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."

Comments

I'm considering annexing my neighbors house

[Anonymous Coward]

They can 'consider' it all they want. Money/resources and willpower to make it happen are something completely different.

Re:What's the propertie status of the moon?

[greyhoundpoe]

The property status of the moon is determined by whomever puts military bases in place first.

It's not a new phenomenon--at the start of the last century, the border between the United States and Canada was very vaguely defined in the area of the valuable seaports in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia. How was the situation resolved? The United States Army built Fort William H. Seward in the disputed territory and trained its guns on the narrow waterways. Now, 105 years later, the US controls all the port cities in Southeast Alaska and the Canadian border is 40 miles away from the ocean most of the way down.

See? No politics required. It's called "staking a claim".

Re:Launch explosion?

[tokyopimpdaddy]

I'm a Tokyo resident, and yes, have been watching the JAXA programmes for a while, as well as some of the national pride (and nationalism) which surrounds them. Infamous Tokyo mayor, Shintaro Ishihara mocked the Chinese for using old technology just days before the Japanese rocket exploded. Hmm. I guess old is OK as long as it works right? (The nicer irony was that that rocket was due to launch 2 spy satellites over North Korea).

I wish JAXA all the best, but I don't think it takes a lot to figure out that this is more symbolic than anything else, and certainly isn't business driven which is a shame, because the X Prize etc., seems to have made more people get interested in space again, on a commercial, private level. Japan is feeling the Fear with a rising China right now, and is desperately trying to flex itself again, but you only have to look at stories like the Livedoor vs. Fuji TV to see the internal conflict Japan's industry has.

Also, the word 'tsunami' seems to get bolted onto everything now in an attempt to get funding. I just hope some of it gets spend on the tsunami victims.

Re:Good

[forkazoo]

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.

Re:not to take the wind out of everyone's sails

[Game_Ender]

I hate when people bring up this kind of moral argument. By this logic instead of paying for the internet connection you are using, shouldn't you just feed the poor around you? Or give it to the local homeless shelter?

Why you're at you should probally just take every cent you don't spend on rent on food and send it to the UN. After all that last food program they had worked out real well didn't it...

Re:Implications

[ScentCone]

Sigh. OK, he said:

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?

What country has even come close to what the U.S. has done to further the world's commercial use of space? Our telecommunications pioneering alone lead the world into a new age. Of course Europe (and to a certain extent now, Asia) are catching up. But as country with an industrial focus in this area, it's no contest. Is the US focus in space spread around too awkwardly of late? Yes. I'm glad to see Bush's recent directives to NASA to focus some more riveting projects. Can't wait for more of the same.

Now, will Europe use an arrangement not unlike Airbus to actually get those governments directly into the business? Will the Japanese government become a bigger part of their country's corporate space business? Probably.

But: is some "corruption" (as the twit poster put it) keeping the US out of a healthy commercial role in space? Please. And, to your point: I didn't "refute" the post because it was so non-specific (non-meaningful, really) that there's nothing but anti-Americanism to refute. As nothing more than a cranky-sounding excuse to say that America is corrupt, I called that troll a troll.