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China and Russia to Launch Joint Mars Mission
The Interfacer writes "China and Russia are planning a joint mission to Mars that will bring back samples to earth and land on one of the red planet's tiny moons, state media quoted a Chinese scientist as saying Wednesday." From the article: "Russia will launch the spacecraft, while China will provide the survey equipment to carry out the unmanned exploration, Ye Peijian, a senior scientist at the Chinese Academy of Space Technology, told a meeting in Beijing, according to the official Xinhua news agency."
Red planet, ha ha.
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Isaac Asimov: There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.
Any space program is good news in my mind.
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Why would they go to all that trouble of making such a huge trip and not land on the planet???
I know maybe it has larger risks but COME ON, it's not like you go to Mars every week.
Just like old times!
Hopefully this will kick off another space race and we can get NASA's butt back in gear to get a man on Mars first.
The day has arrived when a Russian/Chinese announcement of a Mars mission is believable, while the American president's announcement is mere political propaganda.
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BTW nice summary. Someone should add a bug UNMANNED in bold in there so people don't get so excited.
who hopes this sparks a real space race? Although, it would be a shame it was all for the sake of going there and then doing nothing again for 40 years.
HASA has either suspended or cancelled outright nearly half of its space probe missions due to cost constraints. These compete against the Shuttle Return To Space, the new Orion manned spacecraft, ISS construction, and the presidential Return to the Moon and Mars initiatives. So its nice other countries are picking up the slack.
Hm. Red planet. Red China. What are the chances Russia goes Red again?
Warning: Corny karma killing post above.
This 2001 Treaty between the two is the first we've seen since 1950. It's great that we don't have to worry about atrocities or tension between the two neighbors but, with the current administration of the United States, I could definitely see the president of the US showing up on national TV and calling this action another Axis of Evil (tm) power move for Russia, China & Iran. It's a stupid thing to do but I only hope that this isn't seen as a reason to put pressure on these nations.
My work here is dung.
Actually, the USSR and the PRC didn't get along.
What's keeping the US from joining with them?
If it's feasable that the US alone could go to mars, and that Russia and China together can go to mars - then could not all three work together to achieve this goal better?
Or is it neccessary to have the "us" and "them" philosophy when it comes to these kinds of projects?
Must there always be an adversary?
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I've said it before and I'll say it again.
Chinese should land on Mars. This way, hundred of years later, they can claim that Mars is "historically" Chinese terriroty, and setup intergalatic missles aiming at Mars to demand re-unification with the renagade RED planet.
China and Russia have rarely gotten along. In decades past, they had a good chunk of their nukes pointed at each other, large armies stationed at their border, and their politics didn't always match dispite their supposed shared Communism.
These days, you'd be hard pressed to call either country Communist. I think of both as sort of Wild-West capitalist societies. Now they seem to be forming an economic alliance against the other growing political powers - mostly Europe and the US. It's been interesting watching how similar their replies are in the current Iran negotiations.
I think they're both interested in developing their high tech sectors, and see it as a natural partnership. Russia has lots of experience, while China has a very well-developed industrial base.
In Soviet Russia, red Planet lands on you!
It would be good to compare the cost of chinese and russian unmanned exploration missions to NASA's cost. If their missions turn out to be less expensive and more successful than those from the US, I think that space exploration would gain a lot with it. Cheaper missions in larger quantities, improving quality over time: that sounds like something the chinese could do better than the rest of the world right now.
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"I, for one, welcome our new unmanned red overlords"
^[:wq!
Why can't Russia support the ISS and China's program? Unlike the US or Chinese space programs, Russia gets a lot of hard currency for its participation. They might even be making a profit here. Especially when you consider economies of scale, Russia may be *better* able to support the ISS due to its activity with China.
But it would be tough to keep a vehicle on the surface of Venus long enough to do much good science...Mercury isn't too terribly interesting...and you can't really 'land' on any of the gas giants. Mars is fairly hospitable to our machines (as proven by the long lives of Spirit and Opportunity) and fairly interesting from a scientific standpoint. IANARSPD
In Soviet Russia, China launches rocket!
/sorry
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So how would that accelerator prevent a large nuclear counterstrike on the errant country? There are a number of countries that could fight back.
Oh forget it
This has very interesting political consequences in the US, as well. What we're seeing is the first massive event of the end of the American domination of the scientific and engineering fields.
We can't deny that the various religious fundamentalists are somewhat responsible. They have successfully lobbied the US government to reduce its financial support to NASA and other scientific bodies. They have even taken the "battle" to the classroom.
Unfortunately for all American citizens, this group of fundamentalists is far too powerful and numerous. They attempt to make up for their own lack of education by forcing their twisted ideas about the world on others, including people and organizations who wish to improve our understanding of nature via the scientific method.
But these fundamentalists don't realize that the American economy desperately needs innovation and scientific pursuit in order to remain on top. Their shunning of science for peculiar religious reasons harms just themselves. When they go out in force and demand that funding be cut to scientific organizations, they're hurting the economic prospects of all Americans. A nation cannot remain a leader in today's technological world if it will not maximize its scientific potential.
What we're seeing now is other nations becoming on par with America. And we will likely see them vastly overshoot American capabilities within a relatively short period of time. Notice that nations like Russia and China don't have religious fundamentalists participating in organized attacks against science and scientific discovery. We are seeing them become the leaders in highly scientific areas such as space exploration. If America wants to remain competitive, it will need to do something about its religious fundamentalists.
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/08/24/china .russia.mars.reut/
"China and Russia plan to launch a joint mission to Mars in 2009 to scoop up rocks from the red planet and one of its moons, a Chinese scientist said on Wednesday."
Why no American involvement?
1) Americans have lower tolerances for dangerous situations; there is much less concern about the political fashions of "soccer moms" in countries where life is already cheap.
2) American space agencies can't do anything without checking with their defense contractors and their home states first to make sure the money will flow to political contributors and reliable voters.
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Well, Mars anv Venus are closest. Unfortunately the atmosphere of Venus is very unfriendly to humans/machines.
Venus has an extremely thick atmosphere, which consists mainly of carbon dioxide and a small amount of nitrogen. The pressure at the planet's surface is about 90 times that at Earth's surface--a pressure equivalent to that at a depth of 1 kilometer under Earth's oceans. The enormously CO2-rich atmosphere generates a strong greenhouse effect that raises the surface temperature to over 400 C." cite.
The next closest planets are Mercury and Jupiter, you wouldn't want to visit them either. Mercury is basically a semi-molten ball of rock, Jupiter is no treat with its high gravity, high winds, and very little (if any) crust. The planets don't get any better the further you get away from the sun. Basically, Mars is the only planet close enough and similiar enough to Earth to have any hope of visiting (and staying) for any useful amount of time.
I'm planning a mission to Mars to be launched from my backyard in 2012.
*Anyone* can *plan* a mission.
Russia really benefits, if this goes through. This sort of thing has the potential to guarantee substantial launch volume for them. Always a nice thing to have. And given China's economy, I suspect that China sooner or later will be paying most of the bills.
I find it interesting that China apparently is forgoing the launch vehicles. I think this is a big shift in the focus of their space program. Maybe from a strategic angle, they think that they can build up their launch systems later or maybe buy/steal the necessary technology from Russia.
Ahhhh- so by the time we get to Mars there will already be some good noodle shops and attactive tennis players waiting for our scientists.
Nasa confirmed the aquisition of Pixar 3D animation studios to fake another landing. ;)
"We hope to launch HDTV as a global mass media comunication tool as we did with the TV back in the 60's but we are going to need some serious rendering power to fill all these pixels and make it right. Oh, and don't miss the trailer (spoiler warning!) coming to theaters near you!" - the spokeman said.
We were on Venus before we came to Mars.
:) (or maybe just because Mars is further away then Venus (at least most on average))
Venera 4 was the first spacecraft to measure the atmosphere of another planet.
The Mariner 2 was the first spacecraft to fly by another planet.
Obviously, in the past we were more interested in the planets more towards the sun. Maybe the Cold War made everyone decide that heated missions would be better
(info: Mariner 4 was the first spacecraft to fly-by Mars. Tries were made earlier, even before anyone tried to go to Venus. The Sovjet Mars 1 was the first to try)
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Thank you for your Compassionate Conservatism(TM).
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Er, not exactly... http://www.factcheck.org/article148.html
/No, my scarcasm filter isn't broken, I just wanted to set the record straight on this particular issue.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
the U.S. had its biggest growth, in technology and economy, during times when the populace was much more religious. Blaming the lack of R&D and shortsightedness of our big oil/big corp oligarchy on the fundies is just silly, most of the presidents and executive brnach in the last 30 years haven't been fundies
I, for one, welcome our new communist martian overlords.
This is a link to an interview with the General Designer of Russia's Korolev Space and Rocket Corporation. Interesting information about the Clipper space transportation system, and also about ion engine spaceships that they plan to send to the Moon and Mars.
Why don't you put yourself in the shoes of a country with NO nuclear deterrent. Then tell China to get bent. We'll see if you tell them to get bent.
Never thought it grew on Mars so much that Russia and China would go after it. Where do I sign up?
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Interesting politically? You bet.
See these two stories on China's Compass program. In short: China is launching a GPS competitor. Yes, in addition to GLONASS, GALILEO and GPS satellites. Oh, they're also interested in environmental remote sensing now...
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Perhaps, but the "budget deficit" is meerly the measure of government spending whose cost has not yet been taxed. It is an essencially irrelevant number as far as economic indicators go because it doesn't say anything at all about how much effort is siphoned off for government use rather than remaining in the economy. By definition, all government spending is an economic damper, so the most important number is total budget*. It doesn't matter whether the budget is paid for in taxes, recorded debt, or inflation due to unchecked printing of money. The result is the same.
*the next most important number is quality of damper. For instance, government building a light rail system has some economic benefit, so although the money is not being spent efficiently, it's not being spent 0% efficiently either. On the other hand, if the government spent the money building a big hole and piling the spoil up next to it, there would be no economic benefit to anyone whatsoever. All those workers' efforts are completely wasted: 0% efficiency.
In total numbers, I'm pretty sure the Bush administration has presided over the worst of it. In relative numbers I'm not sure, but surprisingly, the war isn't main problem by any reckoning.
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OK, its time to put this theme to bed - it is a dumb plan to throw rocks at Earth from space.
There are two ways to throw rocks: slow and fast. If you are throwing slowly, that means you find a suitable asteroid and subtely alter its course so that it intersects Earth - specifically hitting your target country. First, lets point out that this is hard - you must apply huge forces for a long time very precisely. Second, by the time anyone is doing that it will be easy to look for large asteroids coming at us - and deflecting an asteroid that is pretty far out that already has thrusters on it should not pose much of a challenge.
So let's examine fast. OK, to get a rock currently in Earth orbit (as in on the moon, or on a space station, or just hanging around up there) to intersect the Earth, you need to deorbit it. In order for it to hit a target, you need to deorbit it without using the atmosphere for braking. So you have to apply roughly the same amount of energy to the asteroid as it would take to launch the asteroid into orbit in the first place! (And then the rock just hits the ground - it no longer has orbital velocity, the real killer)
Wait a minute, if we are doing that, why don't we just take a mountain, put nukes under it, and launch it at a neighbor? Same effect, far cheaper, and totally unstoppable.
Nuking from orbit really doesn't make any sense - why go to orbit when you can nuke from home?
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"Nuking from orbit really doesn't make any sense"
.... but it's the only way to be sure!
But... but
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
Here we go a Bush supporter who gets upset and starts blaming Clinton and the media. Very original. Now you are double posting just because you're mad at some moderators. Don't be like George Bush. Grow up.
Can I bum a sig?
I found some other interesting information on this subject, BTW. The US Government expenditures an average double every 10 years, and have since basically World War II - but they aren't doing that anymore. Since 2000, the growth rate has slowed significantly.
I find this interesting because I have always assumed that the way to lower spending is to have Congress and the President in opposing parties - but the evidence does not seem to favor that.
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Like it or not, he's right about this one.
For your enjoyment:
NASA budgets since fiscal year 1992:
# 1993 $14.309 billion, existing NASA budget when Clinton took office;
# 1994 $14.568 billion, $259 million increase, first Clinton budget;
# 1995 $13.853 billion, $715 million decrease;
# 1996 $13.885 billion, $32 million increase;
# 1997 $13.709 billion, $176 million decrease;
# 1998 $13.648 billion, $61 million decrease;
# 1999 $13.654 billion, $6 million increase;
# 2000 $13.601 billion, $53 million decrease;
# 2001 $14.253 billion, $652 million increase;
# 2002 $14.892 billion, $639 million increase, first Bush budget;
# 2003 $15.000 billion, $108 million increase (estimated);
# 2004 $15.469 billion, $469 million increase (proposed);
There are five approved religions in China. In fact, there are more catholics in China then in Ireland.
Anyone else get the nice google ad?
Visiting Mars? Find Deals & Read Hotel Reviews!
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Your fears are unfounded. If someone built such a weapon it would either:
1: Launch small rocks. These would not result in much more destruction than nuclear weapons, and would be much more expensive.
2: Launch big rocks. These would result in total destruction around the target area, and massive damage to the entire planet's ecosystem.
The first option would result in the nuclear-wielding nations responding in kind. The second option would result in societal collapse and probably nuclear war. I don't really see the point. Unless you're doing it to demand One MILLJION dollars!! in ransom.
According to the figures in your link, the growth rate in the 90's was 3.7% a year. The growth rate from 2000-2005 is 6.7% a year.
In the future, you might want to link to pages that support your argument, not refute your argument.
...while North Korea provides the catering service for all of the mission base staff.
The communist countries gotta stick together, it seems.
IMHO, this is very significant.
My very uninformed view of China's space program so far is that it's largely been purchased Russian technology with some in-house few updates. This makes sense for everyone, since Russia has been consistently launching rockets and orbiters for decades now, and China might as well take a little help to get some experience.
This time, from the article, it looks to like China will be doing the "interesting" science portion of this joint mission and Russia "just" does the pushing. Yes, others have built planetary landers before, but not so many that task is mature or easy.
So, this might be China's coming out party with respect to space research and technology. And then they'll shoot for the moon... (literally).
Because Martians do not vote in US elections and threrefore have no reason to buy congresional officials and senators io ensure that it happens.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Then why has it went up 5 out of the 6 years of the GWB presidency? The congress is the control group in this case.
Besides, the President has just as much authority over the budget as the Congress. The budget starts at the Presidents desk and it ends up at the presidents desk. And if he doesn't like what the congress did with it during the interim, he doesn't have to sign it into law. I'm sure you remember the government shutdowns caused by Clintons refusal to accept the GOP budget drafts. The budget doesn't become the budget without both branches' approval.
They had better not be setting up some kind of research base on Phobos. We all know where that leads.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"He is single handedly pulling this country out of the mess the Clinton years produced."
Yeah, I sure hated that mess of economic prosperity and a budget surplus with no national debt.
Bush says "I wanna go to mars!" and cuts NASA funding. He spends hundreds of billions on a war started on false information. Because of that war the region is now destabalized, on the verge of a Civil war, and now a haven for terrorists. Bush has done nothing but created a mess, the biggest mess this country has faced in a long time.
But if you want to keep swallowing the soma peddled by that drug-addict Rush Limbaugh, than by all means, it's a free country (for now).
And those Wikipedia pages prove my point exactly. Venera 4 never reached the surface. Veneras 13 and 14 did, and they survived for a grand total of 3 hours--not bad considering their reported design life was 32 minutes each. Venus is great, if you want to land a probe on the surface to do some quick soil sampling, or take some pictures, but the environment is just too harsh to spend much time in. Landers on Mars have a much greater life expectancy, so it's no surprise that's where most of the attention gets focused.
This country has always and will always be in debt. I don't know how you can say there was no national debt.
</Prince Philip>
doesnt show percentages... just a random line with no numbered units.
Although from a purely mental mastrubation standpoint, if you had tiny thrusters on the rock...
"Reality continues to ruin my life" - Calvin and Hobbes
But that wouldn't be the scenario here would it? You have one Earth-bound country threatening arbitrary other Earth-bound countries. Some of those have nukes and aren't going to take kindly to destruction of their cities or cities of their allies.
nt
What's keeping the US from joining with them?
ITAR
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
The best cooperation between the US/EU and Russia/China would be for the manned mission to Mars. One team could work on the whole getting there problem, another could work on living there for a few weeks or months, another on the actual scientific mission objectives, and yet another could work on the getting home problem. A very ambitious and way cool mission I hope to be alive to see.
The way to do it is to first launch a return vehicle to Mars and put it in orbit, ready and waiting for a crew to board it and use it to go home. You should also launch a habitation module / rocket to get to the orbiting return vehicle at that time, so that it's already there and intact by the time the astronauts arrive. This should include a rover vehicle, the habitation module, including water, food and oxygen / air, as well as all the scientific instruments and tools needed for the mission. Finally, once everything is in place, you can send your astronauts up and give them a few decks of cards to play with for 7 months while they get there.
Man I'd be all over that mission, glued to whatever site or channel is broadcasting every moment of it, now THAT is a reality show I'd like to watch.
Is 0 for all of them. Other than a couple of Venus landers their record for going to the moon, mars or anywhere else is ZERO. I don't know if I'd take that bet.
Agreed. The proposed mission seems to be a replay of the ill-fated Phobos mission. It is puzzling that the Russiams would want to conduct a sample return mission when an asteroid sample return mission would require less energy. Phobos and demos are likely captured S-type main belt asteroids. Why go to the trouble of going to Mars to sample them. Sampling a C or M type body would be a lot more interesting. As for China, they don't offer much except money I'd guess.
As for others on this forum denegrating the US effort I would remind them that there is a flotilla of missions both operating and planned that are producing outstanding results. Spirit, Opportunity, Mars Odyssey, Mars Global Surveyor, Phoenix Lander, Mars Science Laboratory. This is a golden age of US Mars exploration.
an ill wind that blows no good
They are satellites and you can lick my balls, slashdot, for being so gay.
Moon=Luna, Satellite = orbiting body. How much gayer and unprofessional could this site be? Typical modern pseudojournalism.
Wow... you don't know how to interpret data from graphs do you? A superficial look at the graph shows huge deficits during the Bush I and Bush II administrations with surpluses during the Clinton administration. But that isn't the story - when did the changes occur? The upswing from deficit to surplus clearly began (from the same chart) smack in the middle of Bush Sr's admin, while the slip from surplus to deficit began in the later years of the Clinton admin. Sure it took a couple years to actually cross the zero, because the economy has inertia, but the freight train was coming.
Put another way - take the derivative of the data. Positive values = heading toward surplus, negative values = heading toward deficit.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
The GPP did say moon though. But your point does apply there as well. :)
Goddamnit, where are my mod points when I need them.
Don Negro
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Every american lander is nothnig more and nothing less than an attempt to reproduce some (sometimes decades old) Russian success. The recent Mars rovers are just a we-can-finally-do-it-too gig for Russian's Lunokhods. (So much for your "zero going to the moon", BTW). And video feed was, of course, first translated from Venus by Russian landers.
No mentioning the fact that the Venus landing alone in its difficulty and success surpasses everything else ever done in this respect in the world combined.
What specific time period are you referring to? I would argue that even though less of the population may be religious now as they were in the past, religious fundamentalists are gaining more political power in the U.S. today, regardless of their actual footprint in society. As their influence over the general social environment has waned (this is why one would not get elected president, although Bush is somewhat of a fundie), fundies have gotten more into learning how to influence U.S. politics directly, bypassing public opinion. Although I do agree with you on the problems with corporations, it is not right to entirely exonerate the fundies in this case.
Jupiter's and Saturn's moons could be interesting, though, and are probably the next objects of interest after Mars.
Keebler71 wrote:
>
> The upswing from deficit to surplus clearly began (from the same chart) smack in the middle of Bush Sr's
> admin, while the slip from surplus to deficit began in the later years of the Clinton admin.
So a negative trend must continue? Brilliant analysis. I guess that means the budget deficit will continue getting worse forever.
Quick! Someone say to New Horizons probe - we don't need to visit Pluto anymore! Oh, too late...
Heh, I didn't really have an argument - but I was looking at the wrong column. Sorry!
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thats all I gotta say