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China Plans Manned Space Launch By 2005
cosyne writes: "CNN.COM has this article on China's space program planning to send a man to the moon. 'The mission is part of Beijing's plans to create a space industry and earn the prestige of joining the United States and Russia as the only nations to have sent humans into space.' I wonder if they'll make it before the recently mentioned amateurs."
So will most consumer products soon start bearing the label: "Made in Space" ?
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Reminds me of the Cold War that stimulated our space program. There's nothing that can stimulate a space program better than a military advantage. Perhaps this little bit of competition will encourage Congress to give NASA the funding they need to do more than just crash probes into distant planets.
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How much resource and money would be spent on sending people onto the moon? Should they be spending on something else to solve other problems in China?
If you have the source, you have the whole world...
It seems to me that China really has no other reason to do this other than to say that they have done it, and they are spending giant amounts of money in the process. Think of what else that could be used for! Even if they succeed, that does not take care of their other problems such as hunger, poverty, etc. This whole plan is reminiscent of Orwell's 1984; It's all just to boost military morale.
They just want to get their feet wet, for now.
New Scientist has a good story on this. And there is this page with links on the chinese space program from U.S. Embassy Beijing Environment, Science and Technology Section.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I wonder if this will embarass the US government into mounting another of its great space adventures... Wishful thinking i suppose, but my grandparents got to watch a moon landing with their kids and i want to watch a mars landing with mine. (when i find a geek-friendly woman that is)
"I should point out that some powers in the world are on the way to militarizing outer space, not peacefully exploring outer resources," Huang Huikang, an official from China's foreign ministry, told the China Daily.
"Another arms race in outer space has begun since 1998 and we should be watchful," Huang said.
I would like a few more facts and less fundumentalist tone to be interested in this. A satallite program for China makes perfect sense for communications and survey for the billion(s) of people. I sure the US will be paying attention to the launch activites of our future olympic hopefuls, but an arms race in outer space is not econmically nor politiclly fesiable to begin with. Talk is cheap and that is all this is, political grandstanding: US bad--China good.
"The Proples' rocket is going to lay the smack down on the evil american capitalist pigs!"
Please don't take this article as being newsworthy.
"Get them before they get....
Chinese Manned Space Program: Behind Closed Doors is a very interesting read. It details not only a large chunk of the history of the Chinese space research, but also describes the secrecy that has shrouded most of it.
How well does this translate into Mandarin?:
"We choose to go to the moon, and to do these other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
Cynical old bastard that I am, those words actually choke me up every time I hear them. Space exploration (not arsing about in low earth orbit) exemplifies everything that is great about the human spirit. Our reach should exceed our grasp.
We in the west have forgotten that, and now it's all about the bottom line. Sounds like China still gets it. Good luck to them, I reckon.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
This is extremely cool, and a good thing for all of us.
Hopefully it will kick start another space race, and get the americans off their butts. Bush has done nothing but slowly kill NASA with its budget cuts.
In 2005, Russia may become the only country with access to the ISS. (find the story on space.com somewhere -- With all the budget cuts the US no longer has a HAB module or Crew Return Vehicle. Russia's obligations supplying Soyuz Rockets ENDS in 2005 leaving the USA totally stranded.)
With China sending men and women into space on its own, and making plans to build its own Space Station and sending men to the moon, EVEN if it doesn't wake up the US govt. and inject more money into NASA, at least we are making progress and reaching for the stars.
Communist regimes are very good at certain things. The Soviet Union was a powerful military country, and built 9 space stations. (Salyut 1-7, Mir, and now the ISS).
Hopefully China can also achieve some amazing things.
I want to live on Mars someday. I don't care how it happens, or who gets me there, i just want to be there.
D.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
China may be interested in things like this.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
They have an infinite supply of monkeys? I wonder how many of them have typewriters.
I think this is a great idea. I think China should be strongly encouraged to expand its space program. In fact, I would be happy if they became the leader in space exploration. As soon as they announce plans to colonize Mars, it will scare our government into funding plans for the same, and then our space exploration work will be back on track.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
From the article: A monkey, a dog, a rabbit and snails were sent into orbit aboard the second Shenzou launch but scientists say that more unmanned tests will be necessary.
Translation: The monkey, dog and rabbit died together or one of the animals died. China isn't ready to go to space.
China wants space-based military capabilities to compete with the US, including killer satellites to knock out US spy and GPS satellites.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I thought I'd never say this, but Bush's missle defense plan is looking better and better every day...
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"They just want to get their feet wet, for now."
Maybe they should just plan a manned mission to the Pacific Ocean.
324006
If any post mentions the U.S. govt's plan to build a missle defense system, it gets modded down into oblivion, usually with associated comments dismissing the threat as being unlikely or impossible.
/. really needs is a 'Doesn't Buy Into Liberal Utopian Ideologies' or 'I Don't Like The Way You Think' negative mod option. It would be closer to the truth.
But China is getting ready to put men in space, and it is widely cheered as a Good Thing.
How so many people miss the correlation is beyond me.
A rocket is far more complicated than a missle, and the technologies are remarkably parallel.
You see a country that doesn't like the U.S. developing technology that can easily be used to deliver a nuclear payload and you cheer, while simultaneously objecting to the very plan that can protect us from the developing threat.
If the idea of another cold war appeals to you, by all means, cheer on.
Now, go ahead and mod me into oblivion as 'Flamebait' or 'Offtopic'. What
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
Since there is this new continent in the way between Europe and India, the knowledge that the Earth is round is of little practical importance. To reach India from Europe one must navigate East, anyway. There is very little to be gained from building a base or something in this new "American" continent.
This is an important development. The world's most fearsome tyranny is attempting to take the lead in the space race. We deserve better reporting on these plans than this amateurish effort.
I am not a lawyer. Do not take my words as legal advice. If you need legal advice, consult an attorney.
ICBMs were developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s, well before the space programs of the USA and USSR. It was the technology in the ICBMs that was used for going to the moon, not the other way round.
No, Bush has begun reigning in a beaurocracy that was out of control, even their own, and is reintroducing the concepts of fiscal responsibility and sensible management.
The current issues with ISS are due to their own mismanagement and setting of unrealistic goals. When someone blows their budget again and again and again, the last thing you should do is give them more money! Yes, it will be harder in the short term, but if you don't, the waste and corruption will kill you in the long term.
Bush is, typically, going in and actually fixing the problem, instead of boasting about "reinventing government" then covering things up.
The amazing thing about Clinton/Gore is that their ethical lapses, bad as they were, were completely overshadowed by their utter incompetance as leaders and managers.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
I don't think all scientist who were working and the first ICBM really wanted to create ICBMs instead of real "space rockets".
I think some of them tried to build "space rockets" and used them for military purposes.
Take von Braun for example. He always wanted real space flight (well known fact) but build military rockets for the Nazis and the US first. But when the US were searching for space flight rockets after the sputnik shock his project succeeded at once unlike to navy's whose blew up very impressively. The navy used ICBM based designs. I suspect that von Braun always kept space flight capable rockets in mind and created the rocket stuff this way. Therefore his success.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
It's a shame that China is taking the classic police state stance of "We'll tell the press about it once it's over successfully, or not at all if its a failure" with these launches. Because the People's Army Navy has to send specialized tracking ships to around the world in order to keep in contact with the capsule, both foriegn intelligence and foreign news agencies know of a pending launch long before the rocket is put on the pad. And I haven't even mentioned NORAD yet.
With all that going against them, if there is a failure it will be all over the internet long before the state officially confirms or denies that there ever was a launch. That can't be good for their credibility...
If flying over the Atlantic is so profitable, why such a large gap between the Wright Brothers and Lindburgh?
If the internet was so profitable, why did it take decades for anybody to even notice its existance?
If the steam engine would revolutionize the world as we know it, why were there several millenia between the first development of one and the real adoption of it?
I bet we have more slashdot-trolls than they have monkeys. Oh wait, monkeys can be trained ...
karma capped
Sounds like China is trying to get the jump on us! We all know what we must do...
We must be the first country to send a Chinese man to the moon!
I thought I remember hearing that they were planning on shooting someone into space sometime this year? Wasn't that on slashdot a few months back?
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The US seems to be ignoring this market-
people who'd pay a hundred grand for a week in
orbit. Perhaps a clever competitor like China
will figure out how to do this cost effectively.
But there's a reason for the opposition to private manned space missions expressed by the government: the government opposes an independent manned presence in space. The reason is that such an independent group would wield much more power than the U.S. government does, because it could (if it wished) threaten to drop small asteroids anywhere on earth with relatively high precision. It's only when the U.S. government has an adequate defense against such an attack that it will truly allow a manned presence in space.
Of course, that's probably wishful thinking: we'll probably wind up in another cold war and lose more freedom all at the same time, and in the name of that cold war to boot!
Sigh... The world seems like such a hopeless place right now, because there's no place left on earth that I know of where real liberty isn't on its deathbed.
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How hard would it be to retrofit a Space Shuttle for a Lunar mission? Could the cargo bay hold an Apollo-style LEM and enough fuel for the mission? Perhaps the shuttle could rendezvous with some kind of booster, although I imagine you'd have to EVA to bolt them together. Really, I don't care how they do it, it would just be really cool to see the Shuttle in Lunar orbit, with a lander coming out of the cargo bay.
If the Chinese are serious about this, they should swallow their pride and establish rescue plans with the US and Russia. Even if we can't fit a lander in the cargo bay, we might still be able to rescue them from Lunar orbit.
It seems like this whole business might actually be done best by combining Russian and US technology. Use the US lander technology, and the Russian disposable rockets to launch fuel modules into low orbit. Link up with the fuel module and away you go! Come to think of it, why bother just using it to rescue the Chinese? Why not just go there ourselves? Oh wait... there's not much reason to go, and establishing a permanent presence would be EXPENSIVE.
So, unless the Chinese find something really valuable to mine up there, I don't see the rationale for a permanent presence at this time. Then again, maybe they know how to make rockets really cheaply, but based on my experience with cheap metal products made in China, I wouldn't want to ride one.
If there is stuff to mine up there, we should send robot mining units. Why risk people for such a prosaic activity?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?