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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"?
New Star Trek Film Planned by Fans
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
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?
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
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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"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."
the real irony comes when their first test to see if they can "nudge" a comet accidentally sends the target spiralling towards Earth ;)
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.
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?
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
Just imagine:
One big label on earth:
"Saved By China"
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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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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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.
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
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"
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.
"What a coincidence: it went off target and smashed into Taiwan. One in a million, eh? So sad. Eggrolls anyone?"
Table-ized A.I.
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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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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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