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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.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There's a bunch of folks in Tibet been wondering the same thing...
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.
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.
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.
"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.
Sure it's a race, just not against who you think. If they get to a man in space soon, they'll beat the European Union, India, and Japan. Passing the EU is worth a lot of prestige, given that those nations once ruled most of the world (including chunks of China!). And getting to the moon means they'll have beaten the EU and Russia, tying the current space champions. Lots of prestige there, obviously. Even though it's already been done, it's obviously still a tough problem if no one else has done it in all this time, and even if they can't surpass every nation, they can surpass n-1 nations now and have at least a chance on the mars race.
Plus it's a good excuse to advance their local expertise in aerospace materials and computer tech, both of which could get them competitive in the global market for planes and chips.