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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."
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.
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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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.
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.
Sure, the US could push for a multilateral approach to space exploration. Now, stop and think about the current state of affairs in the 'states and you'll see why this isn't likely to happen.
Ths US has a massive deficit, and little actual interest in spaceflight. I have no doubt that NASA could get to Mars and back again, if they had both the budget and the full support of congress and the general public. But in the absence of either, there is little room for new spaceflight programs in their agenda. And even getting an unmanned probe there and back would be a challenge, since it essentially doubles all the costs associated with fuel (not just monetary costs, but weight considerations as well).
This isn't about an adversarial approach to space exploration; China and Russia aren't competing with America. For there to be competition, the US would actually have to have a similar program in place. They might see it as a space race, or national pride, or what have you, but they aren't actually trying to beat anybody.
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