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China Plans Moonbase
jfruhlinger writes: "According to this BBC news article, the Chinese government plans to put a human on the moon by 2010, with the long-term goal of 'set[ting] up a base on the moon and min[ing] its riches for the benefit of humanity.' The article seems to think that the program is more for the benefit of China's defense and aerospace industry. D'ya think they can pull it off?"
Moon unit alpha, or moon unit zappa?
They should switch to democracy instead!
Will the transmissions from the moon have the content from the Washington Post censored out?
Our long-term goal is to set up a base on the Moon and mine its riches for the benefit of humanity.
I guess the Chinese will have all the market share for selling green cheese to the world.
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
I wonder what would happen if China offered the US participation in the program. It probably would not happen but if China is serious about benefiting the whole of mankind (?) they should consider such an offer.
"Can they pull it off"
I hope so. Perhaps this is the start of the second space race?
It would not necessarily be a bad thing if the US government thought China might successfully build a moon base. Perhaps there would be more serious initiatives to encourage more space exploration and development on this side of the Pacific.
Hey, it worked with Sputnik...
if this will bring more money to NASA?
How could the USA stand by and let the chinese be the first to build a base on the moon? I'm sure the military would be interested if nothing else.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
This can only be a good thing, regardless of whether the Chinese Government ultimately succeeds. As I said in a bit more detail here,
'China's moon mining plan is perhaps one of the best things that could have happened as far as space exploration is concerned. The world's primary space organisation, NASA, is constantly having its budget chipped away by the US government. Hopefully, China's future successes in space missions will force the US, and other countries, back into research and development of technologies needed for space flight and colonization such as nuclear propulsion, terraforming and techniques for mining resources on off-earth locations such as the moon and asteroid belts.'
Who knows - three hundred years from now, our decendents could look back on this day and say 'thanks to China pushing the world into a new space race, we managed to develop the technologies that allowed us to get off that overcrowded and overpolluted chuck of rock that we called Earth, before it killed us all off for good.'
Janie took my gun...
One thing of interest in all this that isn't mentioned in the BBC story: as of the mid 1990s, anyway, the official position of the People's Republic of China was that the Apollo program was faked (or at least that it "hadn't been proved true"). My junior year of college (1994-95), I had a roommate who was a grad student in Astronomy. There was a big conference on planetary science at our school, with several scientists from the PRC in attendence. Apparently everything had to be carefully orchestrated so that these scientists wouldn't have to attend any talks in which the US moon landings were a given, since they'd be politically required to stand up and dispute it or they'd be in trouble back home! She (my roommate) says that they (the scientists) didn't actually belive this hokum, but that the conference organizers didn't want to endanger their careers/lives.
I'm not sure how this idea got intot he PRC leadership -- senile Chairman Mao watching Capricorn One too many times? Unless the PRC has changed its tune, we may be witness to the odd and embarassing spectacle of the Chinese claiming to be the first on the moon...
jf
Land at the apolo sites and prove once and for all wether the americans managed to land there first?
I've see the pictures and they look a bit dodgy to me
So in 2011 we can look forward to people claiming that the Chinese Moon mission pictures are fake, then?
"Of course the Marco Polo trip was fake. You expect me to believe humans could cross the Gobi Desert? This whole "China" thing sounds a bit dodgy to me..." -- 13th century conspiracy theorist
--
Benjamin Coates
The Americans sent men to the moon using 1960s technology. The very thought of this makes my blood run cold. However, it worked.
I'd say any sufficiently determined organization with enough money to sink into the project could build a moon base.
Another factor: They'll find it easy to recruit enthusiasts from all over the world. Imagine a brain drain toward China.
Can they get someone to and back from the moon by 2010 - Hell yes. They have at least a million young men who are willing to risk thier lives for a chance at glory and honor.
Will they do it before we do? - A resounding 'Hell yes'. They don't have to go through all the red tape that we've made for ourselves. IF the goverment says we are going to do it they will do it.
Will they establish a STABLE moon base by 2010 - Hell no. There will be too many countries trying to sabatoge those ambitions(present country included) for both political and security reasons.
I learned where the word sabatoge came from by watching Star Trek movies.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
what minerals they want to mine there ?
AFAIK the moon is of the same material as earth, making it mainly a large rock of silicondioxide and iron.
Interesting stuff like uran/gold/etc. should be too rare to mine it commercially (high expenses for transport !).
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
And the people who die in un-humane (sic) conditions in sweatshops provide goods for which country's multinationals exactly?
--
This sig is inoffensive.
One wouldn't also have expected a socialist nation to occupy Tibet, for example.
Perhaps it doesn't matter if they can pull it off. If it's sufficiently plausible that they might, it might provoke the US Gov and NASA to perform the necessary digital extraction procedure on their own space programme. After all, look what they achieved when they were chasing the Soviets. :-)
If this guy has anything to do with it
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscie
shame physics always gets in the way of great ideas
I don't give a damn who pulls this sort of thing anymore, as long as I get to see it in my lifetime. I'm sick of waiting for cool things to become profitable before actually being done. I can't believe that the ISS is still being built, although it has had some very close shaves in the US Congress over the past few years, all because of fucking money. What's so difficult about kicking the secretary's personal assistant's secretary's page off of the government payroll, stopping the spending on idiotic pork projects and $6,000 curtains (thanks Asscroft), and just using the tax money to do things that our decendents will look back at and say, "Bitchin'?"
don't the Chinese have the right idea? That is to say, we hear a lot about how the Americans want to send a manned mission to Mars, but its unclear to me that the Americans have sufficient real-world experience in long term manned deep space missions. To first establish a long term base on the moon would go a long way towards gaining that experience. It's only 3 days away, as opposed to several years for Mars. Just a thought. Comments?
NO CARRIER
Exactly. What's up there, that you can't get easier here? Basalt and quartz are plentiful enough here. What could you do with a lot of silicon, vacuum, and free solar energy?
What you might get from the moon:
- Astronomical observations (especially on far side)
- First class secrecy (on far side)
- Solar power?
- Fair vacuum, easily accessed
- Prestige
- High ground, drop rocks on anybody you don't like (Heinlein)
If bars of pure gold were neatly stacked anywhere you like on the moon, we couldn't go there and bring them back and show a profit. I've never seen a study done on the economics of asteroid mining, but there's a couple of things to remember. They're further out, which means lots more fuel, and they have negligable gravity, which makes working them harder. Plus, one final consideration: if by capture you mean strap a booster to it and move it into earth orbit, remember that the brain trust at NASA recently crashed a probe into Mars because they didn't convert their units correctly. Do you really want someone, anyone, trying to manouver an asteroid into Earth orbit? So basically, until we get huge advances in lift technology, there's no way that any sort of space mining will be economical.
Wait a minute, if China is the 3rd country to successfully put a human in orbit, doesn't that make the score Communism 2, Democracy 1?
And you thought property values were high in Hong Kong!
Joe
Joe Batt Solid Design
Lets also hope it's governed by similar laws as Antarctica.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Is this the next step for weapons testing?
China overflow error, moving to the moon.
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
If the Chinese didn't show us all gunpowder, who knows where we would be, so it is hard to say that anyone really owes anyone for their current technological state.
What?
If its one thing Amercan's can't stand, its communists on our Moon!
It's funny though, is it just talk like the russians did in the 60's and 70's? or are they serious. The united states doesnt have the balls to try something so ambitious. Hell we dont even have the capability to make a rocket as powerful as the saturn 5 anymore. (capability as in nasa's abilities and our government body having enough leaders not looking at the prostate in their own rears first hand..) Hell we made the stupid decisiot to choose a vaporware shuttle replacement over a working prototype.. and now the new shuttle program is now dead..
sorry but the US as a leader in space research is dead... put a fork in us as we are done.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If they do land on the moon, they'll find the Brits have been there since the seventies, with a moonbase populated by gorgeous women in mauve wigs that shoot down UFO's.
Garg
Garg
Alumnus, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters
They set us up the base?
sic transit gloria mundi
...if 1.5 billion people say they say they are gonna do it, they will.
Be it in business, life, current affairs -- whatever the situation. It's almost ingrained into the Chinese worldview. This has been shown time and time again, through the projects that have been completed and/or worked upon, in China. The Great Wall and The Three Rivers Gorge are the first two obvious examples that come to mind; the manmade Kunming Lake elicits the same thoughts, as well.
Now, I'm not saying these tasks are/were not costly, both in terms of dollars and human lives, nor am I saying that many (especially current) Chinese projects are without corruption and/or controversy.
Rather, what I am pointing out is the historical Chinese trend of "progress" against odds. I don't really want to use the term "determination", because there is certainly the very real possibility that people work on these things against their will. Yet in any case, foreigners who've worked there on corporate projects for a while will tell you that, when working with a Chinese corporation, while they may promise you something seemingly outrageous... but short of a few exceptions, they won't promise you something they can't/won't complete.
The aforementioned exceptions are, however, predictably tied to corruption, where unwilling corporate heads -- or even middle management -- can very easily tie up a project with red tape, unless there's a little cash to "oil the wheels". If China's going to build a moon base, this corrupt undercurrent, in my opinion, is the most likely stumbling block. (As an aside this goes for the 2008 Olympics, too. After just getting back from Beijing a few weeks ago, I will be most amazed if they solve, at least to a large degree, the pollution problem, as they have promised.)
In most cases, however, while a project may take 10, 20, or two hundred years, the Chinese have historically tended to accomplish any goal that they've set out to do.
Again, it's all in the mindset... a "slow but steady" one, at that. Westerners tend to think in short, digestible timeframes. "Project ABC has to be completed in X months." The Chinese, on the other hand, look at things across a much, much larger timetable. What's a hundred years, when you've been around for several-thousand, already?
Granted, in a modern world, this opens the door to corruption and inefficiency... but how many of those "really cool projects", on which you've spent countless hours at work, have gotten tossed into the circular file because they were deemed too costly or too time-inefficient by the corporate heads?
So they say they'll have a moon base? I really don't doubt it. It may not happen in my lifetime, or yours... but it will probably happen, nevertheless.
And what's wrong with mining resources? Do you use 100% recycled products?
Capitalist NATIONS don't take huge percentages for GDP in taxes to go in search of the raw materials for production. Instead, CAPITALIST individuals (or their legal constructions) take personal risks to later return a profit. If a CAPITALIST has the means to launch a moon-mining project (including obtaining some precedent for mineral rights on Luna) and the fervent belief that they will make money (BENEFIT). This is all well and good and moral, and all who contribute do so voluntarily.
Frankly, if the Chinese are going to go to the moon on the backs of the Chinese workers it will almost certainly hasten the demise of their non-free (non-free as in speech and as in beer) regime. [See Heritage foundation freedom index. ] That will benefit humanity.
Me physicist. Me make rockets.
Slow tubby, your not on the moon yet
Yes, it would be more economical, but it would also be less defensible and the problem with the PRC is that it hosts a malignent governing philosophy that is a world menace. If they can get a moon base with launch capability they can heft guided rocks into any world capital and force capitulation.
I doubt either the Russian military or the US military is going to let that scenario go unexplored or unanswered.
They don't need nukes, just the capability to launch large rocks. They could even justify building the launchers for commercial reasons right until the first one lands in Tblisi as a demonstration delivered right along with an ultimatum to surrender.
Well, China, although ruled by a group that *calls* itself communist, has been pretty capitalistic for the past ten years or so. The Chinese communists saw what happened to the Soviet Union and is willing to make whatever changes needed to make sure that they don't get thrown out of power too.
the creation od nuclear silos. not only that but they will put a powerfull rciever up there and monitor communications.
Eh. It's probably a lot easier to monitor communications down here on Earth. As for the creation of missile silos, I'm not sure the Chinese could really count on even hitting the Earth from that distance, much less a city or an air force base. It'd be easier for them to just stick a few nukes in orbit and pass them off as communications satellites or some such thing.
Actually, the number to worry about is the 150 million *surplus* agricultural workers coupled with the growing number of urban unemployed (10s of millions here too). Most of the economic figures out of the PRC are bogus but their unemployment numbers are sure to be lowballed and they admit to the 150M.
One has to think that China has their priorities mixed up here. Considering that this is a country that in which not everyone gets enough to eat, and innocent children are murdered for violating population guidelines. I mean, people die in un-humane conditions in sweatshops in this country, and they are spending a mass amount of money to go to the moon? I fail to see the point.
Oh God, I'm tired of these hypocrites. I fail to see how this is different than spending 390 BILLION dollars (or so) A YEAR on a military budget. Last I checked, there were a lot of hungry/homeless/poor people in the USA, and it still doesn't prevent military from having budget increased every year.
You mean they fell for that backlot footage of us landing on the moon?
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
If China's gonna do it, we have to, and before they do.
Ain't gonna happen. Both Congress and the Prez would throw a fit: "You're overbudget on the ISS by billions and you want to go back to the Moon anyway? What are you smoking?" As much as I wish it was us building a base on the Moon, we'll be going to Mars before we go back to the Moon.
If the title was "US to build Moon base", 90% of the discussions would be related to technical issues, and similar things.
When the title is "China to build Moon base", 90% of the discussions are related to 'communists', 'stealing technology', 'human rights'. I presume, most of the people have never been to China.
Couldn't people stop 'stealing technology' stories for a moment (think US would have nukes if they haven't *stolen* German scientist and research?), and talk about feasibility of this project, no matter who does it.
There are so many sites dealing with politics - don't turn Slashdot into another one.
The main reason that capitalists have not taken up mining on either the moon or nearby asteroids is the price of admission. It costs about $10,000 for every pound that goes into orbit. Taking that same pound to the moon increases the cost even higher. And what is on the moon that could be mined right now anyway? Sure, it's a rich source of helium 3, but how many power plants are there currently that use helium 3 as a fuel?
The cost of getting men and material into orbit, let alone to the moon, has to come down dramically and the possibility or extracting a profitable material would have to really go up before such an operation would ever be seriously considered by industry. Any corporation that would spend billions of dollars on something with almost no profit potential would last about as long as Enron or Global Crossing.
The DoD has a lot of responsibilities and is not geared up properly to handle them. They have to go through a 10-15 year retooling process to handle the small war threat and then turn right around and fire up the next generation of weapons systems because our 20 year technical advantage will have been mostly eaten up at that point. Also, there's a war on so I think that such a relatively long term threat is best handled by abrogating or renegotiating the space treaty that kills the free enterprise system outside of earth (no property ownership allowed) and encourage aerospace companies to team with manufacturing and mineral extraction firms into combines that can profitably extract the riches of space and fund the defense needs of their installation and provide an economic base for whatever military needs to be stationed up there as well.
For that sort of vision, I'd certainly be willing to put in $500 investment a year out of my retirement funds and take both a security leap, a science leap, and a nice portfolio boost along the way.
Much better, don't you think?
I wonder what would happen if China offered the US participation in the program. It probably would not happen but if China is serious about benefiting the whole of mankind (?) they should consider such an offer.
... as if they had modern special effects back in 1969) will be enough to at least send someone up to secure that historical site. :-)
It is good for humanity, regardless.
If China is serious about this, maybe it will be get US Government off of its sorry ass, stop underfunding NASA, and start actually doing something to facilitate long term economic exploitation of space.
If the US doesn't get off its ass, humans will still have finally gotten off their sorry asses and begun colonizing space. Once we have colonies independent of earth, the liklihood of our extinction goes way down. This is a Good Thing(tm), regardless of whether those humans come from the United States, China, or Timbuktu.
If the Chinese manage to start another space race with the United States I will personally take my hat off to them, because apparently we (the United States, and the West in general) don't have the will, or the vision, to do it on our own, without competition from the Russians or someone else.
Maybe the threat of having the Chinese sweep away all physical proof of the lunar moon landings (to promote the absurd myth that the landings were somehow fake
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I don't think the moon's resources will justify the proposed Chinese effort, but it's a symptom of the failures of central planning (as if we needed another) that they're trying to dictate what the market will be, rather than letting it happen naturally.
IOW, the US government should "stand by" and do nothing (whether they will resist the urge to waste taxe$ in space is another question). Let's look at how space-commerce (the voluntary, non-government-supported kind) is going in the real world, right now:
So far, it's ALL rich people, and all "tourism." 100%! No exceptions!!
This was to be expected, but think ten years (and maybe 100 orders of magnitude cheaper) down the road...Space-tourism is going to evolve toward one thing, and it's a thing that governments (of any sort) don't seem to want to consider:
SEX tourism. Couples are going to want to have intercourse without gravity (and without annoying swimming pools, scuba gear, etc.). Many honeymooners will want to, uh...start out with a bang (sorry! Couldn't resist).
This will happen naturally, I'm sure of it. Ultimately, all this sex will be the main thing supporting science up there, but no central planning bureaucrat (Chinese or US) will anticipate this, it'll just happen. I only wish that I could find some way to make money off my prediction when it comes to pass...
JMR
(My own opinions, nobody else seems to want them.)
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
After watching the video of the moon rover driving around and kicking up dust as it went... and then seeing the video of the Lunar Lander rocketing off the moon's surface without stiring up any dust at all????? The only way I could see the smaller force of the rover kicking up more dust than the larger force of the rocking pod not able to moving ANY dust at all is if the laws of physics are not constant on the moon.
Not going to get into the issues of trying to pass through the Van Allen Belts wearing suits of 7 layers of 'glass like' material for protection. Nor the number of photos with uneven hash marks (they must have just slid back and forth across the lense as I'm sure they were designed to do for various reasons of National Security). Nor even to get involved with the infamous 'lost report' blasting Nasa's legs out over the whole thing and actually having everyone who's tried to bring it to light die in freak accidents...I mean..these things must happen all the time to all sorts of reports. The president goes through many speak writers each month from being hit by trains, plains, and Logger Head Turtles...
No I just want someone to explain why a rocketing pod failed to create enough power to kick up any dust at all while lifting a pretty heavy pod out of the moons gravite. That's what made me believe the states have never been there. Anyone? (please, no blanket reply/dismissal...if you can't anwser the question please just move along)
Oh..and I did try to make an account..but it seams not to be responding right now...or else doesn't work for Opera 6...whichever..
D'ya think they can pull it off?
Let's see, the US pulled off landing a man on the moon in 7 1/2 years. China has years of technological growth since then, and more manpower (and more resources?) then the US did at that time. The state of the art for propultion is far beyond what it was back in the day US landed on the moon.
Sounds like a piece of cake.
To start mining would take a much reduced cost per kg to lift, most likely heavily reusable spacecraft. Getting it down doesn't have to be the same way - read Robert Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" for ideas, which also converts into a nice big weapon. Gotta love standing at the top of a deep gravity well.
I think this is not only possible, but probable. And potentially scary for nations that don't play nicely with China. Once to the moon, elsewhere is next. Population pressure unlike anywhere but India may provide a good motivation to think long term about spaceflight. Or maybe I'm wrong.
But there is no reason the Chinese can not succeed if they want to.
=Blue(23)
LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? C. MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process.
I think it's should be obvious that China would do this for national prestige - can anyone name a country that wouldn't? - and it's attendant military benefits. Whether they will succede in the given time frame is another question altogether. 2010 is an extremely near date even though the technology to get there is not rocket science (pun intended) any more. The chinese seem to be buying up a lot of already developed Russian technology and have the will to do this adventure, but given that China seems to have difficulties developing it's own *reliable* high tech (J10 fighter for example, Long March crashes for another) I have the feeling that if this does indeed go forward, it will more likely be around 2015 to 2020.
The economic/scientific bebefits of a moonbase would be of more advantage to China in a time of Peace. It wouldn't survive a war.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
If this puts space back into the public eye, then it's a Good Thing (tm) through and through.
Ñ'
Who knows, perhaps once their base is established their first half-dozen long-range sorties will be garbage runsto the old Apollo sites, "to eliminate counterrevolutionary evidence."
My own personal hope once upon a time was to someday walk on the elevated boardwalks around the Apollo 11 landing site and see Armstrong and Aldrin's footprints. Don't think it's going to happen, not even for my kids, maybe for my grandkids...
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
It's a surprise that nobody here mention the many attempts by the United States in blocking China to get into space.
The thing started way back in the '50s, and throughout the Cold War, and even AFTER the Cold War has (supposingly) ended.
Take the International Space Station (ISS) for example - why countries like Brazil and Japan are allowed to take part, while China isn't even part of it?
The thing is that the US will NOT let China in taking part in ANY space program, not even those which are supposed to be PEACEFUL.
Wonder why the article concern so much about China's plan for moonbase ? Of course, the only concern for the author is that China must NOT be allowed to go into space.
All these while the Japs are encouraged to take part in space programs.
Don't you think it's kinda double standards ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Unfortunately, this is not the moral High Ground.
I seem to recall something on this written by some science fiction author someplace. I am sure some military planners someplace are sweating over this right now.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
If you're on the moon, you don't need nuclear weapons. As for communications, the signal loss is so dramatic, especially for signals that aren't explicitly pointed at the moon, that you'd be wasting your time.
Since 80% of the effort of going to the moon is actually used in getting off the earth's surface, you'd be better off with earth-based satellites. For some information (of unknown quality) on this topic, check the Federation of American Scientists site.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Agree with mining for resources, but I prefer to do it on the moon, or from an asteroid in the far future. Mining on Earth damages the area ecologically, which is OK with a couple of billion people's needs. But postulate TEN billion or more, and the our planet's going to look like a golf course with a gopher invasion.
The moon is rock and vacuum. Strip mine away!
The thing is, that used to be true, as far as personal risk. But now with a corporate structure, individuals take no risks in enterprises such as space flight - legal fictions do, as you say. But this means that the classic penalties for failure or malfeasance -- penury or jail -- are now erased. But more on point, a corporation simply cannot take the risks an entrepeneur can take -- such as a twenty year plan to build lunar mines and an orbital industy to compliment it.
Another point: corporations darn well use huge chunks of the GDP -- it's called defense spending. And other things. Remember Ross Perot? He hates government spending -- but doesn't want us to remember that EDP, his fortune, was made off of goverment contracts.
Except that these capitalist individuals aren't lifting us into space. Neither are corporations. The thing is, corporations must make a profit quarter to quarter -- quite large ones, or Wall Street has a meltdown. And space development is a decades-long process with no profit to be made until major components are complete -- a cheap launch system, a lunar base with mass-driver complex to lift the materiel, an orbital system to capture the materiel, smelters, factories, orbital stations/colonies, lunar-terran shuttle systems, on and on. Probably trillions in capital outlay before one penny in steel/aluminum/titanium deliveries, or a decent capability to accept colonists in numbers. No corporation can do this because no shareholder will accept it.
The words "moral" and "business" are not connected. Do not confuse religious and moral issues with business practices -- such confusion is dangerous and intentional. Businesses are not human and their procedures are not moral in any way. HUMANS behave in a moral fashion. BUSINESSES are amoral contructs run by morally-shielded humans. Businesses should never claim a mantle of holiness, and I will not let this meme start without a fight. Thought we didn't catch that, hm?
I'm a Son of Heinlein myself, which means I can smell a dead semantic herring in my underwear drawer.
I'll skip the Heritage Foundation. Sadly tho, if the regime falls before the benefits of space development roll in, the Chinese people will get McDonalds, cars, traffic jams, and corporate control -- and the world loses because the last hope for getting off this planet dies.
I'll hope that democracy develops in China, but that somehow this amazing development continues somehow despite taxpayer protests -- because it really is the last real hope for the human race to spread off this planet before we turn into a race of suburban tax haters who think everything is fine the way it is.
My god, Vonnegut was right.
EMP (Elecltro-Magnetic Pulse) is an effect of a nuclear explosion in atmosphere. On the moon, it won't happen. A 'dirty' enough explosion could cause enough radiation to fry some nearby satalites, but EMP won't do it.
Do not confuse duty with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different.Duty is a debt you owe to yourself.
but couldn't we verify the Apollo program with Sat imagery? I am not well versed in the limitations of our celestial viewing technologies, but I would think it would be feasable to see the lunar lander, the flag, something to prove all the skeptics wrong. Someone explain why this isn't possible?
There's a lot of things up on the moon that are more than abundant there that are much rarer here on Earth. The Helium 3 that it absorbs from the sun over time is sufficient to power the earth for many centuries to come- not to mention all the other stuff.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
When the lunar lander landed, all the dust was blown away from underneath the module. With no air to resist it, it all went straight out away from the module, leaving it resting on solid earth (err, whatever). Without any wind, the dust didn't return during the landers stay. Thus, no dust when it relaunched.
-jk
God became man to enable men to become sons of God. -C.S. Lewis
By what measure are they enlightened capitalists?!?
Being enlightened is a *political* measurement. Being capitalistic is entirely independent. According to your list at that right-wing thinktank, the second most economically free country in the world is the dictatorship of Singapore, certainly not politically free.
NASA doesn't reckon those numbers at all. The shuttle costs a billion and a half to launch. The space station is well over $100bn.
How do you figure (and what sources have you seen) that makes you think those numbers are correct within even an order of magnitude?
Given a little more time, private enterprise would have gotten us into space. Look at John Carmack -- whee!
No. Instead, the governmnet has to rush the gun and abso-fucking-lutely hobble the private sector while trying to rush premature technology into space. Private enterprise has proven to be the best solution to technological inadequacies; as proven throughout history and at the current time.
How to place a thriving American colony on the moon; Lift all restrictions, except those that keep private companies from harming people (i.e., dropping rocket stages in Dallas, Texas).
And, this one will get us on the moon long before China; remove all taxes on any corporation whose primary purpose is to get to the mooon, and remove taxes on their transactions with other corporations. Bingo! You don't even have to subsidize 'em!
But of course the idiots (and they are!) in Congress don't have the balls to consider such a radical move. Lift Restrictions? My God, man, you're talking the end of the world!
-chris
Uh, isn't the moon (and, well, all of space) considered international land, like the poles? So why does any one country think they can start *mining* there. We haven't even begun to do a thorough scientific investigation...and somebody wants to unilateraly MINE there??
Fine. I got dibs on Mars.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I'll take a swing at a few of your ideas, although I can't address much about the photographs as I've never studied them.
> After watching the video of the moon rover driving around and kicking up dust as it went... and then seeing the video of the Lunar Lander rocketing off the moon's surface without stiring up any dust at all????? The only way I could see the smaller force of the rover kicking up more dust than the larger force of the rocking pod not able to moving ANY dust at all is if the laws of physics are not constant on the moon.
Actually, the trap you're falling into is based on assumptions about how dust behaves on the Moon. Those assumptions almost always stem from observed behavior of dust and dirt on Earth. There are a few key differences, however, that make a HUGE difference in how small particles behave in these two very different environments. They are:
Atmosphere: this is by far the most important, and the most confusing. This causes two things. First is that there's a lack of turbulence that is unfamiliar to those who don't work with vacuum. This is what causes your disparity of observation. You'll notice in the film that the return module of the lander did not fire a rocket directly at the moon, but instead it pushed on the top of the descent module. That means the main thrust of the engine went downward into the descent module and then straight out sideways. On Earth, this would cause a swirl of air all around the module, but on the Moon, there's no air to swirl, and the thrust never gets to the ground, so there's no dust movement. Second, dust on the Moon is not like dust or dirt or sand on Earth. On Earth, these things get worn smooth by air and water. On the Moon, they don't so dust is very hard-edged, and its behavior more closely mimics wet snow than sand.
Gravity: this tends to cause things to behave differently than expected, and it goes hand in hand with the lack of atmosphere. Just as Mr. Armstrong did not descend quickly to the surface, we'd expect dust to fall slowly. However, what the mind fails to suss out is that the lack of air resistance more than makes up for the lesser gravity when small particles are concerned, so when dust falls quickly, it looks odd. However, the rub is that the only place dust can fall as quickly as a human being is in a low gravity vacuum, which would seem to prove that they were in fact on the Moon.
> Not going to get into the issues of trying to pass through the Van Allen Belts wearing suits of 7 layers of 'glass like' material for protection.
This stems from misunderstanding how radiation works on the human body. The method for determining exposure has two factors: intensity and duration. One can get a fairly high dose of radiation and not develop health problems if the the duration is short. Conversely, low exposure for long periods can cause difficulties, which is why x-ray technicians stand behind a wall when they use the machine (else they'd get small doses, but lots of small doses) while you get to stand in the beam (high exposure, but you only do it a few times in your lifetime). The Van Allen belt has (relatively) high radiation levels, but unless you're planning on living in it (and most space stations are positioned outside it (well, inside it, relative to Earth)) you're not going to get a lethal dose. All of the discussions about how much shielding is needed for the Van Allen belt are based on the amount of shielding necessary to block all of the radiation, but it's not necessary to do that if you limit the amount of time spent there. The balance is that the Apollo astronauts did get a dose of radiation, but it was in the area of 1 rem (radiation sickness doesn't normally appear until the levels get to about 20-25 rems), so it wouldn't be particularly dangerous (or at least no more so than the trip to space on the booster rocket was to begin with).
Virg
If China really establishes a mining operation on the moon, this would give them a huge tactical advantage should they choose to use it. Think about it; they don't even have to spend the money to haul or build nuclear weapons up there, all they have to do is hurl a few well-placed rocks and they could easily take out any city in the world.
This is wrong. The difficulty of getting somewhere in space comes from the needed velocity change (delta-V), not the distance. One needs a large delta-V to land on the moon, and another large delta-V to get back off the moon and onto a trajectory reaching earth.
Some earth-crossing asteroids are actually easier to get to than the moon, and much easier to return material from. The delta-V to get to an earth-intersecting trajectory can be as low as 100 meters/second.
And you wouldn't return a whole asteroid to earth orbit -- you'd extract the platinum/etc. at the asteroid and only return it (or a concentrate containing a much enhanced concentration of the platinum group elements).
Isn't space for everybody? (isn't the earth for that matter). Doesnt the UN regard space as INTERNATIONAL space? So how come we have to wee wee our national flags over it? Mineing the resources for one countries gain. Hmmm.. narrow minded thinking? (guess no change there really)
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
Well, we were also in our "infancy" when we got to the Moon (recall, Sputnik went up in 1957, and we were standing on the Moon only twelve years later). They have the benefit of our (and the Russians') experience, and they've got 30 years of extra technology to work with when they do try. Also, the Shuttle wouldn't be much help at all for a Moon shot (it's an orbital vehicle). Disposable rocket boosters a'la the Saturn 5 work better for that sort of thing, in terms of energy (and money) cost to get stuff there.
The technology for living on the Moon has been around for decades. If the Chinses are willing and able to sink the necessary money into making it happen, they have a very real chance of making it happen. This has been what's been angering the Moon colony people in the U.S. It's never been about possibility (well, not since 1978). It's always been about getting the money.
Virg
They could send an Arthur Andersen representative, who can verify that the landing actually took place. That should settle it once and for all.
Star Trek started the myth about "sabot" in "sabotage" referring to shoes. This is just false. "Sabot" refers to the metal clamps used in railroads.
Source
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
The only problem with China attacking from the moon is that it's pretty hard to pull off a sneak attack - the incoming rocks will be quite visible to radar and will take a couple of days to arrive. That means that conventional attacks against Chinese targets would be a major component of retailiation.
It would turn into an ugly war, for sure.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
I'll have to start blocking email from .moon
Exactly what I have been thinking lately - that democracy and freedom necessarily are not tied together.
Freedom is not a consequence of democracy, and democracy is not a requirement for freedom.
Will work for bandwidth
As always, the essential question is why. Prestige only gets you so far. Notice that after mankind proved it could be done in 1969 - 1974, we just plain stopped. Know why? We'd gotten all the scientific information we could reasonably have gotten, it was very dangerous, and very expensive. So now we have to ask why and look for deeper responses, an actual purpose to flying out into space. What possibly could be done on the moon that couldn't be done right here, or perhaps on our money pit noisemaker, the Int'l Space Station (ISS)? I strongly suspect the answer is nothing.
Speaking in a larger, world exploration of space sense, couldn't we get more scientific gain by sending out many, many more satellites equipped with finely engineered sensors? I know our human nature makes us feel that if there's not a biped there we haven't really experienced it, but putting a base on the moon, landing on mars, doing deep space exploration, etc - these are all things that become exponentially cheaper if we decide to send machines instead of people to do it.
Before we went to the moon it held an air of mystery for us. But when we got there we found it was just a big dusty gray rock, and so our fascination was with ourselves with succeeding in getting there, not with the destination itself. People who dream of moonbases fail to realize that it'll never happen. It's like going to a far-away island - anything you need you have to bring with you. Food, housing, any and all equipment to do anything - it's ridiculous and there's no reason for it. We'll also never practice interstellar travel, or likely even get beyond Mars & Venus as humans, mainly due to the gamma ray problem. And will it be worth it? For science, yes. But not for any practical purpose.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
Sounds like the 'good ole days' when the communists and capitalists were competing in space instead of wasting their tax revenues on welfare and corruption.
Is this what it will take for the "West" to quit navel-gazing and start exploring again? Will the democracies now have a reason to shoot for the moon again? Or will the Reds get there first?
-AD
No, no. The Vikings went to Mars.
Sheesh. 8)
Virg
The space-based Hubble doesn't have the resolution to see such things, and even if it did, the very properties of light are such that you can't see something that small from that far out (the wavelength of the light itself limits resolution). However, there's a reflector on the Moon designed to bounce a laser back, which was put there by Apollo astronauts (I don't remember which mission) to measure distances to the Moon. It has since been used many times, and every time someone shoots a laser at the right coordinates, they get the beam back, which is impossible to do with regular Moon surface. It's odd that the conspiracy theorists are so quiet about this device.
Virg
first off, it's sad that this article turned into a commie bashing thread.. but i guess it was expected seeing as how most /. readers are from the united states...
my question is this.. how does one acquire new territory? i mean what makes the territory YOU claim to be yours RECOGNIZED by others as belonging to you? sure someone can send a group of guys to the moon, stick a flag in the ground and claim that the moon is theirs... but what about, say, small islands that are in international waters.. i can take a boat out there and stick a flag down in the sand, does that make the land mine?
i think the question is a bit deeper than that. see an individual cannot really OWN land that is not already owned by a larger nation. in other words, if a small island exists within a particular nation's waters, and if that land is not recorded as belonging to anyone, i'm sure that a person can purchase/claim that land from his parent nation.
however, an individual has no representation amongst the nations of the world. he/she cannot defend his new territory, he/she cannot compete with entire nations that might try taking that territory by force. he/she has no trade representation, financially in this world they are a nobody and therefor their 'territory' is not legitimate and will not be recognized.
so lets assume an individual manages to defend his territory by some means.. say a square kilometer of the moon. an individual could send up a robot that is fully autonomous and could pick up small lunar rocks and hurl them at 500+ m/s at anything that it perceives to be a threat to its territory. against a lightly armored lunar rover or explorer in a space suit, this would be a killing blow.
so now you have a person, here on earth, controlling a piece of land on the moon. he/she invested in this land and took measures to defend it. to whom does that square kilometer of land belong to? where does one draw the line? one could send an entire 'army' of simple mecha up there and defend the entire lunar surface. provided that this individual could provide for their own safety on earth until they were able to build a base up there and move to the moon, who could honestly say that the moon isn't under the control of this individual....
and who here can state that possession of land involves anything more than control...
-fc
. echo -e \\04 >
Yep, I've read them all, at quite a young age, and they influenced me mightily. But the Old Man wasn't always right, and had many blind spots.
Do I think the status quo of slavery should be maintained so that space travel can finally start?
Well, let's look at the assumption in that statement. Are the Chinese slaves to their goverment because it is (in name) communist?
Firstly, you are assuming they are communist, with all the baggage thereby. This is false-to-fact. They are a civilization that started as a royal bureaucracy, transformed into a dictatorship, then underwent poor leadership that eventually fell to superior military forces that eventually resolved themselves into an ideological fascism. Their xenophobia was their undoing, but that was reinforced by the hated intervention in their affairs by the enlightened West -- remember, the original Drug War was fought in China by the British -- to MAINTAIN British company's profits generated by the opium trade. Their experience with Western-style capitalism was at the point of a cannon.
The nation has been evolving into a vibrant capitalist society -- in their own way. Like many things, this takes time. But the fascistic urge that permeates the government there is not "communistic" in nature -- it would exist regardless, for it is in their culture, not their economic system. And more to the point, we have no problem with governments with social controls as powerful and repressive as China's -- as long as our companies make money there. Hell, we are currently exporting our manufacuring to China -- I don't see anyone complaining about the free ride that corporations currently get by slashing their payrolls by 90+ percent. Thankee, Tovarisch! Money beats freedom hands down in a truly free market. Hell, the shirt you wear right now could have been made by a political prisoner in the Hunang countryside. How's your free ride doing? Actually, the manufacturer's ride -- you probably paid the same amount, adjusted for inflation, for the Chinese Communist Prisoner shirt on your back as for the locally-made one you bought fifteen years ago. The money just went to the corporate bank account, which was used to buy other companies -- 'cause dividends are bad.
If a free ride for all the U.S. corporations and Wall Street is okay as long as they make money, I'll be as "moral" and hope the Chinese can use their strategic planning advantage to at least get a working space-based economy in place because the classic Heinlein-based capitalists can't do it.
For money, hell yes they will. Lots and lots of money.
I developed my world view from that book.
Heinlein considered Ayn Rand to be a liberal. She didn't go far enough, in a rare interview I once read.
Heinlein started out a "liberal", which is to say someone other than a far-rightist. Like Hubbard, he considered himself a social scientist using the techniques of General Semantics.
The thing is, he developed first principles that were his own prejudices rather than "law" and then developed a pitiless view of world politics that became more and more diamond-hard-right. At the end, he was snarling at Arthur Clarke at a conference because Clarke wasn't entitled to have an opinion in the discussion because he wasn't an American. He became didacticly monomaniacal on some subjects -- because he believed that his opinions, however worthy, were unassailable because they were "scientific" -- like quantum mechanics, the speed of light, chemistry. The thing is, he was as scientific as Elron Hubbard. What he was doing was not SCIENCE, because subjective opinion of social mores and such is not valid observation in the scientific sense, and cannot be used to create a "science".
Ayn Rand's "moral imperative" to pursuit of happiness is nothing but selfishness dressed up as morality. For us to survive as a species, you and I have to have responsibility to the world as a whole, not just ourselves. Objectivists reduce the world to a Tribe of One.
And NO, you do not have the right to kill anyone blocking your happiness. I think that is the very definition of evil, and it departs from Heinlein's view of morality. Heinlein believed in DUTY to OTHERS as a prerequisite to morality. A man who loved the Navy, he almost always defined the duty as military, but I have reinterpreted such duty as one to the world as well. Because we are going up or down together -- not by ourselves.
"True Believers" are Marvel Comics fans. There aren't any more Communist "True Believers" left in China. It's a capitalist economy overlaid with a cultural fascism run by an elite Party. And I never let them "own" the term, or connected "moral" with China. Non sequitur.
Geeks, of which I have been one myself, like to develop tech, but the profit therein isn't as stable as you'd like to think. Profit can be made on the entrepenurial level -- until a major corporation takes your business one way or another. And the development of space travel has been tried for years -- the DC-X (Delta Clipper) and the Rotary Rocket company tried, and had working tech.
But the Delta Clipper project died because the only people willing to finance it was NASA -- which killed the funding eventually because of budget cuts and the disapproval of Lockheed/Etc. corporation which wanted a hugely expensive winged craft which would make major bucks. Lockheed's project died because of it's greed and overdesign, and it took the geek-designed viable DC-X SSTO vehicle with it. Not because the government was stupid, or the design bad - but because capitalism wouldn't support it. Everything has limits, and space travel exceeds capitalism's at the moment.
To beat this, geeks will have to develop cheap anti-gravity generators that can be built in a garage. Failing that, a long-term goverment program is the only option, and China is the only one with the right goals: manufacturing, colonization, and making money. The U.S. is obsessed with Mars for some bizarre reason, and the world's democracies are voting against funding for space development.
If it's going to be the Red Flag, then that's the way it's gotta be. No one else will do it.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
All I know is in Civ, when the race to get to Aplha Centauri starts, when the techs are more or less equal, the civilazation with the most number if citys usually wins...
Usage as I stated seems to be quite prevalent, regardless of your assertion that my information is out of date.
Please see:
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
There is a lot of truth in the replies, and a lot of stupidity as well.
:O)
The unescapable fact is that every Chinese attempt at reliable (non-exploding) space adventure failed, until they started spying, *buying*, and stealing. You can find this out by reading on China's space program.
That's not to say that they're stupid, it may be the economic or social structure or something else for all I know. Chinese prove they're no more stupid then the average human.
One thing I see a lot of in the replies here are the assumptions that in my comment I meant that Chinese were stupid. However, we all know that assuming is stupid, reading between the lines is prone to false results.
If I said it, I meant it, if I did not say it, then I didn't mean it. Period.
get it?
I personally think the Chinese will succeed.
Why? Because they are not truly communist. China is successful in business, which is capitalism. They speak highly of communist ideals, they enforce them socially, but not in business. The outside world (everyone else) is willing to buy from and sell to China, and China is willing to buy and sell in return. There are rich and poor in China. There are weathly people, people who require capitalism to sustain their wealth. This isn't the wonderful equality we all hear about communism is it? The rich living off the backs of the poor?
China will succeed, and well they should, they've got a lot invested in becoming the biggest and best nation on earth. Right now they are not the best nation *IMHO* mainly because of their lack of respect for human life and freedom.
Others may consider those two things to be unimportant, but I experience life and freedom everyday and I think I can't live or be free without them..
The price we pay for immortality... is death. Narnia The Great Fall
The Chinese system government now resembles fascism much more than communism. That is, it relies on appeals to nationalism and its superiority to legitimize itself. Sound familiar with anything else? They have openly stated that their ambitious space program is an attempt in this aim.
The reaction here is, "What a cool idea. They should go for it!" without, without thinking for a second what the consequences of that action would be.
I think there are a lot of implications:
... is it democracy if I may VOTE but not choose my seat in a public transfer freely(Martin Luther King)?
... we showed the world they can not treat us like nothing.
... having ambitions, thinking the wrong people are ruling. Those are good placed in a space program.
... peopler would vote for them.
... no idea here :-) But establishing space stations around L5 and L4 is far easyer from the moon. And likely an opportunity for china to go its own way. Surely China will extend its Moon program to a Mars program. Of course colonizing of Mars makes not that much sence currently ... but imagine: China the only nation with a space program seeking manned exploration of our solar system.
:-)
...
Posters write about lack of democracy in China, actually.
What is about lack of democracy in the US during the time they raced to the moon? (Mac Carthy, Martin Luther King)
You are using the word "democracy" as a silver bullet
Is it democracy if I may vote but have simply no chance to gain a seat if I like to run for a public office(because I'm black, yellow or hispanic, TODAY!!)?
Back to topic:
The USA and USSR moon programs where basicly run for three reason:
a) Distract public awareness from more urgent problems
b) Stimulate the economy and science (interwoven with the industrial and military complex) helping solving the problems in a)
c) prestige and national feelings to overcome the bad feelings caused by the fundamental problems
in a)
Yes, I have the opinion this is true for both nations. Not to say that the USSR was not even a "nation" as it was forged by Stalin and consists of dozens of nations.
But NOW, they felt like a nation as they where close to beat the USA.
Finaly AFTER 50 years of cold war, the USSR no longer exists. The countries of the USSR mostly have "a kind of" democracy now.
Now after the dark ages the people have a feeling of: we are somthing
The democracy is still weak. Corruption is everywhere. Organized crime is struggeling the government and the people.
Now look at China.
No democracy, at least no free public democracy. Right.
Corruption, yes. Mainly in top ranks of the political leading classes, but also in the economy.
Organized crime, yes.
How is China coping with it? No idea realy. Corruption and getting cought may cause, often it does, death punishment. Nearly all crimes falling under organized crime are punished with death punishment.
What are the prime problems in China? Why CAN'T they shift to democracy?
75% of the population is rural population.
25% is urban. Population growth is still not under control. (China has a law that a family may only get one child)
Poverty, education and even fooding is not under full control. But it gets better and is far better than 30 years ago.
China is not very high industrialized. As far as it is, it uses outdated (dirty)technologies.
So what does China try to accomplish? I think they want to urbanize the society to generate jobs and wealth in a service economy(there was an interview with a high representative in the german magazine "Der Spiegel" about that). To get the education, living room and nutrifician problems under control they need to control the growth of the population (currently about 1.1 billion people).
Also they need to provide energy(if possible not to dirty) health services and industrial growth.
China consists of a lot of smaler "countires" where the people speak different languages. In fact they do not like each other very well.
A undertaking like a space program has the effects it had for the USA and the USSR:
o Founding and supporting a feeling to belong to one nation.
o Stimulating spin off effects all over the economy.
o The possibility to trade natural resources for western high tech. AND: furhter more the ability to establish or drive their own high tech industries.
o Establishing a WANTING for education in the rural population
o Establish a consumer industrie while poverty is decreasing
Belive it or not: Chinas politicians think far more deeper and wider for the benefit of their nation than most western politician ever did.
I'm pretty sure that they clearly have the vision to go for Mars. They have a motivation we all have not: seeking space to live. And they need a ventil for all people making trouble
When China is ready they will get democracy. But it is not our right to point at them and demand democracy now. If YOU wan't them to get democracy early then help them to achive it.
(Where have you been when the USA(CIA) destroyed democracies in south america, just because the party the people voted for was not liked by General Food? See the result? Argentinia is now collapsing. Peru still can't get on its feet, fighting Maoistic terrorists. Chile not established well.)
If China was democratic tomorrow, what would happen?
About 20 new countries would pop up forming their own state. Not bad in it self.
In 10 of those countries local "war lords" would have the democratic base to rule. Because they are rich, they own land, they own a factory
The land would fall back imediatly into a 19th century precapitalistic order. The people who OWN would rule. Becasue they tell all ohers what to vote.
What kind of corruption you then had likely?
Thats not democracy, even if the people VOTE for those who OWN. What do you tink why communism ruled USSR? Why did the revolution in the USSR yield communism while it yielded democracy in france? In russia 90% of the population where SLAVES. The remaining 10% where lords. Just a very thin group of people OWNED everything. In China it was similar. When the slaves revolted they found it is wrong that 10% of the people OWN 100% of everything. The revolution was not about democracy or monarchy. It was about land and food and having a job where you had not to fear to get killed by a machine.
Back to actual China:
Putting it to a vote or not, the one child family idea would be dead. Population would EXPLODE.
After population growth starts to get out of control you can forget: feeding the masses.
After you have not enough food or can't distribute it, you can forget: energy, industrialization, education, health service, housing. Just choose which one will break in which area first.
I belive that in 10 to 20 years China will be on the right track and likely will be widely democratic.
A space program will release the energy for that and yield the synergy needed to transform the society.
Technical a race for the moon might be right or wrong
Regardless where you go, you will find them there allready sitting with a base, funny
Who will send the first interstellar probe out of our solar system? (Yes Pioneer is allready on its way) I mean a BIG one, probably with speed of 0.2c (read NASA pages how to make that with current tech).
How might that stimulate world wide the feeling of: we are one humanity? And who will lead such a program? Likely China.
Just some thoughts
angel'o'spphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Well, orientalism aside, he's right. Heck, the U.S. also could muster a million people willing to die for a chance at the Moon. It's just looking like the PRC is going to be more likely to give their million people a chance to try.
Virg
Don't forget what got America on the moon. Sputnik. The article mentions it is a point of national pride. It was national pride that started the US space program to "catch up and surpass" Russian advances in space. And what was the benefit to American's that congress argues when marginalizing NASA? Huge funding into materials and technology development that resulted in many consumer and military applications we use today.
;-)
But now the argument is America cannot afford to be in space. Look at the massive scaling back of Alpha. It serves no purpose... to the political machine driven by corporate lobby. And this is why China will succeed.
Even though China's communist ideals may be for show, China is an effective oligarchy. No battling for mindshare for that next election "addressing short term problems".
I hope Zhong Guo Jen succeed in this vision. It is the Only way Americans will make it to Mars.
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
No, not really. We'd love to see the Japanese go to the moon because we trust them and have a great tradition of sharing technology with them.
China, on the other hand, would like to watch us die in a cloud of radioactive fallout.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
There really aren't many things we (human beings) can't do in regards to putting people in orbit, on the moon, or even other places in the solar system. The question is simply one of how much time and effort we are willing to invest in the project. A don't know how self-sufficient the Chinese moon base would be, but the US has had the technology to put people on the moon for decades, and to keep people in space for months on end. A long-term moonbase would be a hassle in terms of cost, maintenance, and operation, but there's not much new here technologically.
I'm the stranger...posting to
I seem to recall reading an essay about this a while back. Basically, the problem is it takes time even to adapt to moving in space and getting over space-sickness - puke globules are NOT sexy. Furthermore, you'd have to use some sort of straps to hold you on to your mate - "equal and opposite reactions" would make staying in proximity to each other a challenge.
I'm the stranger...posting to
actually, hitting a city from the moon with large rocks would not be that hard to calculate.
Nuclear missle are just aimed at a point in the sky. fter it hits its apex, gravity does the rest.
You would need a launcher that could be aimed, since the moon is so far away, it would only need to move less then a foot in any direction, they know where any city is, the know where the earth is going, they know the rotation speed, the know the exact distance. there could be a couple of anomalies that screw up any specific shot, but it would take us 3 days to get there to try and stop them.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
don't underestimate fear.
the tactical superiority that the moon give any single country is too great to be overlooked.
really, isn't fear why we went there in the first place?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
now, now, don't confuse these people with facts. they don't like it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's about time somebody gave the Americans some competition in space exploration. The next big thing will be a manned mission to Mars though. A Moon colony - however technically difficult that is won't grab the public as much as a misson to Mars (without the robots this time). Lets home they work out whether they're working in inches or centimetres this time!
Video Game cheats, hints a
"Good lord, like I give a damn. I can't believe how sad some people are, placing so much value on karma."
philosphically, thats a damn funny statement.
I wonder if people would case so much if it was called credits?probably not, since a lot of people will poor 10 bucks into a game just so they can have more points then some other person they don't know.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It might be a whole lot easier to accomplish getting somebody to the moon to live if you didn't have to worry about getting them back. I'm willing to believe that the Chinese would send people up to the moon with supplies to attempt to set up a moon base, and keep sending them more stuff, but not worry about the return trip, at least not right away. Send 3 guys up with O2, food, water, and equipment to process lunar dust and rock to extract O2. Use the weight budget that would have been used for a return trip for more survival supplies. Send up resupply rockets. Once the people on the moon have had a chance to experiment on the lunar dust and get a better idea of what would work (perhaps dying in the process), send more people with better equipment. Keep sending people. Don't worry - those who died on the moon did so in the firm belief that they were paving the way for those who followed. They'd be heros on the ground.
The dynamics are way different if you are willing to accept casulties.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Why drop it down a gravity well at all? And why only mine metals? If you have a base on the moon or stations in orbit or the lagrange points, they're gonna need water and organic building blocks from somewhere. Honestly, I'd go for an ice rock first, slap a reactor on it, and use the water in the rock as reaction mass. Maybe tether some iron-bearing asteroids to it first so I could use maximum use of my trip out there (hell, why not just use a big-ass robot mining ship?) The only thing you'd need to do is slap a cover on it so that the sun doesn't destabilize your trajectory, ala comet tails.
Damn straight, America is the country to trust for that kind of thing. You'd never find the American government putting the profits of large mining/drilling companies before environmental concerns.
Uphold Science, Eradicate Superstition, 1999
It's a representation of China's Space Program.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Actually, their footballing skills are pretty much on a par with America's - their men's team is crap, but their women's team is very good. If you remember, they were in the final against America last time.
...We can rest assured that Toplan will have absolutely no involvement whatsoever with the building of this base. They are a Japanese company, right? Right!?
Why bother.
can I smoke pot in this station?
I mean it's impossible for one nation to have it's laws over anothers - no one can own the moon or any planet.
Get your Unix fortune now!
What's the other half? Creamy nougat?
The U.S.S.R., prior to it's implosion, wasn't ruled by a dictator either.
But if you're thinking that experimentation with capitalism in Hong Kong and a few other isolated areas constitutes something other than communism, you are sadly mistaken. China still exhibits all of the characteristics of a repressive and dangerously agressive communist nation, led by an elite few.
The point is that with a large enough stone, you don't need explosive power when you are throwing it down a gravity well. A monopoly on moon bases would put the PRC in the position to do that and to issue subsequent ultimatums to the rest of the world.
Not a nice scenario, given the kind of government they are.
Seems like energy is one of the few useful things one would have more than enough of on the moon.
Not only is anything on the surface sheltered from micrometeors, anything on or in the moon is much less threatened by space debris in general (though this advantage is sort of negated by the inability to dodge the rare bits of debris).
'Making space exploration easier' can't be the primary reason for doing it -- you need something that returns tangible value to justify the initial investment
It's not necessary for an owner of an asset to ever see it. If valuable, ownable items were present off-earth, there would be investors willing to purchase them, allow them to be developed, and then sell them at a profit, regardless of whether or not any product ever came back to earth.
Maybe we should do it for the same reason we do any other basic science: Because we don't KNOW what it could bring, but it COULD bring a lot. And people are much better at noticing interesting things on the spot than a specifically pre-engineered probe.
Not all customers. The ISS is one potential customer not in the gravity well. Telecommunications companies that need transponders are in the gravity well, but the transponders need to be in orbit. Companies wanting to mine high-value materials in space will need someone to supply them with reaction mass, solar furnaces for metals extraction, replacement parts, engines.
Remember, at current rates, every pound lofted into orbit is hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus every pound lofted into orbit has to include the cost and weight of the fuel needed to get it into orbit. Every pound of oxygen, water, structural members, and shielding you can avoid lifting off from the ground is a pound you can use to lift something else that cannot be supplied from space.
See this paper.
If it is oh so easy to land on the moon (only took a few years, and quite a few prople have done it)
SIX people. it took 3,000 years to get SIX people on the moon.
and we havent been back fFor 3 reasons: its much easier to get into earth's orbit and stay there; it's really a bit difficult to set things down gently on the moon; and bringing anything back is even harder.
So, in answer to your question, we havent been back to the moon fFor the same reason most fFolx go to the state fFair, rather than go to disney world: it's a heckuva lot less planning and money.
And what is China planning to use to get to the Moon?
well, the russians are looking to auction off a bunch f equipment. and MirCorp cant keep on leeching onto the dutch/russian market fForever.
heck, maybe there's a really big chinese tourism trade and we just don't know it.
Okay, fine, I'll feed the troll.
> It does not require a human to put something on the moon.
It requires a human to put something on the Moon accurately. Remote landings are only accurate on the scale of miles (that is, landing something by remote, you can only be sure it's within a mile or two of where you want it to come down). Since the device is only a few feet across, and discussions elsewhere in this thread prove that you can't see an object of this size from the Earth (or even Earth orbit), how did the people who use it know where to find it with the outgoing laser beam? Without absolutely precise coordinates, you're vanishingly unlikely to be able to find it once it comes down. Having placed it by hand, the astronauts were able to do exacting measurments to geographical features and so it's easy enough to locate.
What I've discovered is that most of the theories that purport that we did not put men on the Moon revolve around gross misunderstandings of how science works. I suppose that shouldn't surprise me, but it does annoy me. This stuff (barring the getting into space part) isn't rocket science. Do your homework, and your arguments will stand up to debunking a whole lot better.
Virg
Who said anything about foreign oil? I was talking about -all- oil, and wasn't especially thinking about America at all, in fact I'm a European.
In today's news:2 000000/2000506.stm
China Denies Moon Mission Plans
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
The Chinese economy's been cranking along at double digit growth for years now, and this project could guarantee it keeps on doing so. Pyramid building is always good business, and it leads to full employment that tends to take the wind out of the sails of the malcontents and democracy demonstrators.
I think these statements miss the mark. The figures for growth in the Chinese economy are notoriously unreliable. There is also nothing magical about spending on space projects vs. any other kind of project. Based on the lack of private sector moonbase work, capital would probably be more profitably employed (i.e., allow more future economic growth) in other technology areas.
Finally, the problem of jobless discontent in China is that of peasant would-be farmers and low-skill workers at closing state-owned industrial firms. Neither labor pool could be usefully employed in aerospace industry.
Stories like this reaffirm my faith in humanity.
I'm a 2000 man.
depends on what you mean by poor american... if youre speaking about the person below international poverty levels than the diference is non-existing...
Fabio - Sumare/Sao Paulo/Brazil/South America/Earth/Solar System/Milky Way/Universe
http://www.morroida.com.br
Who said anything about cheap? Of the useful things one has access to on the moon, power is probably the most available.