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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.
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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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.
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.
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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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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
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).