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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.
China is light years away from launching Mars exploration programmes
I didn't know China was in a different solar system(!).
Would that be Alpha Centauri or Ursa Minor Beta..?
Ethics is what you say you do. Morals is what you actually do.
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 ?
They're trying to find new homes for the 20 million people displaced by the new dam....
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."
I'd like to see a mission before I believe any of it.. seems like China is just preparing for a cold war
...etc). China still depends a lot on other countries, and the officials understand that.
Conspiracy theory put aside, I think this is a little bit exagerated.
The Chinese government (most high level officials who can make major governmental decisions, at least) are mostly practical. You can't really find anyone who is ultra-conservative and xenophobic right now, not those who are in the position to make decisions.
The major concerns right now to push the economic development as fast as we can (I say we, as I'm Chinese and living in Shanghai), unless there's concern about uncontrollable inflation.
Most officials now just try to play nice, especially with the US (remember the plan crash incident? Bush was amazingly arrogant at the time, but China kinda backed down not to get the sino-us relation into bad water). A lot of people think the government is spineless. But I think the government made a lot of decisions that are right, given the current situations here (economic, political, scientific,
And this is a good thing.
Sure, China tries to develop other areas of expertise too, so what? What does that have to do with Cold War? Why do we have to think that all scientific research must have anything to do with military conspiracy, especially when it is done in China, India, or Russia?
Do you think only people in the US love peace? We all do too. Just give us a chance and I believe we can contribute a lot to the progress of humanity too, just we have done in the past.
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.
Just wait for some old Congressmen to realize that China is only after Mars because it's the Red planet.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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