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

China is being very ambitious

[DanielMarkham]

In addition to the comet mission, they are going to build their fourth space launch center , and they've also announced plans to militarize their space program.
I wonder, when they finally land someone on the moon, will they say "We came in peace for all mankind"?

New Star Trek Film Planned by Fans

Re:China is being very ambitious

[Veteran]

As a contractor who works at JSC, I can assure you that NASA is in charge; neither we nor our companies have any say accept for: "Yes sir". If the contractors are in charge then why did Lockheed, which had been at JSC for more than 40 years, lose the ESCG contract to Jacobs Engineering? Contractors exist because the space agency can get rid of both the companies and the individuals easily; firing a government employee is very difficult.

Contractors in charge is a ridiculous thing to say. From the inside NASA's biggest problem is that during the space race technical people who knew how to accomplish technical tasks were picked to lead and manage the agency at all levels; now most NASA divisions have "professional managers" who couldn't personally build and fly a model rocket - let alone make critical decisions about the real thing. It is these non technical "professional managers" who are the "NASA cultural problem" you have heard so much about. Such people have been directly responsible for most of NASA's technical disasters.

Astronauts?

[gumpish]

From the blurb: 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."

I'm pretty sure you mean taikonaut (unless the Chinese are really sending Americans into space...)

Re:Astronauts?

[Rangsk]

According to this Wikipedia article:
Taikonaut is sometimes used in English for astronauts from China by Western news media. The term was coined in May 1998 by Chiew Lee Yih from Malaysia, who used it first in newsgroups. Almost simultaneously, Chen Lan coined it for use in the Western media based on the term tàikng (), Chinese for space. In Chinese itself, however, a single term yháng yuán (, "universe navigator") has long been used for astronauts and cosmonauts. The closest term using taikong is a colloquialism tàikng rén (, "space human") which refers to people who have actually been in space. Official English text issued by the Chinese government uses astronaut.

So I suppose astronaut would be as good a term as any.

Re:What Goes Around

[Zeinfeld]

One other factoid, population below the poverty line. China 10%, USA 12%.

That is from the CIA world fact book, admitedly the poverty line definition is probably different. But China does not suffer from mass starvation as many in the US seem to think.

India is not nearly as well off. 25% below the poverty line and only 3 Trillion in GDP. That could change rapidly however since the economy has been very much damaged by the autarky policies of previous governments that are being unwound.