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China Scrubs Moon Mission Plans
Jim McCoy writes "CNN is reporting that according to China's state media, plans for a manned moon mission have been shelved due to cost. They are planning on a space station though..."
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And I always thought the "I" in ISS stood for "international".
Not to necessarily dispute your larger point, but while rural Chinese are impoverished, they're not starving to death. It's not Sudan or North Korea. Although North Korea is kind of their fault.
This makes it sound like all Chinese people are impoverished across the country. China != North Korea. Many people in the coastal region and Beijing live fine and aren't even close to starving to death.
The people in the rural areas, of course, are the ones who are impoverished. But Beijing is giving them the shaft in all ways imaginable anyway. After all, in China, if you're born in a rural area, then in most cases you aren't allowed to move into the city, thus keeping your family poor for generations.
Actually, the most pressing thing pissing me off about the Chinese government now is that they recently closed down the call center where people could make appointments to get visas to come to the US. As a result, people have to line up outside the embassy for hours before it even opens up in the hope that they'll be allowed inside that day. Given that I have a Chinese girlfriend who's going home for the Summer, I'm a bit upset about this situation. For more info...
My userid is prime!
Chinese space officials were "shocked" the United States had not done more to welcome them into the small community of space-faring nations, a leading U.S. expert said last month after a trip to China.
Space coorperation is one of the few cards the US has left to play against China's authoritarianizm and human rights abuses. They are in the WTO but practice slave labor. They are belligerent to Taiwan. They prop up a monster in North Korea.
The US has nothing to gain technologically by cooperating. Indeed, the risks of transfering technology that can be put to military purposes is high.
an ill wind that blows no good
Announcing plans is certainly easier than carrying them out. Cancellations (and cost overruns) have plagued every space program developed in our short "space age".
As an employee for a large aerospace corporation, I'm beginning to recognize why space is so difficult. On the parts level, parts must be "space-qualified", which limits selection to a few choice vendors who, in applying rigorous mil-spec requirements to parts testing and screening, mark-up the price 15x. The only alternative is privately "up-screen" the part according to program requirements, which is also a lengthy and time-consuming process. When dealing with space, so many new concerns must be addressed. Radiation effects, outgassing, vibration impact from launch, severe thermal excursions, redundancies, etc. Each hi-tech subcomponent has to be built twice -- one for flight and one for intense qual unit testing. Close scrutiny of reported industry design flaws must be adhered to. There's been quite a stir relating to some flawed algorithms in Actel FPGAs.
Anyway, my point is that space is difficult and costly -- as evidenced once again by this cancellation. My primary fear is that the USA lacks the monetary dedication to see such a large and bold endeavor as the moon/mars mission through to fruition. As for me, I'm just hoping the TPF and JWST survive.
The Mariner 10 probe did a flyby of Mercury in 1975 and mapped 40-45% of the planet's surface.
The MESSANGER probe will launch in June and is expected to arrive in 2011.
Tell that to the Tibetans.
"America is - without a doubt - the most bizarrre culture this planet has ever produced." --James Lileks
A billion plus people, a huge army, an economy that is growing rapidly and will probably soon trounce the US's to become the next Superpower.
I don't know about that. The huge boom in the chinese economy has been due to the the US outsourcing - in effect a huge chunk of the market was transfered out of the US into China, and they got all of the sales that went with it, for free. But this is quickly reaching an end. Just about everything that makes sense to outsource to China has already been outsourced. Proof of this can be seen by the fact that the growth rate has dropped from 36% at the peak of outsourcing to around 8% today. Furthermore, most economists (including the chinese) think that large sectors (like textiles) are becoming overexended and will crash if they don't put the brakes on investment soon. Most analysts expect their growth rate to come down to a normal 5-6% soon.
This makes sense. In order for your economy to grow, you need to have someone to buy your goods.
As I mentioned, there isn't much opportunity for growth due to outsourcing. The current exports to the US are limited by US economic growth. Lastly the thing that allows 1st world countries (like the US) to continue to grow is that we can purchace everything we produce. However, the recent growth in China has been very disproportionate and the vast majority of the people are still dirt poor, which causes difficulty in this regard. Basically China has gotten all the free growth they are going to get, and from here on out it they will have to work hard for it the old fasion way, just like everyone else.
That said I also think that the US (or WTO or whoever) needs to force China play fair. With the free trade should come the obligation to play by the rules, and that includes not manipulating currency, and not getting unfair advantages from human rights violations.
Mar 14:7 For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always.
Not to nit pick but Jesus said it about 600 years earlier.
Average male height = 1.75m
Chinese Population = 1260000000
Mean distance to moon = 384400000m
Human tower to moon = 384400000 / 1.75 = 219657142.9 People
However, for a pyramid we will need ½(n^2) + ½n (n+n-1+n-2...+n-n)
Therefore number of people needed to make a pyramid to the moon = 24124630320000000
Since 24124630320000000 is more than 1260000000, you are clearly an idiot
The ISS would not have "plummeted to the earth" without Progress/Soyuz launches. Good grief, we can boost it with Atlas rockets if it came to that.
Robotic unmanned Atlas rockets, with an unmanned station?
Without the Russians, we would've had to abandon the station, and then constantly shove it upwards (for over a year now!) with technology we don't have. Keep in mind that several portions of the station have failed already, and needed repair.
Don't mock the Russians. We have three shuttles left - Atlantis, Endeavour, and Discovery. The reason NASA's not willing to use them isn't insane - we've almost lost half the fleet already. You wouldn't want to keep losing them, especially as you still need to last 6 or 7 more years.
We desparately needed the Russians to keep the ISS up. They had the technical expertise, and they had the technology ready to go. Could we have done it without them? Maybe - definitely a maybe.
As an aside...
Despite all this, Congress was still a total bunch of jerks, and refused to actually pay the Russians even when they went above and beyond what their responsibilities were. No wonder the Russians started talking to the Chinese rather than continuing to talk with us.