That requires a truly astounding amount of material. Unless the cost to place it in orbit gets within an order of magnitude of our current terrestrial freight, it's not happening.
Best bet is to construct these things in orbit, with materials sourced in orbit. But now you have a chicken and egg problem - need to send an incredible amount of material (and people) in order to (potentially!) save in the future.
I want a country to make one. Any country. I would gladly pay for a ticket for a week long stay on an aesthetic space station. You have no idea how badly I want to live in the kind of futuristic future depicted in science fiction.
> I would gladly pay for a ticket for a week long stay on an aesthetic space station.
How much would you pay? Because the capital cost of building it was hand wavey thrown out as $500B and the operating costs of facility would be exorbitant.
Staring out the observation bay for hours on end with my favorite mood music playing through my headphones. Then going for a spacewalk, before heading back inside and having dinner with my friends in the rotating orbital restaurant. After that, I'll play an online video games with Earth-based players. To conclude my day, I'll return to my luxury pod, lay on the side in bed while looking outside at the planet through the port window, a mere inches from my face, and let my dreams, and the low humm of the station's machinery, take me to sleep.
> Because the capital cost of building it was hand wavey thrown out as $500B and the operating costs of facility would be exorbitant.
Yeah, estimated using the inflated cost of the ISS and other historic projects... give a tenth of the money to a private company not bound to political pork interest like NASA/ESA and they'll manage it just fine. Alternatively, give NASA/ESA free rein to do things the efficient way.
The problem at the root is that, historically, space access never was a plain "we need task X accomplished" - there always was the political interest of those with decision power to spread R&D and construction far across the country, so that everyone got a little piece (and every politician could claim of having brought jobs to their voters). That caused enormous inefficiencies - stuff needs to be shipped three times across the continent (look at Airbus supply chain, it's insane), there's an enormous amount of red tape and coordination efforts required, and turnaround times are insane. Meanwhile SpaceX has like two manufacturing plants and four launch sites and especially they manufacture a lot of what they need completely on their own so they don't have the typical delays you have with a classic vendor-supplier relationship, and they save on profit margins of all the intermediates as well.
I think you're seriously overestimating Chinese economic capabilities. They are still constrained by the same economic realities as everybody else, and -- much as we wish it were possible -- they cannot afford to just do whatever.
Presumably the problem there is that even a sea of expendable labour's useless, if what you need is a Von Braun[1]-esque figure and a paddling pool of engineering talent... .
Space stations and exploration can be a difficult proposition to justify to any economic system; democratic, socialist, communist, etc. For China to want to "beat" us, building bigger and better space stations would somehow have to align with the current and future five year plans.
I would rather have China and the US pouring tons of money into space stations and exploration, but it is hard to figure out the rationale for such a massive investment. China seems to make rational decisions, those of which I am not defending. I am trying to figure out how rational a $500 billion dollar investment in a space station would be to Chinese interests.
The space race was motivated by competition with Russia, notably the imperative to establish a tactical nuclear advantage. We could conceivably see another space race between the US and China, but maybe not if "space" doesn't have the same tactical appeal?
I suppose it could lead to a race to build a new generation of heavy lift vehicles or other propulsion systems. Maybe a return to the NERVA[1] engine! That technology was an interesting story point in the "For All Mankind" series alternative timeline.
Presumably everyone already has access to enough nukes such that there isn't much of a point in investing in nukes, whether terrestrial or satellite? The arms race might lead toward building more, better interceptors?
Best bet is to construct these things in orbit, with materials sourced in orbit. But now you have a chicken and egg problem - need to send an incredible amount of material (and people) in order to (potentially!) save in the future.