Slashdot Mirror
Europe Heads for the Moon in July
Orlando writes "The BBC are reporting that Arianespace are all set for sending Smart1 to the Moon in July. The mission's primary objectives are testing planetary exploration technologies. This is particularly good news after the recent Arianne rocket explosion." China's also planning a moon mission. The U.S. is planning to sit around and watch.
That SMART-1 is a solar-plasma-hall-effect propelled... thing? (I don't know what to call it. "technology demo" would be most fitting)
Anyway, with US short a shuttle, I'd think there should be more of europe stepping up to support the ISS; you know, the *international* space station? of which they are also a part of?
Granted, it'd be the day when you see muslim (like, say, from Saudi) or chinese (as in, from Beijing) flying to the ISS on a regular basis, so maybe it's not that international...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
A little competition to get us back on track. We need to take NASA away from the politicians and give it back to the engineers.
I think it'll be good for us. When the Ruskies got sputnik up there, it really riled us up. A lot of people stepped up and said, "I can do better than that!". "I'll see your satelite and raise you the Moon," they said.
So Europe wants to go to the moon? Good for them. They can have second place, and if it motivates us a bit, we'll see Mars, astroid mining, and the Space Hilton long before I'm visiting the Lunar Beni Hana.
I hope they go there; it'll light a fire under our ass to get back into the swing of things.
Quit your bellyaching and get a reality check. The cool tech most people in China are waiting for is running water. All empire fall, but it is going to be a while still before China uniformly leaves the U.S. in the dust....that is assuming they themselves aren't subverted economically by labor and intellectual capital even cheaper than themselvs. So far they are the low cost choice, but once standards start to rise there, they will also hear that "giant sucking sound" from cheaper locales like every other producer in the free trade world.
The same reason Michael thinks it's worth noting that the US is "just" going to sit and watch is the same reason this article will probably be duped in an hour or two like so many others.
Welcome to 40 years ago.
Isn't amnesia fun?
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Are we supposed to go do it again? Considering we did this four decades ago?
Yes. Or admit that the USA has passed its prime as a society and is now on the slow slide into cultural and moral decay. It is not what you did in the past, it is what have you done lately that counts.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
Ok, honestly, this is starting to get on my nerves.
Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think that Russia had:
- The first rocket in space
- The first animal in space
- The first man in space
- The first woman in space
- The first probe on the moon
And probably some other stuff I can't rememberand
Then a US president decided that having a man on the moon was important... So the US won an arbitary race they contrived.
I have often heard that Americans won the Space Race. It was not the "Space Race", the Russians won that. It was not the "Moon Race", the Russians won that too. It was the "Man on the Moon Race". So well done, have a gold star.
It reminds me of the claim that Americans built the first computer... It depends on what properties are necessary for a device to be classed as a computer: That it's electronic? That it has Randomly Acessable Memory? That it operates on a stored program? (This last one seems most plausible to me.) I am tempted to suggest that one of the requirements implicit in some people's lists is that it was built in America.
The U.S. is planning to sit around and watch
why is everyone like, "well, we already did it."
sure we already did it. And I already backed the server up last week, so why do it again?
we sure didn't learn everything we could from a mere 7 landings!
This is basically what the history books say about the Vikings and North America--technically first, but who cares. Columbus and the English (and French, Spanish Germans, Dutch in descending order) get the recognition.
That, of course, begs the question as to what indeginous Moon people Eurasia will replace when they do colonize the Moon, but let's not go there, shall we?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
[The USA attitude re: Moon exploration] it's more of a "Been there, done that" stance.
At its time, the "Moon Race" was an effective political ploy. Maybe not the best cold war strategy, but an effective one.
But to regard lunar exploration as something the USA has already accomplished is dumb. While there was some good technology fallout, and some good science, they were incidental to the thrust of the USA effort. Which was simply to establish "First Post" bragging rights on the Moon. Which gives the USA all the enduring value of "FP!" claim on slashdot.
I don't disagree with your assessment-- it does seem like most of my fellow Americans do think that way. Which I think is a pity.
So, you think the slashdot crowd is interested in science for the sake of science?
...RIGHT?
The first thing that happens when some other country tries to go to the moon is that there's nooo reason to do it, it's been done... the us has already won...
and we all know that science is about winning right?
not about the pursuit of knowledge.
America won science 40 years ago...
and of course ESA is planning to test equipment on the moon for nationalistic reasons...
becuase Europe is a nation?
If this story tells us anything, it'd have to be that technology is at a point where it's economically feasible to go to the moon for scientific reasons...
of course we can do incredible things if there are political reasons to do it... but what can we do for purely scientific reasons?
In my mind a far more interesting question.
Would have thought the slashdot crowd had the same interest in science.. but I guess I was wrong.
"I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." -George H.W. Bush
Yes. Or admit that the USA has passed its prime as a society and is now on the slow slide into cultural and moral decay. It is not what you did in the past, it is what have you done lately that counts.
People like you have been declaring the "death of America" for the past hundred or so years. Our slide into "cultural and moral decay" is the reason why Japan thought we wouldn't fight back after Pearl Harbor, the reason why the USSR thought we needed to be forced into Communism, the reason why everybody thought Japan was going to whip our butts in the 70s and 80s and why on September 11th a bunch of terrorists thought that they could blow up the Twin Towers without any retribution.
Heck, you can even go back to the founding of this nation when the wise Europeans didn't think we would last more than a couple years at best.
America has been underestimated for pretty much its entire existence.
NASA's "focus" for the past two decades has been to build a space station and a shuttle to get to it. After the moon landings this is a pretty logical next step.
Unfortunately we have ran into more technical and engineering challenges that we would have liked. But we tried. Now we have to move forward and figure out what to do next. However, you cannot start comparing us to the Chinese and Europeans until after they have landed on the moon and asked themselves "what's next?".
BTW, we have sent up a ton of different mission including the Hubble Telescope and the Mars Pathfinder. These have generally been "side projets" in comparison to the grand vision, but any one of these would be considered a "tremendous accomplishment" to China or Europe.
Brian Ellenberger
We know what's up there, we know how to get there, we know how to get back.
Well, to get snide about it, we don't know what's up there (but we do know that a golf club can be used in a space suit, and that funny wheels make an effective lunar go-cart, and we collected enough rocks that I think a strong man would have a problem lifting them all at once-- but I'm not sure). We knew how to get there, but like Goldie Hawn frequently said at the time, "I used to know all that stuff." Now we don't have a clue as to how to get back. We threw all that technology away.
Yes, I mean that. The Apollo program was based on technology that used (get ready for it) sliderules. The total amount of computer power that was used in the entire Apollo program is dwarfed by the desktop machine that you turn off without giving it a second thought, when your done with your evening's slashdot entertainment. You couldn't muster up enough people in the workforce today who know how to use a sliderule to repeat what was then done, or even understand the notes that were written about it. The technology of the Apollo program was never carried across into computers. To remake the heavy lift Saturn rockets or reconstruct the Apollo heat sheilds, we would have to redo everything from scratch. We orphaned the whole thing as we moved on to better technology.
Terribly shortsighted, that was.
In response to another of your comments: I did not discredit what you call the "residual accomplishments". Re-read my post.
As to Christopher Columbus-- he made several repeat voyages to the New World. He stuck to his program, even though it failed in the long run. His program was designed to return spices and gold-- the keys of that age. Our space adventure had no pragmatic purpose, and so was shut down before it accomplished anything of lasting significance. It was truly just a "First Post" effort.
The lander is actually European, the orbiter is American.
Humanity needs to get off this planet, and a permanent mission on the Moon will be a good first step. If it does nothing more than mine fuel and put it into lunar orbit for use by other missions, it will have paid for itself.
I'm old enough to remember the Apollo missions; how vividly I recall that day in July 1969, when the words "Tranquility Base here: the 'Eagle' has landed." came crackling over my transistor radio. Years later, when I took my own children to see "Apollo 13", I tried to explain to them what it was like back then, when we used to fly to the Moon. They asked me why we were going any more, and I didn't have a good answer. Still don't.
So, three cheers for the Chinese and the Euros, and God speed to them.
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I hate to admit it, but your wrong. It would take the US atleast a year if not 2 to get back to the moon. We DO NOT have the equpment/knowledge to build a saturn V (or even to get the parts outside kennedy spaceworthy). We would need to design a WHOLE new craft. Remember getting to the moon is easy, it's being able to get BACK that's hard. The shuttle, which is the ONLY current re-launchable craft requires MAJOR overhaul between a landing and a take off. You would need a craft that could land and take off with NO maintanence. This is not an easy task.... If one of these other governments launches a team to the moon and they get stranded, the US wouldn't be able to mount a rescue mission even if we wanted to....we would need to design and build a craft from scratch. Remember no shuttle has ever even ORBITED the moon.