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Space Race Heats Up in Asia
SushiVSYamcha writes with a link to an article on the Seattle Times site, discussing the newly-heated Asian space race. Following Russia and the US into orbit are the nations of Japan and China, now struggling to one-up the other in a competition for scientific and national pride. The piece covers Japan's new initiative to catch up to the Chinese program, as well as some history of the competition "China launched its first manned space flight in 2003. A second mission in 2005 put two astronauts into orbit for a week, and a third manned launch is planned for next year. This year, China also plans to launch a probe that will orbit the moon. Earlier this month, the country launched a Long March 3-A rocket that sent a navigation satellite into orbit as part of its effort to build a global positioning system. The satellite is the fourth China has launched as part of the Compass navigation system, which is expected to be operational in 2008."
NASA has the capability NOW to send a manned mission to Mars. We have the necessary technology.
Estimated Cost of a Manned Mission to Mars: $75b
Cost of 1 year in Iraq (not including interest, long term costs): $100b
If America wants to be taken seriously I highly recommend that they restore confidence in their own scientific programs.
Or ... competition to make and test better ICBMs while masking it as peaceful research?
If you can put it a precision polar orbit, you can also target New York !!!
>Japan leaped ahead of Asia by launching the region's first satellite in 1972
Wrong. China is the first in the region. 3rd in the world.
The Sat was sent by a Longmarch one rocket.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dong_Fang_Hong_I
In a moment of amazing forethought: Asia (read as: Sony) launches the first 2,400 mile HD plasma TV into space (with all the best channels Direct TV has to offer). followed quickly by equal sized Google ad-satellites. I'm switching from cable.
China already landed their 5th astronaut on the moon... Check out this Yahoo News Photo that was posted recently! It is conclusive evidence of China landing on the Moon!! http://news.yahoo.com/photo/070415/480/0396ebd938f 6423fab2ab1e8de16c8c2
I can throw as many stones as I wish; my house is made of transparent aluminum.
In historic terms, spending may be down since that great space race and cold war and all that, but it would be hard to say any government cares more about space than ours. The shuttle may have been a colossal waste, and the Hubble isn't worth giving up for the space station, but we have men in space, and we continue to put man in space.
I'd even venture to say our Mars pipedreams are closer to reality than anything Asia is actually doing. Give them a couple of years to decades and maybe we can talk. And what's wrong with an Asian space race? Sounds like all mankind can benefit from the results with less strain to our taxpayers. I'm not advocating less NASA spending, I'm just saying other governments throwing in their chips isn't necessarily bad for us. We need more choices of governments and private industry that can get man and materials into space. Heck, maybe the real space race hasn't even started yet. Maybe history will see the cold-war space race as a prelude to the real global space race that lead to actual markets and residents of space.
Once China and Japan catch up to us we will join the space race again. The US will never let another country achieve superiority in space.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Do not forget India, although they seem to be falling behind.
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
More and more countries are jumping into the game. And in light of Spacex and Bigelow, we will shortly see just about every country shooting for the moon.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They are draining us of jobs and money. But that is because they have fiexed their money to ours rather than allowing it to float free. The amazing thing is that W. is now speaking up about piracy (mostly of software), which does NOTHING for us. If he really wants to fix things, then he would have pushed against the fixing of the monies. He is just offering up an election deal.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Did you read the article you posted? From the article: "With the successful launch of "Dong Fang I", China became the fifth country after the Soviet Union, United States, France, and Japan to independently launch a satellite."
Both China and Japan have a LOT of catching up to do. China's space program is arguably at the Mercury/Gemini stage, although they have far less hours in space than either of those programs had. How many space walks have they done? How many docking maneuvers? How about a reusable space craft? It will be hard for either one to go to the moon soon, and so long as the US continues to fund the NASA at current levels, we will continue to outpace them. Our next ship is going to be more advanced than even the shuttle was, and will be capable of a Moon mission - perhaps even a Mars mission.
What is far more interesting to think about is the parallels with early continental exploration... I mean, Columbus comes to America in 1492, and serious colonization takes much longer than that. Almost a hundred years goes by before even the start of real, multinational colonization of the New World... And the differences are interesting. One can argue that those explorers had an easier time of it because they didn't have to bring all of their food, water, and air with them. OTOH, they often met hostile natives along the way, and many colonies were wiped out before they could be self sufficient. No one seriously thinks we are going to meet hostiles along the way in space exploration, but the obstacles are formidable.
At the end of the day, real colonization won't take place until there is a more compelling reason than just science to do it. Continental colonization didn't take hold until there were private companies of people doing it for profit. The same will likely prove true for space exploration.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
Beavis: "China launched a 'probe'... heh heh."
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
It won't be long until there's conclusive evidence that the US has never put a man on the moon!
Why, oh why couldn't that have been the newly-heated Asian spice race? Imagine curry going up against wasabi; new versions of kung pao chicken; the hotter the better.
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
They forget that the UK has also launched it's own satellite on a Black Arrow rocket. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Arrow
A frequently occurring debate I have is with the question whether or not we should have space-exploration (and as a subset: human vs. robotic space exploration). This involves the "we should spend the money on other things, like combating worldhunger"-arguments, as the more subtile arguments which is better: human or robotic exploration.
;-)
I have pondered a long time about this, and this is my conclusion:
We all heard the reasoning for abolishing space-exploration (particular human-based) before, and I think the major flaw in all these 'arguments' why we shouldn't go into space is that they always set economic factors as a premise.
But, although economic viability is important to create a mass-usage of space(travel), I fail to see why it should be the only possible motive to start exploring space. It's a pretty narrow-minded, materialistic and typical capitalistic view on things. It's the same view that makes progress on medication for very rare diseases, or for diseases that are prevalent in continents that are poor, so slow: corporations can't see how they are ever going to get profit out of it, so they all turn their backs on it.
If ppl (including states) are only going to do something when they are sure of an immediate profitable return, the world has become a sad place. (And we should leave it the sooner
Arguments based on such a viewpoint fail to recognize other incentives apart from economical ones.
And the reason why we shouldn't (only) rely on robots? You can explore, but you can not colonize with robots. The will to explore is deeply entrenched in the human race, but with a reason: it has survival advantages.
A species that doesn't colonize new territory and adapt, will perish. I think it's paramount that humans always keep their spirit of adventure and keep exploring and expanding, because the moment we will go "ah, let's sit back in our sofa's and let our robots/droids do it", we're basically finished, even when not being aware of it at that moment.
So, to to all the people saying we don't *need* space-exploration (human or otherwise); we don't *need* the pyramids neither, nor all those great buildings and artworks, nor any luxury, etc. The only thing we 'need' is food and shelter. Based on what we truly 'need' thus, we should go back living like cavemen. But of course, we don't, and the reason is that we, as humans, look beyond our immediate needs and have (and should have) grander visions.
So, economics (and also the ratio of costs/science output) is often less good with human space-travel then robotic ones. Contrary to some zealots, I do not dispute that. But, as I have indicated, I do not think one should measure everything in terms of economic benefits. Even if you could send a hundred, or a thousand robots for the price of one human mission, it still would not change the fact that robots can't colonize planets, and augment the survival chances of the human race (and earths' ecology) through interplanetary spreading.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
All wars are the result of ignorance.
Only knowledge can cure ignorance.
Knowledge is attained through exploration.
Read my Very Short "Stories"
The private sector is also looking quite interesting in the orbital spaceflight arena. I tried submitting the following story last week:
Bigelow Announces $15 Million For Month in Space
Robert Bigelow has announced a price of $15 million for a four-week trip to one of the private space stations Bigelow Aerospace will deploy, with a price of $3 million for an additional four weeks. This drastically undercuts the Russian Space Agency's $25 million price for a week or two on the ISS. Bigelow also stated that interested countries and companies could lease an entire in-orbit research facility for $88 million/year.
i actually thought that was the 5th hole at the sea of tranquility course. an up and down with tons of moon dust traps. but you know, with the lack of gravity, you hit the ball off the 5th tee and it comes down on the fairway of the 10th hole.
as to the topic, superpowers will be superpowers (boys will be boys), i have a bigger ICBM than you, check out my anti-free-speech policy, i bet it kicks the butt out of yours. ego never ends.
think this would happen if the leaders of those countries were women? nuh uh.
-Tony
I think that spacex is a bit behind, but not terribly. The fact that they have done 2 shots and have gotten it most of the way on the 2'nd shot is pretty impressive. But I would rather see them do a third launch before attempting to send another payload. But I think that they will launch again BEFORE the end of the year. As it is, they have falcon 9 first stage built and ready to go. But the truth is that falcon 9 (even heavy) is not what will take us to Mars. We are going to need the BFR that they have already started on.
I am hopeful that Scaled Composites will come out with more than they are letting on. It seems to me that if they build the new SS2 to handle true space, then all that is needed is a liquid or solid booster to push it the rest of the way.
Finally, the new space stations coming from Bigelow looked interesting; a triad making use of 2 nautilus and one galaxy. It seems that looking at it, that it would make a NICE way to travel to mars. It would behove NASA to do a COTs thing with them and push to get a nautilus hooked up to the ISS. Even if they paid 100 million for it, it strikes me as a bargain.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
like you are at the moment is what gets people into wars, even though at the deepest level, wars are generally about competition for limited resources. When resources are plenty, people are content and happy and for the most part don't try and kill each other. When resources become scarce and the divide between the haves and have nots is extreme and the have nots grossly outnumber the haves, then the have nots try and assert their power through strength in numbers.
Without access to resources, it is very difficult to create wealth, and without wealth, your fate is in the hands of those who control the creation of wealth. This means if you ever want wealth of your own to feed yourself, your family, your community, your nation or whatever, you will need to have reliable access to resources so that you can create your own wealth.
With globalization and world trade, those who can control or restrict the flow of resources are the ones who hold all the cards. Germany and Japan in World War II were far more efficient than any of their enemies with the resources provided to them, but unfortunately for them (and fortunately for the rest of the world) they just did not have enough natural resources to capitalize on their efficiency. Who knows, if Rommel was able to take Egypt and Stalingrad had fallen so that Germany had access to the oil of the middle east, then the world would undoubtedly be a much different place. Likewise, if Japan had just bombed the oil depots in Hawaii and left the ships alone at Pearl Harbor, then things may have been a lot more different as the entire Pacific fleet would be marooned at Pearl Harbor without any hope of ever being refueled anytime soon. Japan then just needed to secure the vast natural resources of Indonesia and "Flags of our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima" would be two totally different movies.
"The Iraq war was won almost overnight. That was is over and we defeated the enemy easily. What we are doing over in Iraq right now is not a war..." Thank you! I'm so sick of hearing everyone talk about the "war in Iraq". It bugs me to no end. I'm glad that there's at least someone else that realizes this.
Count on it.
India is planning on a Moon Mission and a Mars Mission and discussing Manned Space Flight.
I wish the US were spending a $TRILLION owning the Moon we pioneered instead of wasting it and thousands of lives losing a war in Iraq to Iran.
--
make install -not war
Reading this reminds me what a tragedy it is that rocketry and space got tangled with nuclear weapons at such an early stage. It cast a sinister hue over the whole space program.
We'd probably be "out there" a whole lot more than we are now except for that piece of bad timing.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
we win the war? really? then, why the heck our soldiers are being slaughtered everyday in iraq?
Never get into a space war in Asia?
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
...unless they reuse the same props in the studio as Apollo's mission...
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Don't be too comfortable with NASA's lead. Only a few months ago they were picking through the Smithsonian exhibits to try to figure out how the Apollo stuff worked. More recently, they issued a solicitation asking for someone to reverse engineer the wheels from the lunar rover. In my eyes, these are clear indicators that NASA has lost a lot of know-how over the years.
Having said all that, NASA is still far ahead of the hucksters and barbarians.
don't you suppose solving the earth's problems first is a better idea than trying to suffocoate our planet with CO2 and global warming and then trying to run off to the nearest rock watching the earth wallow in the filth that WE CREATED in the first place? its really INCREDIBLY ironic that us humans are yearning for the stars while totally screwing up our own earth? not only is it counter intuitive, its incredibly TRAGIC as well.
Now here's one iPoddy site! iPod Range