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

Common problem

[Neil Blender]

The found that after going to the moon, they'd have to go again in an hour. The additive cost was just too much.

Re:money

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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).

It's Expensive

[solarlux]

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.