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China Aims At Moon
SEWilco writes: "ABC News reports the head of the State Aerospace Bureau says China will explore the Moon. They've conducted an unmanned test of their first capsule, but not much else is known about their project. The comments were made at U.N. World Space Week, on the Sputnik 1 43rd anniversary."
The only problem I have with this is that I think less competition among the nations would lead to far less space exploration.
granted.. the chances of this working and succeeding do depends alot on how willing they will still be to show what they can, but would you not agree that if they could just get over the hump of "Well I don't have to show off now anymore" they could do alot better.
Is it not so that it should actually be, that they show off for the citizens of the respective countries
When they get sufficiently powerful, & we in the west realise we have a fight on our hands, we may find ourselves in another sort of Cold War.I suspect propoganda will be even more important this time. Problem is, it'll probably be much scarier next time.
We as the people are actually the only ones that can do something aboutit once it starts and that is why I agree with the propaganda being more important, but this time it might be alot different since there is internet and people are in contact daily, hourly even with pplfrom all over the world so that might be a soothing factor, since if the people know that there is no such thing as a big mean bad guy on the other side of the world, I think Cold War will not be.
-= Free your mind and your Ass will follow,
-= Free your mind and your Ass will follow,
Bono(U2), MTV Video Music Awards=-
I personally think that this is kinda cool. I think that if the US & China (and whomever else...I'm just mentioning those countries because they're regarded as "enemies"), are able to find common ground exploring space, then hopefully we could live in a safer world. (Granted, I'm aware that they could be using this as cover to explore missile propultion technology, but I'll be an optimist...)
Doh!
Excuse me?
I think that they got a good chance.
China has to have learned from the US and the Russians. When we were trying this kind of stuff in the fifties and sixties, it was all theoretical. It had never been done before. It's all well-documented now.
China already has been making quite a bit of progress in the area of spaceflight, recently- See the articles about how they are preparing for
manned spaceflight. They are not as backwards as some people believe, technologically.
They already have a good variety of launchers, as shown here. They have more powerful and more accurate rockets than we did when we first started sending boosters to the moon. So why is this so unreasonable? Plus, its not like they're saying they are going to go next week. It's going to be a space program. They're going to go through all the research and design, the work, and then do it.
If they can keep up the pace that a lunar program would take, then why not? Plus, you have to admit, the propaganda value for the Chinese would be incredibly valuable... just as it was for America in the sixties.
What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?
Still not dead.
the propaganda value for the Chinese would be incredibly valuable... just as it was for America in the sixties.
Sure. They could say that only Chinese have walked on the moon in the current millenium.
I know there were some treaties at some point with countries agreeing not to war in space. Anyone know what these agreements really specified, and whether China signed them?
Life,
Rad
ourpla.net is your planet
Hey, this is great! We wouldn't have gotten to the moon in the FIRST place if the Russians weren't shooting for it. Now that the Chinese are at it, it will definitely put the pressure on the US Gov to return to the moon, if only to make sure the Chinese are not playing with nukes or moon-based lasers or anything.
While ive no doubt that their doing this for political/propaganda/militiary reasons, its wonderful to see some seemingly just-for-the sake-off-it space exploration/travel. Like a previous poster i've dreamt of going to space since i was a toddler, and only this sort of boundary pushing stuff is going to ever make it a common-place experience.
Technologically speaking I believe that it's going to be relatively easy for them to get there. Of course there still going to have to use ridiculous fuel-loads, but developements in material science (alloys, ceramics, even plastics) and even things like CAD/CAE and computer-controlled factories are going to mean that the precision building and heatshileding etc are going to be relatively simple, even relatively cheap (i.e. cheap compared to basically bankrupting the USSR and giving the USA what should have been, and still should be, crippleing dept).
On the other-hand, I might have an issue with a country that still has a peasent economy spending billions on space travel, but then again, i know economics doesnt work like that, so I'm free to support them.
..........I wonder if there going to use one of those 'supercomputing PS2s they've banned for the guidance system? [dont laugh, its more than powerful enough.
...if the nationalist model works. Right now, China is conspicuously absent from the International Space Station. That's due to reasons mostly of politics, but suffice it to say that they're doing all their own development work. One reason the IP's (International Partners) want to work with the USA and Russia is to learn.
China has the ability to show us if the one-country model works. I'm not totally thrilled with ISS, even though I'm helping build a payload for it for a foreign company. It's a mess, and that's primarily from the bureaucracy.
Perhaps China can shake up some of the market. The story states that Mars is their goal. It should be ours, too.
--
-- Geof F. Morris
"What if China does decide to set up shop on the moon? What if they decide to try to mine something or go up there and basically claim something like the Sea of Tranquility as a territory of China? Who could really do anything about it? There are a lot of bad things that I can imagine could come from this. Everything from turning the moon into the largest garbage dump in the solar system to nuclear detonations"
Hmm...go ahead and claim the Sea of Tranquility...what will that accomplish?
"oh no, the chinese are claiming precious resources situated on the moon!"
How the hell are they going to exploit these resources?
And why the hell not detonate our nuclear weapons in space rather than on earth? Why not place our refuse on the moon? It's not like anybody lives there..
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OldSaxon
You like science?
You like science?
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What if?
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
There are people who live in the Antarctic!
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
As a challenge.
In the sense that the Apollo program was good, this also promises to be good.
But the Apollo program was a very bad thing!
The Apollo program was very bad because it created NASA -- an umbrella bureaucracy that refuses to die and sees any true independent innovation as inimical to its interests as the "leader" of space activities.
A pan-Western NASA could easily grow out of renewed politicization of space -- especially at the level of East vs West.
Seastead this.
Hey don't joke like that, Chewbacca was killed when someone de-orbited the moon!
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
Your sarcasm marks you as an irrational religous hypocrite.
Aesthetic environmentalism is one of the stupidest ideologies in human history. It simultaneously requires humans to be considered separate from nature (scientifically irrational) and inferior to nature (a religious doctrine). And its believers are all hypocrites, since the only way to practice it is to kill as many humans as possible, including oneself, so that one ceases contaminating nature.
Too bad you weren't bold enough to post logged in.
There's no "we" in team, only "me"