China Plans Deep Impact Mission

Comatose51 writes "China is planning its own Deep Impact mission. The goal of the mission, unlike the exploratory NASA project, is to push potential life-ending comets or asteroids away from a collision course with the earth." From the article: " The third nation to launch a man into space has lofty space ambitions that include putting two astronauts into orbit this September and eventually sending up a space station and even a manned mission to the moon."

Comments

What Goes Around

[Doc Ruby]

With 2B people to feed, China has much more pressing issues that saving the Earth from comets. And messing with cometary orbits is too risky for even space programs with decades of cautious experience.

This project is a cover for military operations in space. Maybe they're researching how to divert a planetoid into the Earth, potentially more powerful than any nuclear weapon. Maybe they're just launching weapons into Earth or Solar orbit.

These operations are exactly why the US should have led for banning all space weapons when we had the unchallenged political, economic, technological and military status in the 1990s. Instead we've funded unworkable Star Wars missile defense systems for billions of dollars, opening the door for every other country that wants to knock out Jesse James to be the #1 gunfighter in the East and West.

Re:What Goes Around

[Doc Ruby]

No, nothing stops them. That's the point. If the US had a space nonproliferation treaty, and ongoing international regime for enforcement, the US wouldn't now be weaponizing space, either. Or at least would be much less likely.

Now, US space weapons are less of a global threat than Chinese. For one, the current US Bush regime is something of an abberation - even next year's Congressional elections can stop its murderous rampage.

But China's military advantage will set a much more dangerous regime to threaten global security. It's mafia government has been nothing but criminal for many generations - its few legitimate phases have been the abberations, some would say for millennia. And it's got much higher demands for global resources. When 2B Chinese people can each be as wasteful a consumer as 250M Americans have been for a century, the world will be sucked dry. With enough military power, that will very likely happen.

Re:China is being very ambitious

[HMC CS Major]

I wonder, when they finally land someone on the moon, will they say "We came in peace for all mankind"?

No, that line will be reserved for when they take Taiwan.