China Launches First Moon Orbiter

hey0you0guy writes "China has launched its first lunar orbiter, on a planned year-long exploration mission to the Moon. Analysts say it is a key step towards China's aim of putting a man on the Moon by 2020, in the latest stage of an Asian space race with Japan and India. Earlier this month, a Japanese lunar probe entered orbit around the Moon. India is planning a lunar mission for April next year."

Comments

Space Superiority

[downix]

The United States has been slipping on the technology front, and this is another outwardly visible sign of that. If it does not turn itself around and fast, forgetting this political chess game it tries with the world, it will be left behind and forgotten, another empire whose time had come and gone.

Re:Space Superiority

[shawn(at)fsu]

and this is another outwardly visible sign of that.
I'm not sure you can draw a connection between us not going back to the moon in 30 plus years and saying thats a sign of our slipping in the technology race. Since the space race Russia and the US have kept people in orbit for months and in one case 748 days. The US has sent some pretty advanced probes to MARS and beyond. Saturn Comets the Sun, some great telescopes the list goes on. We are doing some advanced stuff To tweek the quote by JFK: We chose to go to the moon now we are doing those other things becuase they are hard.

Re:Space Superiority

[mikelieman]

Worry.

I was discussing this with an engineer friend. Let's say we wanted to get back into the race? Simple enough, you just dust off the plans for the Saturn V, setup the tooling, and...

Oh, shit... Not only don't we have the tooling, but we don't even have enough kids trained in running a drafting pencil to design the tooling. WE WOULD HAVE TO OUTSOURCE THE DESIGN AND FABRICATION TO --- Yup. Asia.

The only way Americans are going to get out into the wide-universe is as Contract Labor.

Some would consider it a national security issue, some would say it involves the long-term survival of humanity.

Whatever, combined with space-based solar/beamed microwave, there's a solution to 2 problems with one project. Build the orbital satellite factory and you have the infrastructure to get anywhere.

Dicking around with the ISS ain't the way to do it, folks. Don't send astronauts, send mechanical engineers, laborers, and parts.

Re:Space Superiority

[Weasel5053]

So you're saying that the design and manufacturer of Ares V http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares_V has been outsourced to Asia? Please cite your sources.

Re:Space Superiority

[SQL Error]

China has launched a lunar orbiter, something the US achieved decades ago.

Meanwhile, the US launched another Mars lander in August and a mission to the asteroids Ceres and Vesta in September.

Re:Space Superiority

[nschubach]

It's not just the moon. If we spent half the money we spent in Iraq on research, we may all be driving fuel efficient vehicles in a few years. Don't get me wrong, I support the guys overseas for getting into a tank and doing what's requested of them, but with leadership like this?

All I'm saying is that we in America could be enjoying richer lives due to technological advances instead of economic decline. Education, Research, and service. That's the next step from industrial progress. We are unfortunately, thanks in part to unions, stuck in the oil that's keeping us from progressing beyond making cars with manual labor.

Re:Space Superiority

[p0tat03]

The problem isn't so much Asia sending probes to the moon (or even men, for that matter), it's that these countries have demonstrated a willingness and ability to pour a significant chunk of their national consciousness to science and engineering, and we do not. This doesn't just apply to the space race, but also everything else we research. My brother is working on his Ph.D in evolutionary biology, and he elected to stay in Canada for his schooling, despite originally intending to go to the US. Why? Because many of the top researchers in his field have been lured away to other countries in recent years (including Canada), mostly owing to the fact that the Bush administration has been sabotaging the funding to their particular field of research (I wonder why?).

I myself am in engineering and I can see this effect also. I have had the pleasure to study under, and work with, many exceptionally skilled engineers, and while it once was the holy grail to teach and work in the USA, I find that most of my professors no longer have that wish, and in fact many adamantly stay out of the US. Many of them are Muslim, go figure.

Re:The "Space Race"

[east coast]

We will all either explore space together and get off this tiny planet, or we will all kill each other and our species will die out. I don't know about you, but I know which one I would prefer.

Did you ever think that even if you were willing to "go along with the game plan" that there are plenty of others who'd rather stab you in the back?

It's nice to think that you can throw down your guns and bombs and a great age of reason would swiftly follow but the much more likely scenario is that someone would just hide this gun behind their back and put a bullet in your head while you were working towards some other goal and simply take what was once yours.

We're living in a world where groups of people are willing to kill other people over a god damn cartoon! That should be a sure sign that we're not ready for the Utopian world that was sold to us in Star Trek.

No we are not.

[Shivetya]

Just who do you think explores the planets? The United States isn't losing space superiority, the US's focus is different. The US and Russians have been there, done that, all before. Now is the time for the new kids on the block to earn their wings. Thank goodness they are focusing on national pride through space exploration rather than warfare.

The US has plans to go back to the moon but support for the "current" Adminstration doing it is not high. We finally have seen the Shuttle given a real end of life which honestly, to me at least, was holding back the whole manned project in the first place. KISS.

Yeah there is a danger we could lose our superiority, but now that we have challengers that is less likely.

That makes NO sense

[SIIHP]

"The United States has been slipping on the technology front, and this is another outwardly visible sign of that."

How does China planning to do something FIFTY YEARS after we did it show we're slipping on the technology front?

You may be right, but I don't see this as demonstrating what you claim at all.

Re:That makes NO sense

[gstoddart]

"The United States has been slipping on the technology front, and this is another outwardly visible sign of that."

How does China planning to do something FIFTY YEARS after we did it show we're slipping on the technology front?

Well, if you could do something 40 or 50 years ago, and you can't do it now, that, by definition is slipping. Meaning, you've fallen behind where you used to be relative to everyone else (or, even yourselves at the time).

The fact that America simply could not launch something today, this week, this month, this year, or quite possibly within the next three years which would get them to the moon means that -- at this precise moment -- you are behind China and Japan in terms of actually possessing the technology. Someone else has technology which you only theoretically possess. But, they've got one that's actually working, and either in orbit or in transit to orbit around the moon. You have 50 year old designs that haven't been revisited since, and that nobody has any working experience with the manufacture of. I own a physics textbook, but that doesn't mean I have any technology -- it means I have the theory.

If something were designed and ready to be built, does the US currently have the manufacturing capacity to make all of the components? Can all of the circuitry and stuff like that be made in country? Or would you have to farm it out to China and other countries where all of this stuff is currently built? If any components in the chain would need to be farmed out, you simply don't have the capacity to make it. And, either due to cost or lack of capacity, you'll note that most consumer electronics aren't actually made in the US.

Unfortunately, over the last few decades, so much American industrial fabrication has been moved out to cheaper locales, there's little left. The companies and systems which used to support the space program are now focusing on other things, or gone completely. Sure, Boeing can probably still do neat things, but you have neither the political will nor the money to make it happen right now. And, it would take time to ramp up and achieve this.

Not continuing to advance when everyone else is catching up and possibly passing you is slipping. China has a huge internal manufacturing capability, a tremendous workforce they can leverage, and whole truckload of foreign currency to buy what they need. That, and they can jujst steam roll over their people to achieve their goals once they set their sights on it.

As Lev said in Armageddon --- "Russian Components, American Components ... All made in Taiwan!!"

What you did 50 years ago isn't indicative of what you could pull off today; which, I fear, would be way less than you did back then. That, unfortunately, is why it seems that the US is slipping in this field.

Cheers

Re:The "Space Race"

[TastyCakes]

Wait, explain to me how spending billions or trillions of dollars of tax payer money on a project that practically zero tax payers are actually going to directly benefit from is going to end hunger or pollution or homelessness? And please spare me the "spin off technologies", as if investing that kind of money directly into research wouldn't produce similar results.

Why are you so hell bent on getting "off this rock"? We are designed by nature to live here, we fit here. Why do you think it's such an amazing idea to get off of it and live some crappy life on mars or some other similarly unpleasant place? There's a novelty factor I'll grant you. But there's a reason people don't live in the arctic or the antarctic or the middle of a desert. It sucks, and living on mars would suck too, only worse. And that is why I don't think there will ever be a significant human presence on any other celestial body over and above research stations. The money for your giant project really could be spent in a number of ways that much more effectively help man-kind.

Re:The "Space Race"

[_Sprocket_]

We, as a species, should pool all of our assests together and put forth as much effort as possible at exploring space and figuring out a way to get off this rock.

I like your sentiment. However, you seem to be discounting or simply forgetting the value of competition. It may seem counterintuitive but sometimes divided pools of resources put towards achieving the same goal can achieve better results than a single effort.

Often you'll have different ideas on how to solve a problem. Sometimes you can't really be sure which way is the best way until you try and implement both. Pick the successful one. The challenge is to be sure that "success" isn't due to outside influence (politics, marketing, etc.) but on purely performance issues.

On a larger scale, the challenge to competing ideas is the bureaucracy. The larger the pool of resources and individuals involved, the greater the organization and mechanism to manage said resources and individuals. These environments tend to become lumbering, unwieldy things that require a lot of resources to simply run while stifling competition and innovation.

A project at the scale of space exploration probably leads to some manner of bureaucracy. However, I'm more inclined to have smaller, battling bureaucracies rather than a single massive one... or at least the often difficult process of trying to make multiple massive bureaucracies work together.

Delusional

[DerekLyons]

From TFA:

Analysts say it is a key step towards China's aim of putting a man on the Moon by 2020

Except that such an 'aim' is a creation mostly of the analysts themselves, China has made no goals or national policy statements. This so called 'moon race' is a creation of pundits looking to justify their paychecks.

Re:The "Space Race"

[GWBasic]

We're living in a world where groups of people are willing to kill other people over a god damn cartoon! That should be a sure sign that we're not ready for the Utopian world that was sold to us in Star Trek.

So why don't we just pack up, move to Mars, and start our utopia there? After all, that's what the Pilgrams did when they hopped into the Mayflower. ;)

Pissed away? Seriously: No.

[Cajun Hell]

we literally pissed away 35+ YEARS

Nation's been asleep and nobody has done anything in all that time, huh?

Computers sure seem better than they were 35 years ago. I carry a phone in my pocket. Apartheid has ended in South Africa. Disco music has been successfully crushed, tainted as "no longer cool." Lead has been vanquished from our gasoline, resulting in the virtual elimination of all crime. Wal-Mart distribution has efficiency that people couldn't even dream about 35 years ago. And last, but not least, The breakfast burrito has been perfected.

We didn't piss away the years; we just didn't use the years the way you want. Technology (and more generally: the inventive capabilities of the human spirit) carried on, its passion at odds with an uncaring universe. It developed what it wanted to, solved problems that it thought needed solving.

And now we have the most literally awesome breakfast burrito mankind has ever seen. I'm sure those who enjoy the fruits of that burrito research and development (yeah, like any of them actually eat fruit, when such a lusciously filling burrito is around), had the resources been spent on continuing the Apollo program continued instead, would say,

We had a good start on the breakfast burrito problem, 35 years ago. And we PISSED IT AWAY, developing space applications instead. What good is a glass of Tang, if not used to wash down the perfect burrito? Why is burrito technology languishing, while pie-in-the-sky ideas capture Joe Sixpack's imagination?

Think about it. Life is what you make it, and we made something. You just don't like it.

So go ahead, eat your fruit and drink your Tang, and live in willful ignorance of (and spite for) Hardee's groundbreaking Country Breakfast Burrito. Daydream of a renewed Apollo program. Meanwhile, the Prime Movers of human progress -- the people who make the world turn! -- will continue to work on what they think is important. Is the Monster ThickBurger really the upper end of burger thickness? Is there a barrier that cannot be crossed? The intrepid human spirit screams, "No! There are no limits! With passion and ingenuity, anything is possible!"

Re:Objective pictures!

[Anonymous Coward]

If they send us pictures THEY took, perhaps we can lay to rest the notion that we never went to the moon at all.

The notion that we never went to the moon has been laid to rest since NASA released the footage showing men on the moon, in 1969.

What I'm trying to say is that people who continue to deny the moon landing today are unlikely to be convinced just because more evidence appears. Conspiracy theorists are easily able to modify their conspiracies on the fly to rationalize new data. Paradoxically, they can even use the mounting evidence as 'proof' of their conspiracies. ("Oh no, now China is in on it too!" or even "You trust China? They are even worse than the US. The very fact that they are supporting US lies can only mean they are up to something even worse" and so on...)

China's space exploration will provide many benefits to humankind, but silencing conspiracy theorists is not one of them.

Re:Objective pictures!

[tulsaoc3guy]

It wouldn't matter if they did take pictures. If the Chinese sent pictures of old moon landing hardware, the moon-landing-denial-crowd would just conclude that the Chinese must also be in on the conspiracy.