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China to Land on Moon Around 2017
smooth wombat writes "China has announced that it plans to land on the moon around the year 2017. They also plan to set up a moon-based astronomical telescope, measure the thickness of the moon's soil as well as the amount of helium-3 on the moon. Helium-3 is regarded by some researchers as the perfect non-polluting fuel source. China's first lunar orbiter could blast off as early as 2007, coinciding with its third manned space trip in which possibly three men would orbit Earth in Shenzhou VII and conduct a space walk."
But since it's a fermion, it can't become a Bose-Einstein Condensate.
:(
Sorry... too much Wikipedia
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
US knows how to do it with 1960's technology, making the moon viable as a platform for other activities, requires almost repeating the Apollo program all over again. Why? Because all moon activity was stopped in 1972 when the last 2 Apollo flights were scrapped.
Plus maybe the most imporant factor: money. I guess China needs 10 year to spread the cost. Or would you rather pay for it? (And here I mean you, as in US citizens) USA owns China a LOT of money, i.e. China sits on wast dollar reserves. and can easily drive the value of dollar down the drain and/or raise the US interest rate a few points. Result of the almost 8 trillion dollar deficit USA has.
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Wait until they arrive and find out it's just a Hollywood set.
They're taking the long view of becoming a super power.
And leaving their enemies radiation free.
"[...] China sits on wast dollar reserves [...]"
...which they need in order to pay for their nuclear wessels.
(I'm sorry. I couldn't resist.)
...that they can see the Great Firewall from space.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
And, NASA was mostly all engineers -- good ones. Now it's mostly PhDs. This is a big difference when it comes to actually accomplishing something. An engineer solves several problems a week, and writes reports about them -- all in the same week. A PhD has solved one problem, took a few years, then took another few years to write the report. And oh yeah, his solution doesn't have to work outside the lab. As a result of working with ex-NASA employees (the good engineers who got chased out by the academic snobbery) I found the corporate culture to be pretty sick in recent (some years ago) days. Gosh, this IS rocket science, and some of it is dangerous (work out how many horsepower hours it takes to put a car into orbit, with 100% efficiency -- it's one heck of a bomb those guys ride), but they are too timid to admit that surely some folks will die playing with it. It seems China has a more healthy outlook here, and might go somewhere with it. Of course, if the academics weren't eating every last dime of the appropriations to "study stuff that can't be checked or proved", there might be money to get the job done, as there was last time. It's profitable to remember that these super smart academics missed Mars by failing to know the difference between metric and English units. Of course they are scared to attempt something most perceive as "simple". They'll want to study it for the rest of their careers and pass the problem to the next guys.
We will operate under the same belief that served us well against the Soviet Union. We will build so many nukes and aim them at China that we will be able to destroy their entire country if they should ever attack us.
The problem is that, this time, we'll be playing the part of the Soviet Union and go bankrupt trying to support an Earth-bound force when they can drop rocks on us all night. All of our satelites will be useless. All of our production facilities will be useless. But we'll still spend money on them.
I bought many of acres of moon land through the "Lunar Registry". I assume that China will check with me before picking a landing spot? I don't want any of my prime real estate damaged by their rockets.
I didn't pay $32/acre just to let anyone use it. That would be stupid!
The world as a whole is consuming energy at a rapidly accelerating pace. The reserves of non-renewable energy are quite well known, and they aren't going to last long (in terms of where we'll be in 2050-2100). There are many ways to reduce the dependency on oil (fuel cells, natural gas, hybrid cars, electric cars) but they all require energy. Apart from the ever elusive fusion reactor, there really aren't any exciting plans to generate more energy. The renewable sources are fairly well known (sun, wind, water, wave energy) and don't amount to much. Remember that we are using up the natural supplies accumulated over millions of years in a few short centuries. That will not be easily replaced.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
China - 2017
USA - 2018
not of course counting: Hollywood - 1969
China has always been a poor farming country until recently.
Poor farming countries tend not to be able to carry out voyages with a fleet of over 300 ships of which some are the size of a small aircraft carrier, halfway around the world (and some say all the way around the world) nearly 100 years before Columbus.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
They could just stand on each other's shoulders like they did in the kung fu movies.
China has not been a world power for all known history and you only need to look at the 19th and early 20th century to see they were dominated by Europeans states like the UK. Furthermore the point should be made that the China nation that existed 2000 years ago is different enough from the modern state we call China, that they should be regarded as separate entities. The same could be said for other nations that claim a western civilization heritage with the ancient greeks. While it's true Britain and the United states existence has been strongly influenced by the ancient hellenistic greeks there certainly are plenty of differences including time, place, other customs that clearly differentiate them from one another. All I'm saying in a nutshell is that the modern, industrialized world we live today is so different then that of the ancient or medieval world, that the modern Chinese have more in common with modern Europeans and Americans, then they do with their 2000 year old ancestors. Also whatever you want to say about China's greatness, the fact of the matter is the Europeans were the ones who eventually brought about the industrial revolution and the modern world we live in today. Who knows, it's quite possible China may take the lead in 21st century in furthering the progress of civilization another step but only after it has embraced the modern world that western civilization has created (Which it is doing by the way, including it's current capitalistic reforms). The fact is all civilizations borrow and steal great ideas from one another and China is no exception. So get rid of your foolish nationalistic pride that everything that is good was derived from Chinese civilization. The world is becoming more globalized and internationl to the point where it's often not possible to associate a technological achievement with a country.