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China Accelerates Mars Program
securitas writes "You read it correctly - Mars. China has announced it intends to accelerate its Mars program, using experience and expertise from its fledgling lunar program. Following China's proposed Moon missions, the first phase would send a Mars orbiter to examine and survey the Red Planet; the second phase will involve wheeled robotic probes like China's Mars Explorer roving vehicle prototype, used to collect and analyze rock samples; and the third phase will involve returning spacecraft from the planet and establishing a permanent automated base on Mars. This puts the China-India space race and the China-USA space race in a very different light and clearly indicates that China plans to play with the big boys of Mars exploration."
The People's Daily is a state-run paper that is usually full of articles about how much students and peasants love the government and how Falun Gong is a dangerous cult. Interesting if they are accelerating the program, but the source is pretty sketchy.
laugh hard, it's a long way to the bank
I think this is the best thing for the future of space exploration. Competition will lead to innovation, and hopefully to added funding. I think when the American population sees China making great progress towards exploring Mars, there will be more of a demand for American exploration.
but going by China's record on safety, I expect there's going to be some pretty fireworks.
First the moon, and now mars..
Could China possibly be trying to hype up its space program to scare other countries? I mean, it just seems kind of odd that all of the sudden, all of these stories about China and space are surfacing..
I'd like to see a mission before I believe any of it.. seems like China is just preparing for a cold war
But who knows
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
Yep, chances are they are just saying this to wind up the US. I'll bet this sort of thing is actually quite a long way down on their list of priorities. Even if they mean it, the cash could easily dry up before it gets that far. The world isn't exactly in a boom economy right now.
If the wheel hasn't been used in decades, maybe it could use a little reinventing.
I want you to assume that all spelling and grammar errors are intentional. Thank You.
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There's a bunch of folks in Tibet been wondering the same thing...
China: Hey USA, we're going to send stuff to moon! Neeneer
USA: Uhh, we've already done that
China: Hey, USA, we're going to send stuff to mars!! neeneer
USA: Right-o, Mr. Red
China seems to be all talk and no substance. Personally, it seems as if they are just trying to tell the rest of the world "Look, we can do it too!" but never actually doing it.
And I don't like how so many people consider a 'space-race' a good thing... the USSR/USA 'space-race' did speed up technological developement in that department, sure.. but the goal was for the totally wrong reason, and it happened wayyy too fast.
We're going to the moon! ( 10 years later ) We're on the moon, hurray! ( 5 years later ) Uhh, we're on the moon.. I want to go home
It seems like soon as we beat the USSR and reached our goal, being that there was nothing worthwhile for the government to invest in (winning a space race = instant world respect and nationality rises considerably, i guess) so it just went stagnant.
The government should have a program that helps and directs corporations getting into space directly, and showing them how a profit could be made... that's where the real ticket is
10. PROFIT!
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
China's "expanding" space program consists primarily of plans and conjecture. Calling this is "space race" is more than a little silly.
China is using 30-40 year old Soviet technology in their attempt to accomplish things other nations accomplished 30-40 years ago. I'm happy they are trying, but this isn't much of a race.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Exactly. Benefits of long-range manned missions are minuscule compared to the costs. It's just a big pissing contest, just like space race during the cold war.
Perhaps it's because the US is scaring them.
I ask you, what could the US possibly do to make the Chinese (and the rest of the world) even more interested in accelerating their space programs than attempting to pull crap like this ?
That was a great article, and I suggest you mod that post up, if anyone with mod points read this.
If the US did successfully take control of space in such a way, it could be really damaging to the human race in general... if we want to survive, we will (someday) have to get off this rock, and if the human race as a WHOLE doesn't work together on this goal, we are all doomed.
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
An increase in the NASA budget would be a very good thing for the future of Government lead space exploration.
However, the caveat I would add is that as long as this increased spending did not come from social welfare budgets, health, education etc.
The best place for an increased NASA budget to come from is military spending. If the amount of effort and money that is spent on creating items of destruction was put into space exploration I'd say we'd be in for some exciting times.
Brought to you by the author of such childrens' classics as "Some Kittens can Fly!" and "All Dogs go to Hell."
As long as humans get into space, I could care less under what flag or what government it is for, just as long as we get out there... and then resist having a war over it.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
The truth of the matter is, they are soooooooooo far behind, how can you call it a race?
Very simple...
They dont have to engineer squat. 99.997% of all the engineering and testing is done for them and freely available.. or available for a price. I am sure the country formerly known as the USSR would gladly sell information on how to get your ass in space, to the moon, to mars, to uranus.. (Ok ok.. bad joke...) all they have to do is build. they have more computing power today than the United states had in 1989.. hell if they use linux and a correct implimentation they can have more computing power than the USA has right now.
The speed of advancement is very fast as the Chineese only have to traverse a very small part of the learning curve.
I think they can do it... but I do doubt that they will... China is known for 2 things.. Lots of population and propaganda... their government is really good at the propaganda part.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
FUCK the space program.
//I lived in China and am currently studying 'Chinese languages and cultures' at Leiden University.
China ought to use all that money and invest it in their economy, schools, health system, and anything else _but_ useless look-how-big-my-d1ck-is crap.
There are hundreds of millions of Chinese living a miserable life and finally their economy is steadily starting to improve. Finally they have a partyleader who actually tries to improve their living conditions, Hu. They should use this money for their country, not try to rival with the US.
It was still the competition with USSR that was the catalyst for our moon program. If we did not have that competition we probably would have never gone. Now with competition with China, that could help jump-start the program again which IMO is a good thing.
However, the caveat I would add is that as long as this increased spending did not come from social welfare budgets, health, education etc.
It is not as simple as that. For example, if diverting money from social programmes to industry boosts employment, then the welfare budget can shrink with no ill-effect because fewer people need it. If diverting money from education to space research means that grants for physics postdocs are approved by a different committee than before, then the net result is likely to be little different. If money is diverted from healthcare to orbital laboratories, which then come up with new drugs, then that's actually better for the nation's health.
The best place for an increased NASA budget to come from is military spending. If the amount of effort and money that is spent on creating items of destruction was put into space exploration I'd say we'd be in for some exciting times.
A lot of space activity is funded from military spending. The USAF are prolific satellite enthusiasts, for example. That brings down the cost of launching for everyone and funds development of sensors and signal processing technology that can be used by scientists.
What I would really like to see is some military spending diverted to fusion research. That would be win-win - a scalable power source, both for use on Earth and to power spacecraft on long missions, and it would also meet the military's goal of increasing national security by reducing reliance on the Middle East. Frankly I am surprised that alternative sources of power aren't receiving more interest at present.
If China stopped with the oppresion of Tibet, and stopped leaning on Tiawan like they do, then maybe I'd be a little more inclined to believe you when you say that China "wants peace".
Ah...but keep this in mind. In WWII Germany was flying around in jets and the US was behind them there. Yet for the most part, the US has held the premier position in modern jet technology (of course the EuroFighter just rocks).
The USSR was the first with their satelite in space. Again, you could have said "The US is so far behind", yet the US was the first to put someone on the moon. We could list a myriad of examples, from computing, steel-work, gun-powder use, and so forth...
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
The phrase "too big for its boots" comes to mind.
The current administration seems to be of the opinion that the USA is supremely powerful. Now, only a fool would deny that the USA is in a powerful position at the moment, but it is not supremely powerful.
It is a dangerous state of affairs when the administration thinks that it no longer needs allies. They need to wake up to the fact that the USA is in the position it is in at the moment partly because its allies allowed it to get there, even helped it.
If the USA really does try to pull stunts like denying other countries access to space, then it might just find out what a difference friends can make. Believe me - Europe, China, India, Russia, Japan - they will react if the USA starts to act stupidly like this. We are already seeming some of the effect of this with collaboration between India and China, for instance.
I think the administration thinks that the rest of the world can't survive without it. They need to travel a bit more. They will that that, for instance, Europe isn't as different as the USA in terms of size and economy as they seem to think. They will also find that India and China aren't as backwards as they might imagine (for christsakes, many Slashdotters have lots jobs to people from these countries, and not just manual jobs but sophisticated white collar jobs).
The more the USA talks like this, the more its former allies are going to group together and start collaborating. The USA seems to like to impose sanctions and economic "punishments" on countries that don't collaborate with it at the moment. I wonder how the USA economy would take it if the national governments of places like Europe, Russia, Japan and China start selling their dollar reserves, or imposing import tarrifs on American goods. The USA may find that actually, it does need friends.
Ahh yes. Whereas the American media is unbiased and covers any noteworthy event in great detail. That is, unless the government tells them not to.
Random is the New Order.
Frankly I am surprised that alternative sources of power aren't receiving more interest at present.
Really? Oil is big money. Big money gets things done in this country.
Really? Oil is big money. Big money gets things done in this country.
But there is no such thing as Big Oil, really - there is only Big Energy. People don't want oil, it's nasty stuff, they want to be able to move people and goods from A to B, heat homes, power electrical devices and so on. Energy companies should be racing to see who gets to fusion first, because whoever does will make a fortune.
"This puts the China-India space race and the China-USA space race in a very different light..."
There is no China-USA space race. Middle America has made it very clear that they do not care about fluff like expensive space programs when the government can instead provide them miniscule tax breaks and 24/7 war coverage. The horrendous mismanagement of NASA funding has become an embarassment to long-time memebers of the Congress, who would rather just sweep the whole idea under the rug and avoid drawing attention to an aging shuttle fleet that they were promising to replace in the 1980s.
America is no longer in a space race with anything other than the financial mismanagement that threatens to eventually kill manned flight entirely.
Our GDP is $10e12, theirs is $6e12, i.e. they make 60%. But wait a minute, scientists and engineers dont make six figures in China, do they? Figuring rougly $100K for scientists and engineers of the required calibre in the US, China can afford the same number at $60K, or twice as many at $30K. Considering US graduate schools are full of Chinese students, their talent is or will soon be at least as good as ours.
As per usual, when an article appears on slashdot about an achievment made or to be made in a foreign country, be it in Europe, India or China, all the worms crawl out of the slashdot woodwork to have their day making racist and/or stupid remarks about said country, generally only showing their lack of knowledge about that country.
I think that many outside of China don't realise something that China's less than democratic system permits which wold be nigh on impossible in the USA: Long term commitment to a project.
In the USA the government gets elected every 4 years and with luck a single administration can stay in power for 8 years. What this means is that no American administration can really plan anything in advance that is more than three and a half years in the future (six months of those four years are spent playing the American political circus). The next administration can, and often does, reverse many of the previous administration's plans.
The Chinese can and do make commitments to long term
projects that can be spread over many years, thus being less of a burden on the national economy and thus having the positive effect of having more time to correct and test those plans. If you look at the Chinese military, which was basically 1950's and 1960's vintage in 1980, when China invaded Vietnam (and lost) and the Chinese military of today, which is equipped with very modern weapons, you'll get the point. The Chinese navy is planning to have true long range ability (Carrier groups etc) by 2050! They take their time and no longer try to do Maoesque "Great Leaps". If China wants to go to the Moon or Mars, they will probably not race anyone there but take their time and do it right (Permanent bases anyone).
I think the Chinese government is well aware that there is a need for more openess in China and recent news articles discuss the idea of allowing democracy within the Communist party on a low level basis. I would find it highly ironic if China and the USA meet one another one day, what with China becoming more open and the USA becoming more restricted (Patriot acts I and II, anyone you don't like becoming an "Enemy Combatant" i.e. Enemy of the state)
The only major reason for the space program of the 60's that Amercians are rightly proud of was...in one word...Sputnik! One of the great causes of the malaise our manned space program is suffering from is a syndrome I think of as "political culpibility".
In other words, no Congressman/Congresswoman is going to push an untried ambitious technological experiment. Such an experiment could well cost the taxpayers a shit-ton of money. If the experiment fails, that money is seen as lost into the NASA sinkhole with absolutely no benefit derived (at least from the point of view of politics, not that of the scientific community). Add to that the potential for loss of human life on manned missions, and what you end up with is a politcal hot-potato that no elected official will want to touch. That's why promising technologies like the Solar Sail are only now becoming realities with the aid of the European Space Agency.
Of course every NASA technology, dicey as it is by nature, was untried at some point. It's my opinion that the political wherewithal (vis a vis space) only surfaces when there is an external (read:military) threat. That it's a powerful, and ideologically opposed nation like China should, ideally, be just the ticket to fuel the ambitions of our elected officials. It's really the classic Zero Sum Game as originally described by John Von Neuman and later applied to social theory by Robert Wright.
Quod scripsi, scripsi.