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Japan Considering Moon Base, Shuttle Projects
ScentCone writes "A brief article at Newsday mentions a Monday report that JAXA, Japan's counterpart to NASA, is looking at robotic probes on the moon by 2015, and construction on a solar-powered manned research base starting there by 2025. The (very) big bump in the agency's budget will also get spent on tsunami warning technology and other terrestrial communications technology development."
They can 'consider' it all they want. Money/resources and willpower to make it happen are something completely different.
Asia's leading spacefaring nation, Japan has been struggling to get out from under the shadow of China, which put its first astronaut into orbit in October 2003. Beijing has since announced it is aiming for the moon.
:)
One month after China's breakthrough, a Japanese H-2A rocket carrying two spy satellites malfunctioned after liftoff, forcing controllers to end its mission in a spectacular fireball.
Well first, go Japan. This should make things interesting (competition spurring innvovation and all that.)
Second, did anyone else miss the story about the failed Japanese launch? I'd imagine the video clips must be pretty spectacular -- anyone see them or know where one might find a link? Torrent?
everything in moderation
Is there an "official" body for sectioning off the moon? How does all that work?
Sure, any country with enough balls and explosives can stick a flag there, but, unlike terrestrial land, I doubt that other countries take that as a solid stake of ownership.
If there isn't an official body, what happens when, say, Japan decides to plant themselves in some choice piece of real estate, like the lunar equator, or wherever in lunar geography is best for launching rockets for Earth? That's a pretty easy to imagine situation, and it would put the Japanese (or the Russians, or the US, or whoever) in a pretty solid dominating position.
This not been thought of before?
Pierre Boulle, the chap who wrote "Planet of The Apes," wrote a novel called "The Garden On The Moon," in which the Japanese competed against the other "powers" to land on the moon.
It was a poignant read.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
That's a toughie. "Diamonds Are Forever" had a plot involving a satellite with a heat-ray (same with "Die Another Day"), "You Only Live Twice" had SPECTRE stealing both the Russian and the US's space-ships to spark World War III, and "The Man With The Golden Gun" had, as a lower-teir baddy, a corrupt Japanese businessman who was working with Scaramanga (although "You Only Live Twice" had that too).
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
My only question, and it's a question that crops up every time I hear about nations/people hollering for moon missions, is "What do you do once you get there?"
I've heard about mining and spaceship fabrication, but both of those have very high transportation costs involved. Just getting a habitable structure for the lunies (or is it "loonies"?) to stay in for weeks/months at a time is going to be a fantastic challenge -- do you use inflatables? -- do you burrow bug tunnels into the moon?
Back when I had an interest in tokamaks (those plasma-fusion-toroid-shaped doohickeys), I'd heard that the moon has a fairly rich quantity of Helium-3, a good fuel for tokamak-style fusion reactors. One shuttle bay full of moondust could power the whole earth for a year, supposedly. How much would it cost to get a shuttle to the moon, fill it with dirt and send it back? It must be a lot of moolah. Would it be worth it? I dunno.
Somehow, though, I'll bet the Chinese and the Japanese could work it out.
Still, my inner skeptic holds sway -- I don't believe it when the President says it, and I have a feeling that China and Japan will reconsider when the costs of such far-flung plans become real.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Well, it's probably a better use of $57 billion a year than the standard Japanese economy-boosting habit of building enormous public works; seven billion 1988-dollars for the Honshu to Hokkaido undersea tunnel (longer than the Chunnel), for example.
With all the current focus on China, people forget that Japan has (in dollar terms; the CIA World Factbook figures use slightly dubious purchasing-power-adjusted figures) the second largest economy in the world. It's an economy in a deep recession, but huge government spending is a traditional way out of those.
To an extent a moon shot is an extension of a ballistic missile programme. The space race of the 50's and 60's between the USSR and USA was partly a PR excersice to cover the massive developments needed for intercontinental missle technologies needed to maintain the status in the arms race.
It would be great if all this interest was purely for scientific and discovery purposes, but under the surface of any programme will be a significant component for the development of millitary technology.
Zubrin (Guy who wrote case for Mars), who is a bit of a nut, but knows a lot about rocket engines, has suggested that while a reusable system is a good idea, the shuttle is basically built backwards. What we need is a system that has a disposable top, TPS if applicable, etc. But, a reusable first stage booster assembly. The first stage won't be subjected to the same level of thermal stress as the last stage, and so needs much less in the way of protection to be made reusable.
In many cases, there may not even be a reason to bring the last stage back, such as satellite deployment, etc, and the last stage mission requirements will vary so widely that it may not make sense to reuse it even if it is free.
i remember in his "expanded universe" that he wrote if the u.s. didn't get off its ass and develop a real space program, japan would, and we would end up having our visas stamped by japanese customs officers when we space tourists arrived at the moon.
..... kris
seems to me the real space race has started.
"I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me."
I guess if I intended not to do what the subject says i wouldn't post this. None the less I suppose it has to be mentioned.
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The UN has estimated that for 81 billion dollars a year everyone on Earth could be fed.
Now nevermind the US military budget
Err.. space travel is cool. but someone has to say it. Priorities?
I guess the real point is that we could have space travel and no world hunger (and hense no terrorists and far less wars) but..
err.. interested to see if anyone has any thoughts (always surprised by the depth of insite and depths of cynacism on here)
Mike
I can easily imagine that Japan may be able to seriously leverage the commercial use of space the way the current corrupt leadership in the US cannot. What mean if the Japanese seriously started space based businesses while the US did not?
"liberating places like Iraq from corrupt regimes" How does it feel to be winning abroad but losing at home? "The Japanese are still embarassed by the last war they started" And you, being the enlightened American, are not embarrassed by the firebombing of innocent civilians in Tokyo or the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Or by the fact that the U.S. has waged many wars since . . . oh, all in the "name of freedom," of course? "they understand the need to get involved" Btw, the Japanese are there to rebuild the bridges and roads that the U.S. destroyed and require other countries, like Australia, for protection, since the only legal (under the Japanese constitution) way they can be there is if they are not involved in combat (or in a "combat zone" for that matter!). This is just Koizumi and the Jiminto doing a nice, nice for the most powerful/dangerous man on this planet. This is the most unpopular decision Koizumi has ever made in his career. "Less turmoil, and fewer crazy tyrants with pet oilfields in the world is crucial" Hmm, we agree on something . . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
How does it feel to be winning abroad but losing at home?
Hmmm. Can't imagine what you mean. Losing to whom, by what standard?
And you, being the enlightened American, are not embarrassed by the firebombing of innocent civilians in Tokyo or the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Actually, no, I'm not. Because we didn't start the conflict, and because even as they knew their abject aggression throughout the Pacific was a lost cause, the Japanese refused to cease hostilities. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki put a stop to the war, and saved both the allies and the Japanese from the bloody grind of an invasion. Why would we be embarrassed about ending a war that the Japanese started by raiding througout the Pacific, enslaving people in Korea, China, and throughout the South Pacific, and then (just to make sure that we might not get in the way), attacking the US Navy in Hawaii?
Japanese are there to rebuild the bridges and roads
Right. And they are armed and trained to shoot to defend themselves, and coordinate with other forces to call in air strikes or whatever else they need to suppress the insurgents that seek to deprive the Iraqi people of things like their bridges, their police, and their vote. And their mission there is to help stabilize a place that Saddam completely sacrificed to his own military and political ambitions. Remember how he started a war with Iran (over a million dead), or invaded Kuwait? Or, even after being kicked out of Kuwait, agreed to sell his oil to the world in exchange for things like food... but then turned those sales instead into military hardware, palaces, and tangible financial support for nice folks like Hamas, Hezbollah... you get the idea.
Hmm, we agree on something
If, by that clumsy bit of sarcasm, you're implying that the US is some sort of imperial force, why not ask the very same Japanese you're talking about, and ask how imperial we've been there? Or in Germany? Or in Kuwait? Or Croatia? Honestly, sometimes it would be easier if our purposes were as evil as you'd like to pretend they were. But no, we get to do the dirty work, and most of the rest of the world just gets to complain about not getting enough opportunities to tell us how to put our resources, people, and productivity to work on other people's behalf.
Ask the people in Iraq how they felt leaving the voting polls last month, or ask the people in Lebanon where they got the inspiration to finally speak up and stop being puppets to Syria... it's the actions we've taken in Iraq that have changed the direction in that part of the world. Please note that Lybia gave up their nuke ambitions, and are going to find their way back into the legitimate world - and not a shot fired or a US soldier on the ground. Why? Because we did indeed act in the name of freedom. That you feel the need to put quotes around that word says a lot about you.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.