14 DAY TRIAL // Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) is opposing the visit that NASA Administrator Charles Bolden is planning to make to China, in order to discuss the possibility of cooperating on manned spaceflight in the future.
The senior Republican appropriator is the ranking member on the House Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee, which is the body that manages all NASA spendings.
The official is a known and outspoken critic of China, and has been opposing any sort of collaboration with the Communist regime for a long time. He made his opinions known to Bolden in an official letter.
“I need not remind you that no such planning or coordination has been approved by the Congress,” Wolf wrote in an October 5 letter.
“In fact, several recent NASA authorization bills have explicitly sought to place strict limitations on coordination with China,” he added, saying that the Asian nation should not be included in ongoing projects.
Some had proposed that the country be invited to participate in the International Space Station, a joint venture of Europe, Russia, Japan, the US and Canada. But this collaboration is unlikely to take place.
“It should go without saying that NASA has no business cooperating with the Chinese regime on human spaceflight. China is taking an increasingly aggressive posture globally, and their interests rarely intersect with ours,” Wolf said.
“The US intelligence community notes that China's attempts to spy on US agencies are the most aggressive of all foreign intelligence organizations,” the letter reads.
“China's aerospace industry for decades has provided missile technologies and equipment to rogue regimes like Iran and North Korea,” Wolf argues.
But experts at NASA say in a white paper that the new approach to conducting talks with China is entirely in tune with the new set of guidelines on the US national space policy.
The documents, released this June by the White House, imply that there is no problem with this sort of bilateral relations.
But NASA says that a potential cooperation will only take place if the Communist regime is capable of full disclosure when it comes to its space activities.
The visit “will be introductory and will not include consideration of specific proposals for human space flight cooperation,” the white paper adds, quoted by Space.
“Specifically, please provide a summary of information about the US human spaceflight program that will be provided to the Chinese government, including non-public technical, operational or strategic information,” Wolf's letter reads.
“I would appreciate a detailed list of the NASA facilities that Chinese officials will be invited to visit, including a summary of the security precautions that will be put in place to protect sensitive spaceflight information,” he added.