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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
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 ?
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
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.
"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.