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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."
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"?
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NASA had visual, but I am hoping China can one-up NASA and put a microphone onboard so we can hear the exciting sounds of a space collision. Did George Lucas do this?
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All these "deep impact" projects are starting to freak me out. Does the One World Government know something we don't?
It would seem that the data gathered would be critical to any future mission to comets that intended to push a comet off course.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
is to find a comet that is actually going to impact Earth...
God Fucking Damnit
China has much more pressing issues than [space exploration] This project is a cover for military operations in space.
So, uh... what stops the rest of the world from applying this same logic to absolutely anything and everything NASA does?
America has fewer truly hungry people than China, therefore their space development aims are benign rather than secretly evil?
Maybe these tests are really just a way nations can slightly tip their hands regarding their black-project space-weaponry research, without directly acknowledging such undercover programs.
Has China begin using rockets they have designed, or are they still using Russian technology?
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"Maybe they're researching how to divert a planetoid into the Earth, potentially more powerful than any nuclear weapon."
This was the first thing I thought when I read the first post in this discussion joking about diversion into Mongolia.
Think of the advantage of being able to cause inflictions of "natural" disasters on your competitors/enemies.
I'd imagine it would be very much in the reach of any monied country with the will to do it.
Ahhh, the advantages of not having a proper modern legal system
If it was Europe trying to pull this shit, we'd have a second defendant!
The unofficial
look forward to a nation finally putting a man on the moon, instead of faking it! :)
What if they don't find a US flag up there?
That the comets that might _potentially_ hit the earth are the most stunning to view from earth. Diverting them away from earth takes away some awesome home astronomical viewing. If they are going to do this, they should only divert ones that they can certainly establish would pass too close for comfort (which might happen once or twice in a hundred years).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The kinds of things people are now capable of, technologically, economically and ethically, represent terminal threats to the possibility of peace, and even our species existence. In a vacuum of responses to these threats, we are doomed. Which is why the current vogue in the US of subverting even the minimal mitigations, like the US, other international law, and human rights treaty regimes, is lethally irresponsible.
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An estimate of the orbital delta-v for Tempel /Deep Impact suggests a velocity change of only 1 cm/hour (I can't vouch for the math). Assuming we would need to nudge a threatening body by 1/2 the diameter of the Earth (from direct hit to grazing pass-by), we would need to know to hit a Tempel 1-sized body in advance by over 73,000 years. This type of mission would work 10 years in advance for much smaller bodies (say less than 350 m in diameter). Even these estimates assume a perfect strike by the deflecting deep impactor -- a margin of error or the need to push the object several Earth-diameters further reduces the potential for this method.
Kinetic energy is not the way to go. Deep Impact delivered only about 4.5 kt of TNT. In contrast, a good sized thermonuclear weapon could deliver thousands of times that energy (even taking into account the relatively poor conversion of 100 megatons yield into delta-V).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
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...)
China's not happy since they are the fireworks experts. They don't want to be outdone.
;^)
I kid.
--- Journals are boring; Go to my web page instead
If the Chinese government is covertly doing military research in space now, as you say, what would have prevented them from doing the same even with a treaty?
Oh wait... I get it. If we had a treaty, we could wag our collective fingers at them when they blast Taiwan off the map with an aimed meteorite.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
I wonder which way China will go with their visions for space.
Will they follow through and actually do what they claim.
Or will they take the US route (which we'll call "Fred") where we talk grand plans and visions...then we cut funding for other projects that are already successfully producing major scientific discovery, and finally we then cut funding even more and adapt 40 year old technology that never lived up to its original expectations in the first place. And then when it fails we propose gigantic new visions we don't intend to follow through on, so that everyone forgets about the failure of the earlier project.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
It was NOT named for the movie, in fact the project was named before the movie was made.
The next thing you'll claim is that Armageddon isn't a made-up name at all, but based on some old book.
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It's been over 1.2B for a generation. They're lying about the official figures so they won't have to spend extra money on them. Unless you "checked" door to door.
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"With 2B people to feed, China has much more pressing issues that saving the Earth from comets."
That's the problem, iddn't it? They can't afford to be hit by a comet, either. Well roundedness/diversity can be a good thing. Consider the USA's space program. Suppose it never happened, would the USA be the same for it? Maybe they want to cover their butts and spark a little technological innovation to boot.
"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."
Err maybe. The way I see it, though, this sort of weapon has the same drawbacks as a nuclear weapon. It's not like they're going to use it against their enemies without it being traced back to them. If they managed to drop a comet on somebody, from a consequences point of view they'd be in just as much shit as they would be if they had fired a nuclear weapon. Worse, it'd take a hell of a lot longer to get the ball rolling, not to mention the dangerous consequences of a small mistake. What would stop the USA or any other government from responding with nuclear weapons if China pulled a stunt like that? Truth be told, I have trouble imagining that the impact of a comet wouldn't rock their boat, anyway. If it hit the water, for example, well just think about that. If a big enough comet hit to kick a lot of dust into the air, well they wouldn't be fond of that, either. Maybe I'm just incredibly naieve about how useful of weapon a comet diversion would be, but IMHO this theory just seems too far-fetched.
An alternative explanation is that China's vasteness makes the concept of a comet or asteroidal impact a bit scary. (At least on a statistical level.) Perhaps they're worried about their own territory. They might even be trying to improve their global image. "We're trying to save the planet here!"
Anyway, I can speculate all day about it. I'm not trying to say you're wrong. I'm just not sure I suspect you're right.
"Derp de derp."
...We have SDI!
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
the real irony comes when their first test to see if they can "nudge" a comet accidentally sends the target spiralling towards Earth ;)
We should have just funded the innovations. It would have been cheaper, more productive, and less threatening to security. And we would have one less reason to distrust the government which lies to us when it says it's not weaponizing space, and when it says that the Star Wars missile defense weapons work.
The last Cold War was so profitable for so long that the people running the US have created another one. The last one sucked. This one will be worse.
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I specifically said "treaty" and "regime". You really don't know how international law works, do you? We don't wave fingers. We have international inspectors and spies who monitor compliance and take action, usually under the treaty's terms, to stop violations. Not every military enforcement of UN rulings is a lie about WMD to justify invading Iraq, but that's how they work.
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...since aliens are going to start placing interplanetary real estate off limits starting in 2010.
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You're not wrong about China having an ulterior military motive for their space work. A nation (even an Axis of Evil Rogue Nation) has a right to defend its interests against a perceived threat. Of course China has military uses planned for their extraterrestrial technology.
But you're completely wrong in thinking that we could say or do anything to stop China from doing anything they really want to do. Had we shown "leadership" and pushed for a ban on military uses of space, they wouldn't have listened anyway.
We will have weapons in space because we have weapons wherever we go. We are a violent, overconsumptive, power-hungry race.
Get past it. You'll sleep better.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Personally, I think it's just the comunist party making an attempt at trying to look like they are a competent government rather than the pack of stupid greedy thugs that they are.
What, you mean like every other government in every other country? A close friend of mine has spent almost 10 months of the past two years in China, from what he says the truth about how China handles its citizens lies somewhere between what China or the US would have you believe. Take what you hear from US-gov supplied press reports with a grain of salt.
There are exceptions, but a general rule of thumb is that the people in power got there because they put a lot of effort into gaining power. I don't care if they're democrats, republicans, communists, or whatever - most are greedy bastards.
MY GOD, WE HAVE A GAP IN OUR AERSONAL OF GIANT SPACE ROCKS!
rofl
If you get nervous, just remember that there are a few billion other people who don't really give a damn.
...that The Gipper was buddy buddy with China and made an under the table deal with them to *not* pursue any SDI projects until after Ronnie cashed in his chips.
Then they'll have to race Chevron!
...which out to be a fair fight. I'd put a multinational oil conglomerate up against the world's largest tin-pot dictatorship anyday.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
Now that they've announced it, MAD would stop them from doing anything of the sort.
I hate to break it to you but China's government is a hell of a lot more competent than the Bush dynasty.
Anyone who pays attention to international economics knows the Chinese government knows what they are doing.
The Chinese leadership is made of engineers and economists while the American leaders are businessmen and lawyers. Who's the greedy thugs?
Because we know that they do. /Sarcasm
Really, when I think: what if all of the money that has been poured into war (cold|on drugs|on terrorism|on every other thing) had been put into improving the lives of people worldwide? While I don't think that we would have a Utopian society, I think that things would be a lot better all around. We would likely have better technological, scientific, and artistic achievement, less poverty, and AIDS would be a non-issue. We would also have a lot less "terrorism," because the whole world wouldn't be pissed off at the US and UK. Therefore, nutcases like Bin Laden would have nobody to recruit.
A tee-shirt I once saw said, "war is so 20th century." I think that about sums it up. We need to evolve now.
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
Only genius of China nation think so clearly for future requirments of Grate Space missions.
The Nasa needs to play catch up games now, I beleive. (If try the copying of ideas, then perhaps you will find...)
I suggest you read Slashdot
If it's unworkable, why should be worried?
I couldn't even figure out how to mod that. Great job.
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Just imagine:
One big label on earth:
"Saved By China"
It's 11:00PM... do you know where your tax dollare are?
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
I thought NASA exploded the comet to prevent future collisions too ??? or did they do that just for fun?
What does your Credit Report look like?
Now that China is a manufacturing superpower, the next logical steps up the value chain would be research, development, and marketing. Then they can fire all the foreign executives who now keep so much of the value of what they make through outsourcing.
You illustrate the point of the program precisely, to educate people with reactionary views like your own. China does not want to be seen as a technically and military inferior country that can be pushed around by the worlds last superpower. The population of China is generally estimated to be 1.3B, not 2B.
They are spending the money on this project for exactly the same reason that JFK launched the moon shot - political prestige translates directly into power. The idea of going to the moon was to spend the USSR into the ground. JFK started the program in 1962, a quarter century later the USSR was kaput.
For example at the moment there is a sizable faction of the Republican party that spends its time talking about the need to start a trade war with China. Some of them even want to go further and instigate a new cold war. In that type of political environment it makes good sense to invest a few billion dollars pointing out that the economy of China is not stagnant and declining and that it has more than enough capacity to support a military sector that is more than sufficient for national defense.
According to the CIA world fact book China's economy is worth 7.2 trillion and is growing at 9.1%, the Us economy is worth 11.8 trillion and is growing at 4.4%. At that rate China overtakes the US in 10 years time. That is not even taking acount of the fact that the US economy is mature and the typical growth rates of mature economies are much less than 4%. Plus the US has a massive balance of payments deficit that is only being financed by China buying US bonds.
So even if the US was to try a cold war strategy at this stage as the neanderthal wing of the GOP would like it is simply too damned late. China has more economic leverage over the US than the US could hope to gain over China.
The US is currently facing the same problem that hit the British Empire. In the 1920s a bunch of politicians got into power who were really into the whole imperialism thing, they swaggered about holding 'empire days' and such. All the time completely oblivious to the fact that the empire was slipping away and their behaviour was one of the main reasons that it was happening.
China and India are becoming world powers. The US is not going to be the worlds only super power in the future. That is a good thing if people would only realize it. The US is not going to be able to pursue a unilateral foreign policy, but why on earth does the Bush administration want to?
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This project seems like a convient reason to put nuclear weapons in space.
After all, nudging a comet with enough accuracy to hit a point on the earth would take unheard of mathematical precision, requiring millions of skilled... oh, wait, never mind...
--- Pork is not a verb.
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.
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So? How much difference does it make where the nuke is launched from?
evil is as evil does
Deep Impact released energy equivalent to only 4.5 _tons_ of TNT, not 4.5 kilotons.
I've lost count of how many times I've seen this mistake made.
See, I read his statement as literal. FEEDING their population.
I'm not certain China can continue to feed its population at the rate the population continues to grow. They definitely can't power their economy or bank it at this rate.
This is why the US doesn't fret so much about China, IMO. There's a lot of talk, but Capitol Hill seems to be taking a wait and see attitude. With the prices of oil skyrocketing with no end in sight, China, a manufacturing powerhouse, is literally a giant with his balls caught in a vice.
China, especially because its economy is so closely tied to its manufacturing prowess, is desperately in need of renewed electrical infrastructure, a benevolent relationship with oil suppliers, etc. In other words... despite their economic growth... they are so dependent on the rest of the world for essentials that they have less power on the world stage than they should have. "Feeding" billions of people is still tough for them to do.
un burrito me trampeó.
Everyone knows they did it to screw with horoscopes.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
This has been a popular theme for politicians to rally behind for the last 3 decades.
The fact is, nobody will sustain the growth that they are at for the long term. Eventually, China will even out and start facing the same issues that the US has been working out since the '70's.
The same applies to India, both nations are starting to get their piece of the global market and when they start to catch up, their economies will change drastically (just like the US's economy has with the upturns and downturns through the 70's 80's and 90's with recessions, gas shortages etc.) This is what is on the horizon for up and coming national players.
Take a look at China's natural resources and what do they have that the rest of the world needs? (besies rice) They have a heavily 'services' oriented economy. This is prone to severe highs and lows based on the rest of the worlds ability to pay them for their services.
Their economy is growing faster than their population, so it's pretty clear that they can continue to feed its population as it continues to grow, since, overall, they do a better job of keeping people fed than the US does.
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It decreases time of flight to target. It makes it harder for a ballistic missile defense system like SDI/Star Wars to successfully intercept because you won't have huge friggin ground launch signatures to warn you and give you accurate trajectory estimates, you'll just have much smaller de-orbit burns that make detection and prediction much harder, with a smaller event window in which to do it. It's an inevitable result of the return of the US missile defense project.
So you're left with a missile defense system that's incapable of defending against a Chinese attack, and also completely useless against terrorists who would deliver a nuke through shipping. Why did you spend those billions again?
So everybody becomes even more trigger happy as they realize they have less reaction time available than before. Bet that doomsday clock advances a few minutes as a result.
Stop - Boom, boom, boom - or I'll shoot!
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Yes it is very difficult for the Chinese to feed all of their people. As we all know about an hour after eating Chinese food your hungry again.
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A Mexican astrologer is suing China for disrupting the natural order of the Universe.
Actually, the sneaky thing would be to aim a tiny comet or fragment thereof in such a way as to take out "accidently" an appropriate city of their political enemy. It would work as part of their secret warfare strategy.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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.
The Chinese government is oppressive and agressive, their not evil and insane. They won't do anythign that so dumb. Their a conservative authoratarian regime that does want prosperity for it's people and occasionally curshes any opposition. The Us does the same but in different ways. The chinese assasinate, the Us character assasinates.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
China, especially because its economy is so closely tied to its manufacturing prowess, is desperately in need of renewed electrical infrastructure, a benevolent relationship with oil suppliers, etc. In other words... despite their economic growth... they are so dependent on the rest of the world for essentials that they have less power on the world stage than they should have. "Feeding" billions of people is still tough for them to do.
Their population has almost stabilized. Their not growing much. The projected growth from 1995 is higher then actual growth. Their policies are working. India ont he otherhand...
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Why aren't the Chinese getting involved with ISS? Or are they? If not, who's being the stick in the mud - NASA or the Chinese? It seems terribly wasteful to ignore existing infrastructure.
As 99% life forms died from radiation and nuclear winter, who cares the comet?
BTW, what makes you hate Chinese so much that you even want to commit suicide?
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
"JFK started the program in 1962, a quarter century later the USSR was kaput."
And the two have a direct relationship. That is, but-for JFK's starting the program, the USSR would not have fallen. More probably, it was the sudden military build-up during the 1980s that forced the Soviets to compete. It wasn't the space-race that beat the Soviets, it was the military-sprint.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
"What a coincidence: it went off target and smashed into Taiwan. One in a million, eh? So sad. Eggrolls anyone?"
Table-ized A.I.
Kim Jong Il is also planning a Deep Impact mission which will utilize a nuclear missile to find out what Tokyo would look like if it were struck by a nuclear missile.
"It decreases time of flight to target. It makes it harder for a ballistic missile defense system like SDI/Star Wars to successfully intercept because you won't have huge friggin ground launch signatures to warn you and give you accurate trajectory estimates, you'll just have much smaller de-orbit burns that make detection and prediction much harder, with a smaller event window in which to do it. It's an inevitable result of the return of the US missile defense project."
That's a good thing. It continues the highly effective mutual assured destruction paradigm until the US finds a way to stop those missiles. The minute one country can stop the other countries missiles nuclear war is more likely.
"So you're left with a missile defense system that's incapable of defending against a Chinese attack, and also completely useless against terrorists who would deliver a nuke through shipping. Why did you spend those billions again?"
There is no rational basis for US defense spending. It's the product of a system where the tax dollars are siphoned off to defense contractors in exchange for bribes and votes. It has nothing to do with the defense of the nation.
"So everybody becomes even more trigger happy as they realize they have less reaction time available than before. Bet that doomsday clock advances a few minutes as a result."
Again I tend the disagree. MAD has served us well and will serve us in the future. As long as the US is afraid it might get nuked it will stay away from nations that have that capacity and stick to attacking defenseless countries like iraq and afghanistan.
evil is as evil does
"The Chinese don't need a rocket: they can stand on each other's shoulders." :)
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
Is it's heading for some rather nasty bumps in the road. Environmental problems are a major one. The polition problems are becomming not only a problem to quality of life, but to industrial uses as well. You can pollute land and water to the point that it's not even useful for factories, and this is happening.
Poverty and education are other major factors. Despite the data cited by another reply, China is very polarized right now. Alone the eastern seaboard in the major cities, many people are seeing a great deal more wealth. However for the vast majority of China, the pesants, poverty is rampant, healthcare is minimal, and education is near non-existant.
Now, people might note the similarities to the US Industrial Revolution, and they'd be right. These problems are not insurrmountable ones. However to think that China's economic growth will continue unabated isn't realistic. They are going to have to divert resources from growth to solving these kind of problem eventually, or face worse problems in the future.
These problems are also made more difficult by the nature of the Central Commitee. They are a very focused group, and a very powerful one. This means that when they focus their attention on something, and thus a large amount of China's resources, things can be done quickly, but it also means that if they aren't paying attention to a problem, little gets done and they aren't all that good (relitive to many other industrial governments) at multi-tasking.
Plus they have some problems in dealing with realities they don't like. Partially because of their control over the media and thus the "truth" that reaches the people, they have a tendancy to want to believe that if they don't like something, it isn't true. Both AIDS and SARS were like this. They didn't want to acknowledge them as problems, and so nothing was done, until it became a real problem, then they were forced to deal with it when things were worse.
So while there isn't much doubt China is going to be a powerful player on the world scene, perhaps more powerful than the US, I wouldn't paint it to be a situation that's all roses. They face some serious problems in the future, and that is going to have a serious impact on their economy.
I don't know about everyone else, but when someone else says they plan to "move comets" while at the same time saying they are going to militarize their space program (see first top rated comment in this thread), well that stops and makes me think a little about what the two mean together.
:-)
Especially when the title is "Deep Impact" yet they don't plan to crash INTO the comet but to move it INTO... some other target? Perhaps a military target?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I would imagine one of the first things they build on the moon is a good Chinese restaurant.
If Anonymous stalker Cowards didn't show the love, I'd get lonely.
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They're making it up as they go along. Google is good for last-minute fact checks, to make sure everyone else is faking it the same way.
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They have nuclear weapons, which are just as devastating and insane. With extra problems like fallout and a huge industrial demand, along with ongoing security problems. Billiarding a comet into the US seems like a much more surgical strike. It's not "evil", it's military business.
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Killing tens of millions of politically inconvenient people in a few decades is pretty psychotic. And don't call me "Anglo" - that's the wrong tribe.
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Fuck you, Anonymous asshole Coward. Karma is exactly "what comes around goes around". Like your "zero" score, and your content-free posting assholery.
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You are discounting the very real danger of accidental release of nuclear weapons. Both USA and USSR have on several occasions mistaken various events for missile launches. Fortunately there was enough time to figure out that the launches were imaginary or peaceful. Once both SDI and nuclear weapons in space are in place, the likelyhood of mistaking something else for an attack will go up, and the time window before retaliation missiles must be launched is cut short.
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that's probably because you're used to stuff like "We have a calling from beyond the stars" and similar BS.
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
That's a good thing. It continues the highly effective mutual assured destruction paradigm until the US finds a way to stop those missiles. The minute one country can stop the other countries missiles nuclear war is more likely.
Spot on!
Due to the unknown mass, irregular shape, partial breakup in the atmosphere, and lack of precision control, it would seem to be difficult to target the reentry to a specific CONTINENT, let alone the desired CITY.
You could end up dropping the thing on yourself as easily as hitting your enemy.
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Actually this is Republican party mythology. The USSR did not respond to the Reagan arms build-up. During the entire Reagan presidency they were dismantling nuclear weapons under SALT and SALT-2. They also broke up a large number of conventional weapons under treaties agreed with Reagan.
What Reagan did was to combine JFK's spend them into the ground strategy with Carter's strategy of claiming the moral high ground of commitment to human rights. What Reagan did was much less important that what he said, "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall".
Of course it serves the need of the Republican party to tell the fairy story version in which the cold war took place in 1980 rather than the 1960s and in which the USSR would have survived without intervention. The opposite is the case, the USSR was a basket case in 1980, their command economy failed because communism is a crap economic system.
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exegene refugee memories in hiding
The US will eventually fall behind in the area of manned space exploration, because the Russians and Chinese don't need to answer to the public if something goes wrong, and they are generally more risk-tolerant. I admit, though, that this doesn't seem too original.
Asian pron.
my point is that they produce food for 1.3 billion people on a relatively small tract of arable land ~ 7% of their surface area. they have a dubious agriculture and pesticide record, and pollution of their major waterways continues to reduce the viability of their arable land. this is what i mean by not being able to feed their own population.
middle eastern countries can't feed their populations either, but have a stranglehold on oil, which is just as good. china has a workforce advantage, not a commodity advantage.
the US might have a problem with poverty and homelessness, but the issue isn't production... it's distribution. the US produces enough food annually to feed the planet. china's agricultural issues are just beginning; it's why big processed food manufacturers like Con Agra and GMO companies like Monsanto look at China and drool.
un burrito me trampeó.
The problem with dropping rocks is that in order to really move a large rock (or even a small one), you need to do it WAY in advance. China would be better off sending a backpacker around the artic circle to America with a nuke in his pants and announcing that he is coming. If China sent something up that altered a rock so that it was aimed at the US, it would be clear very quickly. The US, or any other nation with a doomsday rock headed towards them, would likely be a tad touchy about the whole thing. Sure, months or years later the rock might hit and do terrible damage, but by then it wouldn't really matter because the nuclear war would be done and over with.
Doomsday devices are just stupid to toy with when everyone else has them. An asteroid or 2,000 nukes... does it really matter which one you get hit by? All of the super powers have more then enough firepower to wipe the other off the map. If we restrained ourselves during the cold war, I would find it hard to believe we couldn't find the same restraint when the 'tension' between the US and China is a few orders of magnitude lower.
Finally, most people don't realize this, but China really has a lot to loose in any such event. Sure, they have pile of people, but they also have some very real internal political strife. People think of China as one homogenous happy culture that all gets along. The truth is that China has a lot dissent within it. The government is iron fisted enough to deal with the dissent right now, but after a nuclear war? Hell no. China would completely shatter. The US on the other hand has an extremely strong political culture that facilitates smooth transfers of power. I am not saying that the US wouldn't be hurting terribly (nuke wars hurt), but politically, it would reunited as a democracy as at the speed that it could set communications back up.
Doomsday device wars are no win scenarios, and that goes double for nations that rely on an iron fist to rule.
Too bad it looks like comets are made mostly of fine powder. Trying to move that with force applied at a small point might not work so well.
With the Live 8 concerts spotlighting poverty in Africa, I think they forgot about China's poverty.
I read recently China has 26 million rural peasants living in poverty...they see the cities getting richer while they are going nowhere, and they are getting angrier by the year, and maybe slowly realizing that communism is the biggest flop ever foisted on humanity...even getting Taiwan back into the fold, let alone a decent space program, would not probably make these people feel any better about their plight.
The internet is showing the Chinese people how the rest of the free world lives, and the ChiCom government will not be able to stop their people with censorship much longer.
We might not see a totally free China in our lifetime, but sadly we will probably see Taiwan taken back and another Tianenmen Square-style massacre in our lifetime (provided we actually find out about it if it happens).
The 2008 Olympics will be in Tianenmen Square...and I will not watch.
Chalupa
"That is from the CIA world fact book, admitedly the poverty line definition is probably different."
I love that CIA fact book. However, you are right to point out the 'poverty' is very different in the two nations. Impoverished Americans do not die of starvation. They die of heart disease because they are fat. An impoverished American is well fed but slightly malnourished. 'Well fed but possibly malnourished' sure as hell is not the definition of impoverished in China. The definition of poverty is defined by the government, and a government as obsessed with image as the Chinese government is going to set definition of poverty such that few make it in, so you can display figures like that the US has the same poverty rate as China. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if China pegs its definition of poverty such that the percent always matches the US.
Next, you need to realize that China has so much growth because its population is so damn poor. When you have 1.3 billion people and most of them don't have TVs, much less DvDs yet... well, you are talking about a potentially huge market. However, once that market has been fulfilled, what is next? This is the part of the 'China is the next super power argument' that always baffles me. What on earth does China have that could possibly let their people become as wealth as the US and Europe? China has poor utilities, an amazing corrupt and bureaucratic government, and a xenophobic culture. China has nothing over the US and Europe other then that they are cheaper and have fewer environmental regulations. China can only remain cheaper as long as they are poor. If they are no longer poor, they have nothing to offer. US and to a lesser extent Europe will continue drain China and the rest of the world of their elite simply by offering up open societies that easily adapt to immigrants. China on the other hand is only going to receive immigrants from even more destitute neighbors (AKA North Korea) and will have a very hard time convincing a Europeans or Americans that China is the place to go for grad school - much less convince them to live there for the rest of their lives.
So, will the US be eclipsed one day? Sure. Will it be by a closed, inhumanly bureaucratic, xenophobic society? Hell no. India has a better shot then China because they at least have a system capable of changing itself. The EU could have a shot if it could get its shit together and stop cowering in terror at the thought of the culture of the individual nations being 'polluted' by immigrants (run France, here comes the polish plumbers to eat your culture!).
I'll believe that China is a super power on par with the US or the EU when hundreds of Americans due each year smuggle themselves in shipping crates in a desperate attempt to get the land of opportunity known as China.
I love this post. I honestly do. This is the poster child of the new Slashdot, where assertions replace fact, and are moded up for it. Once upon a time, ideas were exchanged here, and the flames and crap were weeded. Now it seems that crap just fertilizes more of the same.
.....
....>
Case in point:
"For example at the moment there is a sizable faction of the Republican party that spends its time talking about the need to start a trade war with China."
Really? Truly? Wow, I guess must be reading all the wrong newspapers etc. I have yet to encounter this idea from the current elected Republicans in congress. And it is from a SIZABLE fraction no less. How could I have missed this? It may be because I don't get most of information from Blogs, but instead rely on accountable press. Who knows?.
All I can say is in an older, more civilized Slashdot, you had to back up such spurious claims with many links to be moded up. Now, if you call Bush or America or Republicans bad, you get a seemingly automatic +2. In any case, I would love to see your source for this information. Please.
"According to the CIA world fact book China's economy is worth 7.2 trillion and is growing at 9.1%, the Us economy is worth 11.8 trillion and is growing at 4.4%. At that rate China overtakes the US in 10 years time."
As some may have learned in the dot com boom, looking at past events and drawing exponential trends tends to leave some heartache. The sky does have limit kids. If you go on to read the CIA fact book, and not just post the tidbits that make you sound smart, it says:
" China in 2004 stood as the second-largest economy in the world after the US, although in per capita terms the country is still poor.
The leadership, however, often has experienced - as a result of its hybrid system - the worst results of socialism (bureaucracy and lassitude) and of capitalism (growing income disparities and rising unemployment).
From 100 to 150 million surplus rural workers are adrift between the villages and the cities, many subsisting through part-time, low-paying jobs....
Another long-term threat to growth is the deterioration in the environment - notably air pollution, soil erosion, and the steady fall of the water table especially in the north....
In short, the Chinese economy has improved over the low starting place that the great communist experiment had inflicted on its poor people. However, equalization will set in and it will face the limits/problems that the US and Europe face. Oh, and in the name of intellectual honesty, since I posted excerpts from the fact, here is the link so you can read the parts I left out, mostly to shorten the post some. They further highlight the limits.
Oh, and this is very good ad hoc attack:
"The US is currently facing the same problem that hit the British Empire. In the 1920s a bunch of politicians got into power who were really into the whole imperialism thing.."
Again, really? I watched, read, and discussed a great deal during the last election. I somehow missed the great debate on how the US should make and empire. In fact, no one even mentioned and may I suggest, even thought about becoming an Empire. Last I heard, the US still has a president who will leave office in 2008, and will not rule for life. The last I checked, the other territories that make up the fictional US empire seem to still have sovereignty, and are free to disagree with the so-called imperial US decrees. In fact, they often do, and make policies that run contrary to US wishes. For example, French seem to have this quaint notion they can do what they want, even against US interests. Not a very Roman like atmosphere, is it?
I do not wish to misinterpret the original posters intent. My understanding is that it was a justification of why China is investing so heavily into space and why it is ok if they include militarizatio
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap
China is plagued with proverty, political and human right problems. They should take care of these problems before planning any space mission. Guess what. Everytime a natural disaster hits China, it's not the government that spends money helping its people. It was the world aid. China is a joke.
Tanstaafl
I read recently China has 26 million rural peasants living in poverty
The 2008 Olympics will be in Tianenmen Square...and I will not watch.
Chalupa
Thats fine, The 26 million number is likly true. The pverty rate in china is hovering at 10%. The US at 12%. So before you get all high and mighty, the US has not moral ground to stand on. The poor rural folk aren't as much an issue, since they do have food. Which make those poor rural folk better off then a large slice of the world. Tienimen was bad, Gautnonamo is not better. Terror and oppression are tools of the state, they are tools we wish to avoid here, but we do a piss poor job in atcually doing it. The chinese gov. commit some pretty horrible acts, so does the US and the USSR. This doesn't justify them. But you also then boycott any olympics in any of those countries as well to avoid being a hypocrite.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Russia/TsarBomba.h tml
It takes just a moment and an action to destroy. It takes some time and thought to create.
Moderators, go ahead and mod me down as flamebait for the gun comment. Deep down, you know its true, on-topic, and insightful.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
If the US felt that there was a real danger of being accidentally nuked they would aggressively pursue disarmament. Again that's a good thing. Ideally the Chinese would set up space based nukes sitting on top of the US where the missiles could hit withing 10 to 20 seconds and cause instant annhilation of the country.
If that happened the US would do everything in it's power to get rid of all th enukes in the world. Until then the US feels like it has the capacity to destroy other countries while minimizing the risk to it's own citizens. Therefore there is no reason to disarm.
I hope and prey that the chinese (or anybody) can achieve the ability to kill all americans within seconds. Until that happens the world will forever be in risk from nuclear weapons.
evil is as evil does
But none of that is compelling, since they *are* able to feed their population right now. You are claiming, incorrectly, that they are not.
the US produces enough food annually to feed the planet.
Are you on crack?
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
for an impactor, it needs to be nudged so that it will be at escape velocity relative to earth as it grazes by.
Space stations as you say are useless for 'not having all the eggs in one basket' but full-blown colonies may not be. step one to full blown self-supporting colonies (fully self sufficient as in need to import nothing, but still do if it's cheaper than making it) is space stations. Kind of like historical ships: step one to colonizing the new world was ships. the ships themselves are useless as population sinks or as backup population, but another entire continent full of people is a nice thing to have.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
The mission is to determine the chemical composition of the region of space known as "Washington, D.C." by smashing a large object into it at interplanetary speeds. It is hoped that spectroanalysis of the resulting gas cloud will be informative. One theory holds that there may actually be organic compounds in this area, which could help explain how life arose on Earth.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
San Francisco.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
Competence? Since when was lucking into a huge, developing nation competence? Look, man, I could lead China to vast economic growth given such beneficial circumstances.
Oh, and the greedy thugs are probably the ones who run the totalitarian government without even a vague illusion of free speech, and last time I checked that was China, Slashdot's fear of the Big Bad Government taking away their pirated Radiohead mp3s aside.
The breadbasket of the US would not be able to feed us if not for the oil flowing in to create fertilizer. It's really just a glorified desert because after harvesting no nitrogen is returned to the soil.
You illustrate the point of the program precisely, to educate people with reactionary views like your own. China does not want to be seen as a technically and military inferior country that can be pushed around by the worlds last superpower. The population of China is generally estimated to be 1.3B, not 2B.
I don't think his views are only towards China. Many people when America announces funding for NASA say "Well there is XYZ social problem which has not fixed, why is money going into NASA?". While I'm sure part of China's Space ambitions is military, that ambition is not unique to China.
That said, I'm all for China going into space, the more the merrier.
For example at the moment there is a sizable faction of the Republican party that spends its time talking about the need to start a trade war with China. Some of them even want to go further and instigate a new cold war. In that type of political environment it makes good sense to invest a few billion dollars pointing out that the economy of China is not stagnant and declining and that it has more than enough capacity to support a military sector that is more than sufficient for national defense.
This isn't exactly true. What you are stating is a rift in the Republican party that I feel is growing stronger. Old Republicans, i.e. Paleocons believe in Fair Trade, not free trade. They are upset that while we are trading freely with China, China's government is keeping the value of Chinese currency cheap. This artificially keeps China's labor cheap. Of course this isn't very 'free trade' like, so some Republicans and Democrats are upset with it, and want to pass a Tariff against China (27% IIRC) until China truly embraces free markets so that the US is at least on a level playing field. There is no desire on the old right (i.e. Paleocons) to start another cold war, just the opposite in fact, they are very anti-war unless our vital national interests are at stake.
The press does a good job with touting free trade, and making anyone who argues against it look like a monster rather than a voice of some much needed skepticism on the subject.
According to the CIA world fact book China's economy is worth 7.2 trillion and is growing at 9.1%, the Us economy is worth 11.8 trillion and is growing at 4.4%. At that rate China overtakes the US in 10 years time. That is not even taking account of the fact that the US economy is mature and the typical growth rates of mature economies are much less than 4%. Plus the US has a massive balance of payments deficit that is only being financed by China buying US bonds.
At some point the US citizens need to expect the government to be fiscally responsible. Unfortunately, the current face of the Republican party (i.e. Neocons) spend just as much as democrats.
That said, if China truly opens up their economy to free trade their growth will slow down. If not, expect the US to hit them with a tariff within the next 5 years, possibly even within the next 3.
So even if the US was to try a cold war strategy at this stage as the neanderthal wing of the GOP would like it is simply too damned late. China has more economic leverage over the US than the US could hope to gain over China.
Not true, first most people aren't looking for a 'cold war strategy' against china. All they want is Fair trade, if we open our markets to them, they must do so for us. Others do promote a trade policy of 'national interests' where we protect our own markets and workers. To that, I say why not? Most other countries do the same thing, why must the US worker be the one crushed under the harsh boot of globalism?
The US is currently facing the same problem that hit the British Empire. In the 1920s a bunch of politicians got into power who were really into the whole imperialism thing, they swaggered about holding 'empire days' and such. All the time complet
How is Guantanamo "not better"? Please compare the number of people who died in each. Do you believe that there have been large-scale massacres at Guantanamo?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
It is dead in Russia, but not in China. Last time I checked, the Communist Party was still in power there.
"I guess something bad happened to your family back in china causing you to have a strong grudge against it?"
Perhaps he is a Tibetan, or perhaps he is a relative of the 30,000,000 or so Chinese civilians executed by Communist policies (at gunpoint or by government-ordered famine) in mainland China. That might piss him off a little.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
How is Guantanamo "not better"? Please compare the number of people who died in each. Do you believe that there have been large-scale massacres at Guantanamo?
Do you beleive that the loss of liberty of either the students in tiananmen or muslims in Guantanamo differ? The deaths don't occur directly in Guantanamo, having already happened in afganistan and Iraq. They are equivilent.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."