Slashdot Mirror
The New Moon Race
An anonymous reader writes "News.com has a pictoral and editorial look at the quickly-heating second race to the moon. A Japanese orbital probe is expected to reach orbit of the satellite sometime today, just one of the dozens of projects now aiming to exploit Earth's orbital partner for scientific and business gains. 'The next lunar visitor may come from China. The Chang'e-1 spacecraft is scheduled to lift off near the end of October. It is slated to study the moon's topography in 3D and also investigate its elements. Chang'e-3 is a soft lunar lander that is scheduled to fly in 2010 ... If all goes as planned, the United States and India will have astronauts on the moon by 2020, China by 2022, and Japan and Russia by 2025.'"
The fact that we're racing to the moon again is a depressing statement about what we've been doing recently, though I guess any progress is better than none.
Does it really take 13 freaking years to dig up the notes from Apollo program, dust off/refresh the equipment and relaunch? Did we take such a big step back?
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
A PR stunt for the US is all this would be. Mark this as flamebait or troll if you want, but I think the only good this would do is put some faith back in the US government.
This is a dupe, the orginal article is from 1960.
...first post on the moon. ;-)
Did you even read the article?
China is expected to launch its first lunar exploration satellite later this month; India has plans for a moon launch in April 2008; the next U.S. moon mission is slated for 2008; and Russia could be flying private citizens around the moon and back as early as 2009. All of those countries are making plans to land a spacecraft on the moon by 2012--with astronauts and cosmonauts to follow soon after. Reports say Germany is also interested in joining the space community. Meanwhile, Google is offering $30 million to encourage private teams to land a rover on the moon by December 2012.
New energy sources...plain old space exploration progress...a moon base...the possibilities are endless and all you can come up with is "depressing"? Maybe you should consider therapy.
Not to be too cynical, but I've not had too good of luck with the "Made in China" tools and equipment I've used over the years.
Not that I'm saying they couldn't do it, jus tthat they might want to outsource the parts from their regular factories.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
Winning this race is easy. Stay out of it. The reward for winning is you can return tens of billions of dollars to your taxpayers.
Seriously, the moon is sterile. It is covered in dangerous, sticky, abrasive, lung-destroying dust. It appears to have no valuable resources, other than perhaps He3, which might be valuable 30 or 40 years from now when / if fusion power becomes a commercial reality. Being honest about it, there is little or no science value to having a manned base up there. It is not a good jumping-off point for Mars missions or anything else. All it's good for is spending money which would be better spent on Earth.
So we can win this race very easily by doing nothing.
If people really want to go there, they should start a private foundation and do fund-raising. Taxpayers should guard their wallets and purses and not blow any money on this pie-in-the-sky nonsense.
Gee, what with the International Space Station, which has cost billions of dollars and which seems to have little or no scientific or other value, you would think we would start asking, "why are we doing this", especially when the subject is manned space bases.
"NASA must complete the ISS so it can be dropped into the ocean on schedule in finished form." The moon base can't even be dropped in the ocean, but we could say, "We must build a moon base so it can be abandoned on schedule in finished form before anyone else can do it."
I just want to taste the cheese, and each country will prepare it in their own way. But in all seriousness, these are just stepping stones into further advancement into space exploration. It should also be noted that although the technology today is vastly greater than that of America's alleged first landing (for the conspiracy theorists out there) the same complications still arise and it takes years of planning and development to safely and accurately perform this operation. Plus we all know about the past failures, and loss of life, and that becomes a major slowing factor.
It's more depressing than that.
1957: Soviets launch Sputnik.
1969: Americans land humans on the moon.
2007: Slashdotter reports "If all goes as planned, the United States and India will have astronauts on the moon by 2020, China by 2022, and Japan and Russia by 2025." 2020: Americans return to the moon.
The first time around, it took us 12 years to do it from scratch, with tooling recovered from WW2 V-2 rocket bases, and computers less sophisticated than present-day wristwatches. We're now talking about maybe being able to do it in 13 years.
It's not just a lack of progress. We're going backwards.
I want to reelect George W. Bush in 2008 so we can Declare War Against Space! :D
There's also an article on CNN, I actually think this just makes thing more interesting as it will encourage NASA to catch up or be ridiculed.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/10/04/space.race.ap/index.html
Why does the summary assume that the US will be the first to put men on the moon again? The US is bogged down with budget cuts, political infighting, and wars in the Middle East! I believe that least one of the other nations will get their shit together(and put men on the moon) before the US does.
By the way, my catcha is "superior"
heh.
I mean, why? In the past there was the propaganda race for space and the moon. Now, it's pretty much useless to go to the moon.
Moonbase? Big deal, it will be a huge waste of resources. I mean, what can you do on the moon? There's basically a lot of rocks there. Lower gravity? Who cares, we have the ISS for that and even that is a big barrel of pork. The cost to ship everything to maintain a moonbase is huge and the benifits are mostly of the teflon kind. I propose we stay on earth untill we find a way to do something usefull in space. Things like good telescopes and satelites.
This will be the Ted Stevens of pork, the second race to the moon.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
When do the land wars begin? Been a long time since we had some uninhabited land to fight over.
Who says the first race ever ended? Just because they are a lot slower to the finish line doesn't mean you can just make up another race. USA still wins!
In Soviet Russia, the moon lands on you!
I was just thinking about Sputnik and thinking how in the 30+ years since the Apollo missions international cooperation couldn't get us back to the moon, but maybe international competition will.
Why does the summary assume that the US will be the first to put men on the moon again?
What do you mean "again"?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
has massive implications for technological innovations for the rest of the century.
When you consider how much modern tech was a byproduct of the space race, only good can come of another one, regardless of who "wins".
Imagine if there were an open-source entry for such a project. The implications of an open-source license covering the emerging tech that shapes the next century are astounding. Could it ever happen? Not in the opinion of a hardened capitalistic cynic, but, if it did, it would cause a fundamental shift in our technology paradigm.
All they are asking for right now is a robot to a) get to the moon and b) send data back. This is for every geek who has ever reviewed the tech that they used in the 60's for the Apollo mission and thought, "We could do that today a lot faster with a lot less money."
Do you think that you could do it for $5 million?
Now its just time to buck up and do it. Do it with open source. Now that's a picture I wouldn't mind seeing plastered all over the Associated Press, a picture of a lunar robot with a huge-ass penguin logo on it.
"I do not avoid women, Mandrake . . . but I do deny them my essence." - Gen. Ripper
If the US doesn't get there before the Chinese, they won't be able to install the flag and make all those foot prints that were supposedly left by the visit in 1969. Then everyone will know the US faked the moonshot.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
orbit running. you wont be able to get to moon by any means by 2010. forget it. youre stuck here.
Read radical news here
Is that the US would probably have a base on the moon had Apollo never been canned. The space shuttle and ISS set the US space program back 3 decades.
Maybe someone can explain why a proven and highly effective spacecraft like the Saturn V was retired for the space shuttle, which proved to be more dangerous, complicated, and expensive than NASA ever imagined.
The current Administration insists that it is physically impossible to secure the U.S./Mexican border, because the illegal immigrant will find a way to get around any barrier American ingenuity can ever devise. On the other hand, Americans can't figure out how to cross the Earth/Moon border any more, despite having done it 38 years ago. The New Moon Race therefore presents an opportunity to solve, at very little cost, a stunning array of problems. Instead of fences, simply place a few billboards (facing south) on the border advertising, in Spanish, the following: $100 an hour day labor jobs, a no-cost emergency room for every family, instant legal status, and a driver's license handed out to each person on arrival -- on the Moon.
If they could send a person to the moon in 1969 with that technology, why, with today's technology will it take so long? Shouldn't there be some kind of Moore's Law in effect with regard to space travel.
It's clear our politicians and goverment has only one thing in mind with we the people. Space must be explored, I think our politicians would surely rather sacrifice our progress for their over payed payroll. If we do return to space its going to be to make sure terrorists don't launch an attack from there or to prove to everyone else that we are THE global super power. No, there would be no 'it has to be done for humanity' reason... Hahaha, screw our government!
> United States and India will have astronauts on the moon by 2020
I'm fairly confident that the United States will get there somewhat before 2020.
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's only a race if there's more than 1 player, but China seems 2 B the only player in this race. For US, all the 2008 candidates are pledging to shift money back to aeronautics & Earth science after being wrongfully diverted to a moon program. Europe & Japan don't have any human moon mission plans.
I remember - mind you, I was a kid then, that the original space race to the Moon was during the Vietnam War.
From the viewpoint of a child, it worked remarkably well, in that I thought the Vietnam War was some kind of TV show like Rat Patrol, even though a cousin of mine served there, and was totally obsessed with getting Star Trek in color (when I could) and the Lunar Landings.
That said, it looks like we'll be in an unfair race, in that we're going broke over Iraq (and then Iran) while the Chinese and Japanese are making money off of them.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The US has fairly credible plans for man-rated lunar launchers in the Ares I and Ares V, spacecraft in the Orion vehicle, and a large lunar lander. It seems to me that if these other nations are to reach the moon in their stated time frames they should be presenting plans for similar very large launchers and space architecture. Yet none are forthcoming. Russia won't get to the moon with a Soyuz or proton. Europe won't get there on an Arianne V. China won't get their with a Long March 4. Japan won't get there with an H2. India will not get there with one of their satellite launchers
an ill wind that blows no good
Unfortunately, with the current emphasis on returning to the moon, funding for possible Mars missions has been siphoned off (since NASA's budget is definitely not large enough to work toward both goals at once). The Mars mission would also be of great value scientifically, since the rovers currently exploring the planet cannot accomplish as much as a actual human in the same timespan, and being the first country to set foot on another planet would be an event worthy of space history books.
Robert Zubrin and David Baker have already outlined an inexpessive, easy to prepare mission plan, which also minimizes the risk to the astronauts [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct]. The plan calls for Earth Return Vehicles (ERVs) to be launched unmanned with rockets no larger than were needed for Apollo, followed by a second with astronauts onboard. The ERVs would then make fuel for the return trip out of the martian atmosphere, saving payload costs from earth. If anything went wrong, we would also only lose the machines, not any astronauts, which should be a major selling point for NASA in light of recent tragedies.
The pricetag: $55 billion for an 18 month stay on the planet, and it would leave one ERV on the planet's surface, enabling a continuous cycling of astronauts to and from Mars, a truly worthwhile investment.
We are made wise not by the collection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future. -George Bernard Shaw
....the best form you can be is a full moon. And then the half moon... he's all right. But the full moon is the famous moon. And then three-quarters, eh, no one gives a shit about him. When does he come, two days in, to the calendar month? He's useless. Full moon. The moon. The main moon.
Now wash your hands.
Do these governments have a common vision of what they'll do in space? Or is this simply a race to claim more territory? What about space terrorism, wars on the moon?
We should all agree and work together before we start inhabiting other bodies. We have enough conflict here on Earth.
Think of the children!
a new moon race? activate the quad laser!
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
Of all these nations, only the US and China have announced any plans for going to the Moon. My take is that humanity will be lucky if *anyone* returns to the Moon by 2025. I'm sure someone will get there eventually, but there's plenty of problems to delay the current contenders, such as they are.
we don't have a JFK to push through it
It wasn't JFK that pushed it through, it was LBJ. Most of Jack's legislation was dead in the Congress, but once Jack died, Lyndon went to work.
Now, Lyndon Johnson wasn't much of a popular guy like Jack. There wasn't an ounce of Camelot in him. But Lyndon had a few advantages, in that, he was a physically big guy, a real bear of a man, and, he was really a lot more connected in with the still important Roosevelt wing of the Democratic Party - much more so than Jack did. He was relentless on the phone, cunning as a lobbyist, could cut deals with the best of them, and if none of that worked, he was a frigging big guy and he could just hover over you and intimidate you.
LBJ was one of the most powerful President, legislatively, that this country has had, until the current President George W Bush. It's a Texas thing. No President between LBJ and W got asserted the executive nearly as much, both utterly dominated their own political parties like no other leader could (Carter comes to mind), and both, well, were very divisive presidents in times of great national consequence.
This is my sig.
Right now, there is no major reason for the States to be going back to the moon. Other than showing we still can (considering we went up there six times forty years ago, it should be pretty obvious we can) there is almost no real point to it.
It would be better to let private corporations, as bad as they are, do it, instead of NASA or the government. Right now, there is just no reason to waste the money going there to find more of the same rocks we found before.
Calling a sword by a pretty name is no more than adding perfume to poison.
What risks are those? Their manned space program is derived from a Soyuz. Their first flight was in 2003. Their third won't be until 2008. They are flying a lunar mission to NASA's lunar orbiter of the early 1960's. The US has an absolute armada of spacecraft scattered around the solar system. I'd say China's space program is pretty moribund in comparison.
an ill wind that blows no good
Good job, ever think of having your people believe they are the best in the world? Setting an example for the rest of the world? Showing everyone else who has the power to go to the moon? Space Programs are a huge boost of morale in people. I wish I wouldve been born in a time when I could have seen Apollo go up. It would inspire me so much. Its such an incredible feat that we still talk about it to this day.It gives people dreams, knowing that they too may one day be able to "reach for the stars"
While we still have much research to do about our own planet, earth, there are so many more things to be explored outside of our own planet.
There are a lot of Chinese people, and they want their industrialized economy. And, for that matter, so the billion or so people next door in India. That's two good reasons to start looking at whatever kind of mining can be done in space.
I know what I'm about to say is anathema to many geeks, but just hear me out before you open the can of napalm. With our limited budget and socio-political 'attention span', I say that research money is much better spent doing research here on earth.
Understanding the true nature of the heavens, getting off of our own planet, and traveling to the stars has been a dream of mankind probably since the beginning. But as we learn more about it, we also learn how inhospitable and impractical is it to make a living out there. The cool factor is off the scale, but the idea that we are going to colonize first our solar system, second the galaxy, seems a little bogus to me.
I don't forsee any self-sustaining extra-terrestrial colony in the near future. The moon is dead; Mars is dead; those places have nothing to eat and nothing to breath. Our closest experiment, Biosphere 2, needed imports of oxygen. The vertebrates and pollinating insects died. Any people living out in space would be totally dependent on resources constantly shipped in from the earth. Anything they might mine and ship back would be extremely unprofitable due to costs of launch and shipping. Can you imagine the cost of blasting rocks off of Mars and shipping them to Earth?
We would see a lot of cool things, learn a lot of great things, do some wonderful experiments, understand the solar system better, etc. etc., but with our limited budget, I think we might have more pressing needs.
Here on earth, we are living in a cornucopia of biodiversity. We are living in the midst of a great library of genes, compiled over the past several million years. Sadly, there is a four-alarm blaze in the library, happening right now, and we are doing very little to stop it. We won't be finding any new medicines or genes on Mars. They are already right here on earth, right under our noses, in the rainforests and deserts.
I know we need to get off this rock if we have any hope for long term survival. But I think, as Biosphere 2 showed, we also need to have an understanding of the biosphere in order to have any long-term prospects in space, especially in the case that convoys from Earth are not available. Mars and the moon will always be out there, quietly waiting for us... We are in the middle of an emergency, and those celestial bodies can wait another few centures.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
* the capsules this time will be a much more friendly environment - just like the shuttle your average school teacher will be able to ride in it.
To be honest, after this, I wasn't sure whether your post was going to be a joke. If we're going to bother with flying slightly evolved monkeys around the solar system at all, then we really can't afford to make it safe, too.
Do you think Europeans would ever have taken over the US if they had waited for transportation safe and comfortable enough "for the average school teacher"? Exploration is messy and dangerous business, and we'll get volunteers even if the capsules need to be depressurized and people have to wear diapers. I don't see any reason to pay extra tax dollars to make it comfortable and safe, too. It's not a vacation.
Look at how tough mining is even on earth: low cost labor, frequent accidents, huge production facilities. When a couple of miners get trapped, we fuss for weeks. And that's with huge amounts of water, air, energy, and oxygen available, and a complete infrastructure, hospitals, roads, trucks. I haven't seen any economically feasible proposals for doing anything like it on the moon.
That said, it looks like we'll be in an unfair race, in that we're going broke over Iraq (and then Iran) while the Chinese and Japanese are making money off of them.
What's "unfair" about it? China and Japan told the US: "don't do it, it's stupid, it's expensive, and we're not going to pay for it". The US is doing it anyway and paying the price.
The first time arouond we had the will to succeed although for very selfish reasons. The reason we should go now is that this race is much more serious. No less than your standard of living is at stake. The Chinese do not plan to just visit the moon, they plan to claim it as sovereign Chinese territory just as the Russians now claim the seabed under the arctic ocean at the north pole. With their military to back it up, in this lousy new world they will make this stick unless we are ready to go to nuclear war to stop it. Failure to go to nuclear war over this will be no better for us. It will only lead to a slower and much more deadly slow strangulation of our standard of living, and finally our existence as a nation as we know it. Visitation and discovery are not the aim. We all know what is there, helium-3!, and in quantities that whoever possesses it will be able to buy the world a piece at a time. Everybody knows that helium-3 is fusion reactor fuel, and everybody knows that with it a nation is able ot exploration and exploitation of the rest of this solar system economically. Those supposed advisors to our administration that want to concede this to the Chinese and use our resources instead to enact tax givaways programmed to enrich monopolies ought to be prosecuted for treason. And hung!
Are we going to space to do science for science's sake? If so, robot probes win hands down.
If, however, we're going to space to blaze a trail for future commercial and private ventures, robots are largely useless.
It seems to me that the US designs everything around eliminating any chance for failure no matter how minute. Engineers will spend months testing the tertiary backup pump for the toilet. Everyone else will just seal the damn thing and shit in a bag for a few days...
The US is so encumbered by lawyers that it has become afraid of failure. Most Americans think it's better to not try than to fail. Why?
I think most other places realize that you have to take risks and just do it. Spend a few months designing the best system you can. Create a backup for any *truly* critical system. Then, strap in some people and launch. Meanwhile, the NASA guys and gals are still debating over the environmental impact of the steam created by the water used to cool the tower during launch...
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Kinda reminds me of the "big stone head race" on Easter Island just before they ran out of trees. This planet is having a huge problem with global climate change and most rich countries are getting into a race to the moon... I hope the planet holds for another 60 years, then I quit!
I am an Indian and I believe that there will not be a manned mission to the Moon from my country in the near future. Chandraayan 1 and 2 (the one with the rover) are probably going to be the only moon missions that India will *solely* undertake. These will build our capability to launch robotic space probes and that would be it.
Dont get me wrong, I do not doubt the ability of ISRO to eventually put a man on the moon. But, I doubt its ability to convince our notoriously populist and short-sighted politicos to invest the enormous amount of money and political will required to eventuate a successful, manned Moon landing. Those who disagree can take a look at the antics of the Leftist scum over the US-India nuclear deal. Anyway, what India and ISRO, in particular, have achieved so far is inspite of the politicians and not due to it. But, I digress.
I fervently hope that with the (fingers crossed, touchwood) success of Chandraayan 1 and 2, ISRO will be able to partner with ESA, NASA or JAXA or all of them in an international manned Moon mission designed to result in a Moon base. Also, given the current economic and political conditions in every space-faring country except China, the probability of this happening is quite high. I think the notion of a "space race" at present is inherently silly and that there is a need for humanity to get its act together if we have to extend into space.
While many people ask why anyone should want to go to the moon and just as many answer that the moon is a worthy goal because, uhm, yes, uhm, other nations are going there, there are many real benefits to landing on and having a permanent manned presence on the moon.
Firstly, and most importantly, the massive national prestige for any nation that does this can not be emphasised enough. Even if the US were going there with no apparent competitors, the fact that the US can do this would do more for gaining respect, no matter how unwillingly, than any number of curious American foreign policy actions. As it stands today, the international respect for the US is probably at its lowest its been in any time since the US became a superpower after WWII. This is regardless of how competitive the US economy or business are, because, like a weakened body, once the illness gets a foothold, it becomes a fast target for numerous smaller ills, and you have, for example, Europeans rightly pointing out the huge poverty rate in the US, lack of proper healthcare, poor education system etc. You get the Russians reasserting themselves, but in a far smarter way than in Soviet times, with the US's only response a provocation along the lines of missile deployment on Russia's borders. You get the Chinese being able to launch a, up to now, flawless and modern manned space programme (and spare me the comments on how its copied Russian technology. It's not). You get South American machos being able to insult and provoke the US with impunity, and you get Iranian crackpots being able to defy the US because of the bloody mess that the US perpetrated next door.
A manned permanent US presence on the moo would do an enormous amount for American self confidence. Bragging rights should not be discounted so easily.
However, the same goes for any other nation that has the moon as a goal. The main reason that other nations are setting goals for a manned presence on the moon behind that of the US is because they're know what the whole operation costs. There is a very good reason why the Europeans, in the form of ESA, has no manned space launch vehicles. They did build a module on the ISS, which despite the derision that the ISS gets here on slashdot, gave them valuable experience in building long term manned space vehicles, and they have the ATV, which gives them experience in powered automated space transport. They have been world market leaders in commercial satellite launches for quite a while now, although that may of course change in the future, but they scrapped plans for the Hermes mini shuttle a long time ago, because: It was seen as costly goal with no commercial return.
The European space effort is funded by European member countries and has far better financial oversight than NASA does, as no member country will be able to set up huge and costly goals in the face of middle class European tax payer opposition. This is why the Europeans do things in tiny, agonisingly slow steps, and, where possible, in partnership with other space faring nations. Opposition from member countries recently stalled the European goal of launching a manned Mars mission in 2030.
BUT, the fact that the US Orion is only for Americans and American companies has forced the Europeans into finally starting their own manned programme in partnership with the Russians. The future CSTS seems to becoming a hybrid of the European ATV as powered service module, a bigger re-engineered Russian Soyuz rentry vehicle, and European habitation vehicle based on the Columbus ISS module.
But no one has said anything about landing on the moon yet. The reason is because, apart from the US no one has actually been there or has any experience in lunar landing engineering. The Russians, with enough money, could probably be in Lunar orbit in a year. They certainly have the technology. But the current Russian politicians under Putin are no fools and they will in no way spend uncounted billions on Lunar landing technology in a mad race to the moon like the Soviets
Maybe if this probe can zoom in on the areas where the moon landings took place, and can show the moon rover for example, it'll stop the conspiracy theorists?
Ready, steady.... GO!
Even "developing" countries are wealthier than the US was in the 1960s, so many mroe should be able to afford space exploration.
We need more vespine gas!
its good were actually going there for real this time
Conspiracy nuts always expand the conspiracy to support their preconceived notions. Even evidence to counter their theory will be twisted as supporting their moronic theory.
These are the type of people, that when a science magazines mention there name in a negative context will then say that they were 'published' in said paper. Misleading people into thinking they have a shred of credibility or two brain cells to rub together.
I highly suggest subscribing to the skeptics guide to the universe podcast.
Site:
http://www.theskepticsguide.org/index2.asp
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Wake me up when they figure out cold fusion, because there's enough He-3 on earth to run experiments with.