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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."
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.
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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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.