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.'"
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.
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.
And in a couple of hundred years, when China, India and whoever else cares to try is out there galavanting around the solar system, and the US is sitting down there, a second-class power, no doubt someone will look back on your words and go "There's one of those pricks that screwed us."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
At the rate things are going you can leave the hundred out - the US is trying as hard as possible to become a second class power as quickly as possible. You guys are going to need somebody who is a real miracle worker after Bush.
Arthur C. Clarke recently said something to the effect that had it not been for Cold War politics (international pissing contest + good public face on ICBM research) science wouldn't have really gotten to much space exploration until the components had become much cheaper and lighter.
It's not so much that we've had a slow go, it's that we had an artificially false start.
Similarly, Europeans landed on North America sometime around 1000, but it was an accident, and Norse sailing craft, which were the best in the western world, weren't really up to the task of regular trans-atlantic voyages, it would be another 500 years before really practical technology caught up to the mere feasibility.
And it might be 400 years again here. Even though technology (in some ways) progresses faster now than 500 years ago, the challenge of space is more difficult than the challenge of long ocean voyage, not just by an order of magnitude, but along many different *dimensions* of difficulty.
The failure of reality to keep up with science fiction isn't the fault of reality (or of science fiction) it was only a strange confluence of events that allowed the two to look, for a moment, similar.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
The problem, as I see it, is that China is willing to take the risks, just as the US was forty years ago. The US went there, costing lots of money, proving ultimately that the Soviets were years away from duplicating it, came home and that was that. NASA was sent off to waste valuable resources on the shuttle program, which really has been nothing more than a satellite launch and repair service.
China is clearly doing this for nationalistic reasons, just as the US did in its time, but it also knows the spin-off technologies from such a venture are huge. Sure it costs billions to go there, but the funding of research could give China a boost in surprising areas.
This is the problem with the myopic "the Moon is a waste" and "fix problems down on Earth" line. It really does ignore how much value these sorts of massive state experiments, even if the direct benefits are negligible, can add.
There's also the idea of the long-term view, that the national interest of great powers (like China, Russia and the US) or would-be great powers (like India) will not be served by planting themselves firmly on the ground. China is clearly thinking into the future, and hoping it can find itself in a few generations as a leader, and not playing catch-up.
This is the United States' race to lose, and I think only now are folks beginning to catch on to that. Resting your laurels on a space program that ceased to exist a generation ago is not in the national interest.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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
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 Apollo tech was abandoned because the shuttle tech was supposed to be cheaper, and more reliable. Not only that, but the Air Force was supposed to split the cost. Unfortunately none of these things came to pass. It's easy in hindsight to say we should have stayed with Apollo tech, but we were pretty much all cheering the shuttle until its limitations started glaring through.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Moore's law works because they're not running into fundamental limits, but running into practical limits of manufacturing capability and cooling. Unfortunately, the cost of space travel is a pretty solid barrier based on physics (specific impulse, combustion chemistry, and delta-v), and the Apollo design was pretty well optimized; the main advantage we have now is lighter computers and better comm equipment. We can also do some controls stuff, but that will only help so much.
Significant reductions in cost and capabilities (beyond an order of magnitude, which could be possible with volume, such as SpaceX's plans) really depend on a completely new propulsion technology. All of the current alternatives are promising but still have glaring limits.
The same thing was said about earth orbit
Yes, and people were right: manned space stations have been a colossal waste of money.
Go back to your Satelite TV, XM Radio, and enjoy the GPS to get to the store with a really good price on a high def TV.
All unmanned technology.
There is more to a trip to the moon other than mining.
Yeah? Like what? Analogies don't make an argument.
I have another name for a massive state experiment with negligiable direct benefit - it's a failure.
When I hear people speak of the indirect, intangible benefits that NASA has brought with the space program, it usually boils down to two things, Tang and feel-good. Namely, they point to the variety of spin offs like solar cells, velcro, Tang, etc that supposedly wouldn't have been developed otherwise or the vague sense of national pride that one gets from things like going to the Moon or having a space station in space.
Needless to say, I find those applications to be low value. Things like velcro, solar cells, etc would be developed anyway. And national pride can be built in other ways for nothing. But the real issue I have, is that these huge national projects have almost no economic value. No economic activity in space was created by the Apollo program, Space Shuttle, International Space Station, or the horde of unmanned space probes. By 2010, forty years after Man first landed on the Moon, there will be 6, possibly up to 9 government employees working in space (if China can make it's space station work). I don't see that as an effective use of the hundreds of billions that has been spent by NASA or its government-based competitors.
As I see it, there's a lot of complaints about the fixed nature of NASA's budget. But I see only three ways to increase it. First, if there's some emergency (like an asteroid about to hit the Earth). Second, it can grow as overall GDP and hence tax revenue grows. Three, it can grow as space-based GDP grows. So if NASA were to make a "massive state experiment" that boosted greatly overall private investment in space, then that's investment not another failure. For example, they can do so by using private launch services rather than building a specialized vehicle (say the Ares 1) to duplicate those services. That brings down the overall cost of putting things in orbit.
You're right, but for the wrong reason. You have progress and motion confused. Going to the moon for the sake of going to the moon is pointless. If you want pointless and exciting, the National Football League, NASCAR, and major league baseball will provide that for you at essentially zero cost to the taxpayers.
Spend many billions on scientific research? I'm in favor of it. There's a payback -- maybe not direct, but it's there. There is a reason that the US leads the world in information technology and that is largely that we spent a lot of money in the second half of the 20th Century learning what works and what doesn't.
So, a few billion for a huge atom smasher -- fine (within limits). billions for unmanned probes to Mars, Mercury, Titan -- sure. Get some rocks back ... Please bring some rocks back. Figure out how to get reliable broadband to rural areas? Pretty good idea.
Many tens of billions for a pointless space station, ill conceived space shuttle, and manned return to the moon. That's nuts for the US. Been there, done that. Got a good reason for going back? Thought not. If China wants to spend billions on a Lunar expedition -- fine. More power to them. I'd rather they spent money on moon landings than on building aircraft carriers.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey