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..."

Comments

Re:money

[stienman]

I think they should spend their money on their own people before spending it on the moon.

Spending money on the 'people' will not lead to useful change, even if it's spent on the 'right' things (food, housing, education, etc).

They can't feed their own people without educating them.

They can't educate their people and expect to remain in power.

So they spend it in PR stunts so the uneducated can, if they want, take national pride in a nation which does not treat them well.

And they spend it in military/police funding to keep the powerful in power.

And they limit the flow of information, again, to limit education and to keep the powerful in power.

Until there is a radical change in societal structure/governmental structure, nothing is going to change, regardless of where they put their money.

IMO.

-Adam

Pot, meet Kettle

[FreeUser]

well we already have one difficult partner... Russia... who can't put a single thing into orbit within 3 years of when it's supposed to be
there...

Pot, meet Kettle.

Uh, yeah. Like the space shuttle you mean?

Yes, that's right. Currently Russia is the only nation in a position to launch manned spacecraft. Without them we would already have abandoned the IIS and it would likely have already plummeted to the earth.

Meanwhile we can't even save Hubble, and it remains to be seen if we ever get our fleet back off the ground again.

Fear

[netfool]

"The United States harbors concerns that the army-run Chinese program could some day pose a threat to U.S. dominance in military satellite communications."

I can understand the concern. 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.
But China has never really been an expansionistic type country. It's seems throughout their history, they're usually the ones attacked, or the fighting is domestic (power struggles etc).

Here's where I contradict myself - I could see all of that changing however, a growing economy with a billion++ people will probably need a lot of resources...especially oil.

I wonder if this whole Iraq war is really about safeguarding the middle east from future chinese aggression. I mean, we can't have a communist nation invading a democratic nation! Or even an areas around it as it would cause the domino effect and all the countries around it would fall to communisim as well (SEE Vietnam War).