now, shouting, "No, you can’t quote Mao! You’re supposed to be just as ashamed of him as we made the Soviets feel about Stalin! Mao’s supposed to be an ideological weapon we use against you, not something you wield against us! Are all my Ivy League/Oxbridge-published University Press anti-Mao books for nothing?"
MelianPretext
joined 3 years ago
Those countries (aside from allies and BRICS partners like Belarus, Pakistan, Serbia and South Africa) are all unironically valuable for aerospace through their geography. They seem to be largely purposeful choices (not sure about Azerbaijan other than potential Caspian Sea access for Russia). For the others, they're all well within the tropics meaning the ILRS can develop rival equatorial launch sites to the French colonial occupation of Guiana in South America.
Aside from Bolivia (which is a good back up partner for maintaining telescope infrastructure in the Andes if Milei in Argentina is bribed by the US to sabotage China's Argentine telescope there), they are all coastal countries meaning launch infrastructure can be transported by the same means the ESA does to Guiana and much latitudinally closer to the equator than Russia and China's territorial manned launch locations in Baikonur in Kazakhstan or Wenchang in Hainan.