Slashdot Mirror

No, it's a pity that it's only made of moonrocks, which Sotheby's sold some of back in '93, at a price equivalent to about $2.2 million per gram. Seeing it cost NASA a little over $50,000 per gram to collect, I'd say it's worth the trip. http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/fl_moonrocks_030806.html

Right you are- per http://www.space.com/news/080214-sn-destroy-spysat.html :

"The hydrazine tank aboard the failed satellite is about the same size as the one that was aboard the doomed space shuttle Columbia. The tank landed intact in an unpopulated wooded area in Texas after the orbiter broke up on re-entry in 2003."

However, given the unlikely chances of it landing in a populated area (let alone on land), I'll stick with my previous assertion that the primary goal of this exercise is the destruction of the interesting bits.

Agreed. That could *never* happen. It wouldn't be like a pissing match between say, China: http://www.space.com/news/070119_china_asat_response.html and the US: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/14/AR2008021401704.html?nav=hcmodule

There is supposed to be an international registry of known satellites, although not all countries use it consistently, especially for military satellites.

Pretending that a spy satellite is a different kind of satellite probably wouldn't work too well. First, different kinds of satellites use different orbits. Even more importantly, non-military US satellites have lots of publicly available information. Non-military satellites are usually either scientific instruments or commercial assets. The paper trail on a "real" non-military satellite would be hard to reproduce in a convincing way.

A very good story ran on Wired a short while back, "Hacking our five senses", and what he described is part of the story:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/esp.html

Also check out
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/cyborg_mann_041012.html
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/03/50976

And the story on Slashdot itself
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/03/155204

The RTG references for this are, I think, mostly traceable back to

http://www.space.com/news/nasa_plutonium_020724.html

which indicates that 'for reasons of national security' one RTG-worth of plutonium-238 had been reclaimed from NASA about five years ago.

There are various national-security applications for plutonium-238 - it's perfect stuff for powering, for example, bits of equipment to sit in a cave in Afghanistan or next to an undersea cable off Taiwan quietly recording all that passes to be collected later; it lets you build satellites without shiny solar panels. Lincoln Experimental Satellites 8 and 9 used RTGs; http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=5562667 is an abstract claiming there are ten American satellites in Earth orbit with RTGs on board, though I rather doubt it will list names and purposes.

Self-destruction in the sense that the satellite explodes into many peices isn't a good idea. Those little pieces travelling and thousands of miles per hour become lethal to other satellites. With who I work for, the Orbit Analysts have modeled scenarios in which an ASAT (anti-satellite missile) takes out a satellite and what affect it would have on other satellites. China recently tested their ASAT (link: http://www.space.com/news/070202_china_spacedebris.html) and it caused all sorts of anxiety even theough it was in low-orbit.

What was to stop, say, the Soviets or Chinese from going up and physically stealing a very expensive satellite that presumably contains technology/information we don't want them getting their hands on?

NORAD. They can track even the smallest peices of debris, down to the size of a 1 inch bolt. "The Mountain" is continous contact with our Orbit Anaylsts and alerts of possible collisions (near misses) due to space debris. In other words, you can't exactly sneak up on a satellite and steal it without being seen ... at least, not yet.

More likely to be a directed EMP or something similar from China.

U.S. Defense Report: China Working on Anti-Satellite Systems
http://www.space.com/news/050727_china_military.html

No mod points, so I thought I'd just comment you [troll/funny].

Actually, I find it quite funny that space.com shortened magneto-hydrodynamic wave (or as Alfven might have sometimes called it an electromagnetic-hydrodynamic wave) and called it magnetic wave for the lay person. Compared to an earlier article where I think space.com refers to them as sound waves,
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070604_mm_sun_sswave.html
it may be even less technically accurate to call them magnetic waves, but more correct sounding (if that's possible).

This article has very little to do with magentic reconnection nor the lack of electricity (it seem to just posit that MHD-waves can carry energy from the surface to chromosphere and they were observed). Of course since MHD-waves are essentially only present in electrically conducting fluids (like plasma or seawater), I doubt anyone but you has the impression that people are ignoring electrical currents (or electricity as you are calling it). ;^)

The object thrown towards the Earth spends a quarter of an orbit falling to Earth before its downward motion stops. Then it spends a quarter of an orbit rising to its original height. Then it spends a quarter of an orbit rising higher than its original height. Then it spends a quarter orbit dropping to its original height.

The object thrown away spends a quarter orbit rising to its hightest point. It spends the next quarter of its orbit dropping back to its original height. It spends the next quarter orbit dropping to its lowest point. It spends the next quarter orbit rising to its original height.

The object thrown prograde spends a half an orbit rising to its highest point, then a half an orbit dropping back to its original height.

The object thrown retrograde spends half an orbit dropping to its lowest point and then spends a half an orbit rising to its original height.

(shamelessly stolen from http://uplink.space.com/printthread.php?Cat=&Board=sciastro&main=536780&type=thread)

I don' think those dots are stars. They probably wouldn't show up on a photos like this, especially seeing as Mercury is probably *very* bright because it's so much closer to the sun than us. I suspect there is actually a bit of processing going on the dim the photos to make sure they're not washed out.

I think it's either just noise from the camera, or possibly the effect of cosmic rays hitting the camera CCD. This is something that effects anything leaving Earth's protective atmosphere, and causes astronauts (especially Apollo astronauts) to see random flashes in their eyes as the cosmic rays hit the receptors at the back of the eyeball.

A bit of explanation here:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mir_lights_030416.html

One big advantage of a crewed mission to a near-earth asteroid over a crewed mission to Mars is that we simply don't have the technology to get to Mars. A transfer orbit to Mars takes 1.4 years (total round-trip time). (This is simply the period of a body in a Keplerian orbit that's tangent to the Earth's orbit at perihelion and tangent to Mars's orbit at aphelion. A spaceship isn't like a car, which takes less time to get there if you drive faster. A spaceship only thrusts with its engines in order to change its orbit.) The big unsolved scientific and engineering problem is how to keep a crew of human beings from getting exposed to unacceptable doses of radiation when they're in Earth-Mars orbital space for that long. The radiation intensity from galactic cosmic rays is much, much higher out there than it is in Earth orbit. Feasible amounts of shielding actually make the problem worse rather than better, because of secondary radiation. According to this article, the duration of a mission to a near-earth asteroid could be 60-90 days, so it avoids this very tough, unsolved problem. There are many other aspects of a near-earth asteroid mission that are also a heck of a lot easier than a Mars mission. You don't have to land in a deep gravity well and then take off again, for one thing. If you look at the history of uncrewed Mars missions, it's pretty damn scary -- the success rate is very low, and that's for missions that don't have to take off and return to Earth, and don't have to provide life support.

The big question in my mind is what is the rational justification for government-funded crewed spaceflight at this point. There's no scientific justification; uncrewed probes give more bang for the buck. The shuttle's only mission is to go to the ISS, and the ISS's only mission is to give the shuttle somewhere to go. Thirty or forty years ago, this was all basically cold war propaganda stuff. It seems to me that the U.S. is having a hard time dealing with an unanticipated outbreak of peace. The rational thing to do would have been to continue harvesting the peace dividend, start ramping down our foreign military commitments, and let both crewed and uncrewed space exploration make the transition to the private sector. Instead we've been blundering around like idiots with our ridiculously large military, and in terms of space exploration we've been choking the scientifically productive uncrewed program by diverting the available money into extremely expensive projects like the ISS that have no rational justification.

Is an automated drilling/mining/processing plant. There are mineral deposits up there.

The minerals might be useful locally but helium3 is what would really be harvested from a lunar mining colony. Solar power would be plentiful for fueling the base, but the Helium3 would pay for it, by being a new fuel source. Profitable is better than cheap.

Whoa! Slow down cowboy, and take a deep and calming breath. The idea of doing this has people behind it http://www.space.com/adastra/adastra_moon_resources_050223.html, but not everything we rely on is likely to be found in an as relatively easy-to-reach place as the moon. It's a good idea to work on the problems from both ends - conservation here, new sources out there (some of which, we have to reason, may be quite a long time in coming).

I smell propaganda BS, How much crap the US put up over the years. It seems to be the "its not wrong when we're doing/did it." argument. Admitidly I believe in more recent history the US is the front runner in trying to prevent the buildup of space junk, But from my understanding it has not been the case for all that long. If memory serves Russa is currently the front runner for space junk (closely followed by the US), and the only reason for that is a accidental design flaw in one of their main satalite programs that leaked coolent of some kind into (MEO?) orbit. Should China have tooken more safegards to prevent debris, sure. Should one of the front running countries for orbital trash be complaining about the actions of one of the countries that had/has the least, No. And of course the whole thing probably has little to do with the debris created and more to do with the fact that china is trying to level the playing field with the overgrown beast which is the US Military.

This might help, its a bit old but probably still generaly relevent
http://www.space.com/spacewatch/space_junk_list.html

I know it is bad form to answer your own post, but I was curious if I was losing my mind. Anyway here are the links.

Slashdot:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/17/2257234

Article:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/071017-monster-bhole.html

I was pretty close.

If I understand it correctly, what you said is backwards. "Solar Minimum" means the sunspot activity is at a minimum, which means the energy received by the Earth is higher, not lower. But none of this is well understood.

The LSST and Google have also announced some degree of collaboration: http://www.lsst.org/News/google.shtml.

Indeed, an ex-Google "VP of Engineering", Wayne Rosling, joined the LSST project in June 05. That Google announced a joint effort with the LSST some time later is not therefore totally surprising--sometimes it's who you know.

1. Learned how to land missions on mars.
2. Learned how to make a moving piece of equipment work on mars for at least 5 years.
3. Have learned a bit about the weather conditions there, in particular, depending only on solar may be a big mistake. We have seen a massive storm move in and almsot kill the vehicles. Likewise, have an idea of the extremes there.
4. Have learned a bit about the physical make up of the planet. In particular, lots of minerals that many thoerized would not be there, but are.

Obsolete means it's just not a very good rocket compared to what can be built today. As for the parts, sure there are custom parts, but there are plenty of off-the-shelf parts also, and even the existing plans for manufacturing the custom parts call for the use of off-the-shelf parts or equipment to build.

Here's a quote from http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/saturn_five_000313.html:

"There is no point in even contemplating trying to rebuild the Saturn 5. Having a complete set of Saturn 5 blueprints would do us no good whatsoever. True, we would still be able to bend the big pieces of metal fairly easily. But they are not the problem.

"The real problem is the hundreds of thousands of other parts, some as apparently insignificant as a bolt or a washer, that are simply not manufactured any more. Everything would have to be redone. So a simple rebuild would be impossible. The only real answer would be to start from scratch and build anew using modern parts and processes. Yet another immense challenge!"

US classified communication satellite launched from the Cape yesterday.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sfn-071210-atlas5-launch.html

As I understand it from the discussions here and here, it would be impossible with conventional rocketry, and possible but impractical with a solar-powered ion engine. The latter would take three years, during which the telescope would be unusable. That becomes prohibitive when you consider that the ISS orbit is unsuitable for observation, so after the repairs you'd need time to get the telescope back to a useful orbit. By that time the telescope would be too old.

Several alternatives are considered in those discussions, and none seem to convince those who apparently understand these matters.

Personally I'm not convinced that the telescope would be entirely unusable during an ion-engine transfer. It should be very limited in where it can point, but usable in those limited directions. And after repair you'd only need to boost it to a higher orbit. That orbit could be energetically quite close to the orbit of the ISS, and thus quickly reached. And such a plan could perhaps dramatically lengthen the lifetime of the telescope.

But I'm no expert. I may well have overlooked or misunderstood something.

the SR-71 [...] was never successfully engaged by SAMs (or anything else, for that matter).

What I find telling is that I am reading about the proposed mission on a British news site, not an American one. The American people really don't care.

Now, what makes more sense to me than sending a manned mission to Mars is one to an NEO. There's some neat science to be had from a manned mission to Mars, but there's not a whole lot of practical benefit.

A near-Earth object is a different story. There's a real chance of a large object hitting Earth in the near future; we need to get our hands dirty studying the composition of these objects if we want to be able to deflect them if they come near. Not only that, but these things have some serious economic potential; a large asteroid can contain many millions of dollars' worth of metals--and they are within reach of commercial mining within the next few decades. They have the added bonus of not being trapped in a gravity well, so you don't have to pay to launch your new satellite into space after you finish building it.

What I find telling is that I am reading about the proposed mission on a British news site, not an American one. The American people really don't care.

Now, what makes more sense to me than sending a manned mission to Mars is one to an NEO. There's some neat science to be had from a manned mission to Mars, but there's not a whole lot of practical benefit.

A near-Earth object is a different story. There's a real chance of a large object hitting Earth in the near future; we need to get our hands dirty studying the composition of these objects if we want to be able to deflect them if they come near. Not only that, but these things have some serious economic potential; a large asteroid can contain many millions of dollars' worth of metals--and they are within reach of commercial mining within the next few decades. They have the added bonus of not being trapped in a gravity well, so you don't have to pay to launch your new satellite into space after you finish building it.

Funny. First you do realize that you and I have posted a lot on the space threads and I am generally defending the private space ventures. But in this case ....

Here's my take. Bigelow will get a six man space station up there at some point in the next 10-20 years. And it won't cost anywhere near $50 billion to do so.
First, I trust that you are not saying that the ba-330 is a six man station the way that bigelow claims. Keep in mind that the skylap was 368 m3. IOW, it was bigger than the ba-330. Did it support 6 ppl? Just 3 (though it was expected to support up to 4). So, it will require the full system config to support say 6-10 ppl (2 ba-330, 1 sundancer and the node). Now, will that cost 50 B? No, it might cost all of 1 B in the future. But of course, what was the RD cost for it? The guts of this was paid for by NASA. In fact, had NASA not been doing the ISS, it is doubtful that transhab would have been developed and by same line, that bigelow would not have this. A big part of the 50 b is not the actual placing of items in space, but the RD work on it. In addition, to compare the ISS to even the full bigelow station is also a joke. The bigelow will not have any where near the capabilities of the ISS (for instance power). In addition, it is almost certain that the life support system will be some modified version of what NASA has going into ISS. IOW, again, bigelow will use NASA dollars to do their work. So, to compare these is a real apple/orange situation. ISS was about getting a number of nations to cooperate in putting up a large system and learning to survive in space. Bigelow is about taking others technology and then lowering the costs.

WHile I agree with you that Spacex had earlier funding from DOD, and some support esp in launch facilities, DOD is NOT paying for the development. That apparently is pure Musk.They paid for falcon 1, which cost them 5.9 million. Since it failed, musk has had access to the same facility, but all launches are on their dime. I am sure that you remember Spacex's old launch schedule. Do you remember that a few were on there but disappeared? Musk points out that spacex has not lost any planned launches, but that they might change schedule and mission. Read that how you want. NASA, jumped in late with support, but cots has already brought more money to spacex than DOD has. In fact, musk has indicated that COTS paid for much of his development costs. That has allowed Spacex to be able to do more launches.

NASA has been schizoid WRT to private launchers. And yes, griffin will probably be gone with the next pres. But I doubt that cots will disappear. In fact, I suspect that constellation will be more in trouble. Dem Congress seems to want to push small private space as well as robotics. WRT to armadillo/blue shepard, I think that NASA will fund these, because both systems can be converted to landers for the moon, esp. if the companies will convert those to trucks i.e. have the ability to drop a load and take off again. Right now, most of the space designs have the launchers being used for 1 landing and launch. Will NASA willingly give it to them? Nope. But they will because 1 or both of these 2 will be used by the private groups for landing on the moon. NASA will throw their lot in with those that are working. As to NASA getting rid of these systems, well, Ares I will not be available until 2011 at the very earliest (and that is with major money right now), and more likely 2013. NASA may not like these private systems, but they dislike having to deal with a nation that they kept alive for more than 13 years, only to be snubbed and played with. It is in America's interest as well as NASA's to help the private systems.

Finally, a true heavy launcher. Yes, if we are only launching 3-4 a year, then yes, these are too expensive. But Spacex has said that they can do many more than that. They base it on the fact that not only are we shooting for the moon, b

How about one that actually works?

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/071124-expedition16-third-spacewalk.html

Russia is building a spaceport in the far east because Kazakhstan is weary of toxic Proton launcher first stages crashing in their territory. Proton's are loaded with UDMH, a dangerous carcinogen, and Nitrogen Tetroxide, a highly concentrated acid. Central Asia is strewn with spent first stages of Protons and Soyuz. Like Baikonur the new spaceport would be located above 45 deg N, which requires increased rocket performance to launch most payloads compared to lower latitude launch sites like Cape Canaveral or Kourou. The high (52deg) inclination of the ISS is a compromise for the Russian launch site. As a result there are fewer launch opportunities for the shuttle. By the way, Johnson Space Center is not a launch site. Perhaps your are referring to Vandenberg AFB in California.

If slashdot thinks this story is newsworthy they should also post one about the new Chinese launch site on Hainan Island.

What is the name of the theory that says that in this environment, on this particular planet, this is how life evolves. Elements of life, possibly seeded, took paths of least resistance in this environment, throw in over 4 billion years, and this is what you get at this point.

In fact, new extremophiles are constantly being found living in environments we previously thought to be impossible, or at least very unlikely. Life just seems to be the norm in this Universe, or at least it seems that way. Realizing the relatively young age of the planet we happen to live on (a child in history of the Universe), the Drake Equation should see Ne going up every time we find life living in places that are extreme, or when we find new ways life could emerge, widening are rigid list of things that need to be in place to support life as we would describe it.

At our current rate, we will soon be able to use probability alone to suggest intelligent life elsewhere, IMO.

...2, 1, go.

The current global warming debate isn't that there have or haven't been variations in Earth's temperature in the past (there have - Antarctica used to have forests, or someone / something put flora and fauna fossils on the continent just to screw with our brains ...and it was in roughly the same place 100 million years ago, with what is now Australia and India).

And it's not whether the sun's output is or isn't constant (it's not, but the increases measured since the 1970s don't equate to what's happening on Earth in much the same way that a burning house across town doesn't explain why your kettle's boiling).

That debate is the speed it's happening, and how rising sea levels is bad for anywhere with sea ports that handle a lot of essentials to people's lives. And the population displacement that would result in having (for example) Florida as a small archipeligo. The fossil record shows slow changes. What we're doing now is speeding up the process. There have been no increases like this in the past. And studies now show the big extinction events of this planet coincide with climate change rather than impact events. The dinosaurs were being ousted long before the KT hit the Yucatan... and there was even a 'dinosaur killer' asteriod that hit Earth some time before KT, which resulted in no global extinctions at all.

Of course, I understand there are influential Americans that think: "despite the hysterics of a few pseudo-scientists, there is no reason to believe in global warming". Good luck with that. The British already had their King Canute.

This is off-topic. As was the post I'm answering. Both should be marked as such.

The mission's total cost -- about $600 million -- may have to be deferred from NASA's budget, Weiler said, but would not cause the cancellation of any other mission at NASA. The Mars rovers are an "agency priority," he said. The second rover costs about $200 million, half of the $300 million to $450 million to build and launch the first.

The total cost of building, launching, landing and operating the rovers on the surface for the initial 90 day primary mission was about US $820 million)

Viking missions cost $935 million in 1974 or $3.5 billion in 1997 (not adjusted for inflation) Pathfinder mission $280 million, including the launch vehicle and mission operations.

Let me put it like this:

SETI costs us, at most, $5,000,000 a year to fund.
The war against Boogiemen, in Iraq alone, is costing us ~$116,750,000,000 a year to fund.
SETI's lifetime cost thus far has been 115,000,000 (assuming 5million/year. 5mil is the most it costs per year, 4 million the least)

Mathtime! 115,000,000 / 116,750,000,000 = 0.000985010707

Yes, the lifetime cost of SETI has been but 0.000985010707% of the cost of ONE YEAR in Iraq.

.001% of the cost of one year of a bullshit war to fund a search for proof that we're not alone in the universe?
Hell yes.

Hell
Yes

Hell
Fucking
Yes

Sources:
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_faq.html
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Cost-of-War/Cost-of-War-3.html

Let me put it like this: SETI costs us, at most, $5,000,000 a year to fund. The war against Boogiemen, in Iraq alone, is costing us ~$116,750,000,000 a year to fund. SETI's lifetime cost thus far has been 115,000,000 (assuming 5million/year. 5mil is the most it costs per year, 4 million the least) Mathtime! 115,000,000 / 116,750,000,000 = 0.000985010707 Yes, the lifetime cost of SETI has been but 0.000985010707% of the cost of ONE YEAR in Iraq. .001% of the cost of one year of a bullshit war to fund a search for proof that we're not alone in the universe? Hell yes. Hell Yes Hell Fucking Yes Sources: http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_faq.html http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Cost-of-War/Cost-of-War-3.html

It may improve bandwidth so we can transfer more data, but I'd say we're doing pretty good in that department already, I'm not sure what a HDTV feed from Mars would give us.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/060104_laser_comm.html

Call me crazy, but I'm gonna take a wild ass guess that the guys doing this for a living know a little bit more about it than you do.

Paraphrased from http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/ap_060803_exp13_fpmu.html

The space station picks up electrons and ions as it flies through a thin layer of the Earth's atmosphere, said professor Charles Swenson, who had a key role in developing the Floating Potential Measurement Sensor Unit.

"It's similar to picking up a charge and getting extra charge particles on your body," he said. "If you touch a doorknob they jump off your body."

NASA is concerned that charges on the solar panels of the space station will jump to another side of the station or even to an astronaut's suit, Swenson said.

The suit could be damaged, or an astronaut electrocuted, if a charge jumped from the station to the metal rings on a suit.

"They are in a sweaty, wet garment inside the suit, not very conducive to working in a high-voltage environment," Swenson said.

More detail on what happens, and steps NASA takes to mitigate the risk.
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn9669

Here is the link to the preliminary video report.

I thought of this when I read about the joint damage. As far as I know they never found the source of the crunching noise.

It could also be something as mundane as a bad heat treat in a bearing leading to launch-load brinelling and subsequent low cycle fatigue. Or maybe they got the launch loads wrong because something resonated and that caused the damage. Or something could have been assembled too tightly.

1. EHT (Extended Heim Theory) allows to easily calculate particle masses using only some physical constants. You can check this Heim Mass Calculator: http://www.daimi.au.dk/~spony/HeimMassFormula/HeimCalculator
2. Succesful prediction of masses of neutrinos.
3. Prediction of Heim-Lorentz force which most likely is being observed in ESA experiments performed by Dr. Martin Tajmar. During these experiments artificial gravity is being created.
   • ESA news about Tajmar experiments http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/GSP/SEM0L6OVGJE_0.html and some other news.
   • M.Tajmar recent papper which references EHT (Droscher&Hausner): http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.3806
   • Theoretical explanation of Tajmar Gravito-Magnetic experiments by Droscher&Hausner: http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/documents/LauncherSymPaper2007-0-42JHCorrected22April.pdf
     This paper also contains proposal of modified experiment which will allow to verify if EHT is true and also allow to build very effective propulsion engine for spaceships. See this article: http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/mg18925331.200
4. Reasonable explanation why CMB Cold Spot appears to be cold without mumbling about Dark Matter/Dark Energy, thanks to Heim's corrected gravitional law.
5. EHT explains why it appears that there is not enough mass observable in the Universe without using Dark Matter concept.
6. EHT most likely explains weird effects measured during Gravity Probe B experiment, see: http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/documents/FieldPropulsion.pdf.
   These effects are in agreement with Martin Tajmar findings, see: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.3806
7. Droscher&Hausner paper about space propulsion based on Heim theory http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/documents/aiaa2004-3700-a4.pdf was awarded by AIAA in 2004.

I beg to differ. You're response is too negative. Let's see what the Chinese have to say about this, in this article from Space.com:

China has drafted a multi-step program for lunar exploration.

Next year, the country's first lunar orbiter/fly mission is to fly, Luo said. By 2012, China space planners will be landing a rover on the Moon surface. In 2017, that country's lunar exploration plans call for robotic lunar sample return missions.

"We call these three stages the first step of our lunar exploration," Luo explained. "The first step will be done purely robotically ... with unmanned missions."

And in the future, Luo stated, "China will also consider the possibility of manned mission to the Moon."

So... no mention of a manned landing by 2020, but nonetheless, a definite interest in lunar exploration.

First things first--there's also a $50M prize out for building a spacecraft that can take 5 people into orbit.

If you build it, NASA will not only come, it'll give you $2 million dollars for you troubles. The space agency today said it will offer $2 million in prizes if competing teams can successfully build a lunar lander at the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge at Holloman Air Force Base, in Alamogordo, N.M. Oct. 27 and 28th.

Will they let the chinese show up? Or maybe the Japanese?

And will they get extra credit for video/photo/3D telemetry? How about spectrography gear and other testing equipment? Because they've got all that. On the way to the moon or already there.

I'm so tired of my tax dollars being wasted on international dick-waving contests like this. I wish NASA et al would just whip out the rulers- it'd be cheaper. Then again, it wouldn't feed the defense contractors, now would it?

I'll never forget that crashed UFO in a crater picture. Bravo for the humpty dumpty project's success!

I find it more dismaying that an otherwise seemingly adult and mature article writer feels such an urge to childishly emphasize blame. What is it with this childish American and Russian jingoism? If blame is so important, can't you people at least blame the engineers and not the nationality?

There is a lot of history behind this.

The Americans and the Russians have always taken very different approaches to dealing with safety engineering in space. The Russians have typically taken an empirical, "what me worry?" approach. They have taken a band-aid approach to problems, and their management has mostly about burying and denying issues.

The Americans tend toward a very analytical approach, which requires an attitude of being open about issues and figuring out how they happened in the first place.

In the end, it is two very different management cultures, and for someone brought up in either culture, it is dismaying to see the other's approach.

Olberg wrote an interesting book about it. If you keep in mind that the book was written from the American POV, it gives some pretty good insights into the clash of management cultures that has shaped US/Russian "cooperation" in space.