The Chinese government may pay several billion dollars to buy the Mir orbital space station, the Spanish news agency EFE was reported as saying Thursday in a report carried by the Russian news agency Itar-Tass.
The report quotes Chinese diplomatic sources as saying that purchasing the Mir space station would enable it to gain time and accumulate means to realize its zeal to become a space power.
The combined news reports suggests that many so called Chinese “experts” believe that urgent repairs of several Mir modules and onboard computers will keep the station working in the orbit for another 15 years.
The Itar-Tass report repeats previous suggestions that China’s first spacecraft, launched last autumn, was only a copy of an obsolete Russian spacecraft.
Despite rumours that the Chinese government is studying the possibility of buying the Mir complex, Itar-Tass said that the Chinese embassy in Moscow did not know anything about the intentions of the Chinese leadership to buy the Russian space station.
