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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."
This has nothing to do with technology. The US achieved this in 1966 with Surveyor 1. This is about political will.
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.
"But Pojut, there are so many issues down here already! Hunger, Homeless, Terrorism, Etc.!"
And a lot of those problems would go away if we stopped acting like little children (our club is better than your club), united our efforts internationally, put some real money towards it, and actually went out and learned things.
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.
Living With a Nerd
Yeah, a lot of what the previous poster has to say reminds me a lot of the fallacy that modern man couldn't build the pyramids...
People would be extremely naive to think that we have come so far but somehow lost the ability to do what we did 40+ years ago. No great knowledge was lost. No ability to produce the materials were lost. Public interest in the space race is what was lost.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
It sure seems like China is changing rapidly. While we are still well ahead of them in Space Tech., they have a lot of motivation. We are economic buddies, but will we enter a cold war with China, if they come to threaten us on the fronts we have historically been ahead on?
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If others want a shot at it, I say go for it - at least someone is reaching upwards and towards getting humanity out of its cradle. More power to 'em if they can help establish a peaceful and vigorous plan in motion to reach that goal.
I was literally less than 24 hours old when Apollo 11 launched. I'd like to think that we'd have people living and working full-time on the Moon sometime before I die of old age...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
You made me think about this a little... Almost all scientific breakthroughs in the last century came because of war: The two world wars, the cold war and the space race (technically part of the cold war.) Currently there are really no such war or race going on, at least not until the Asian countries starts to send probes to Mars.
Actually, I say to hell with people on the moon! Instead I think it would be much better to create a manned space station orbiting the moon instead, and use it as a "shipyard" and launch-platform for missions to the asteroid belt, Mars and beyond.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
Helium 3 could solve the worlds energy problems, the only place to get it is the moon.
That would be fascinating if it were true. First of all, we do not have any He3 fusion reactors, especially not on the scale that commercial power generation requires. Second, to supply the US with its power needs would require 15-20 tonnes of He3 per year. To power the world, you'd need, say, 100 tonnes per year (note: this is just electrical power, not fuel in general. You'd still need gas for cars, diesel fuel for ships and trains, aviation fuel for jets, etc.). One million tonnes of lunar regolith yields only 10 kg of He3. In other words, you'd need to process 10 BILLION tonnes of regolith per year to power the Earth. According to google, lunar regolith has a density of between 1.8 and 2.6 tonnes per cubic metre. Let's call it 2. You'd need to process 5 billion cubic metres of regolith per year. I'm not sure how deep the He3 goes, but it's estimated that the regolith is only 4-5 metres thick, so let's say the He3 goes down 5 metres. In order to supply the Earth, you'd have to strip mine 1000 square kilometres of lunar surface per year. It would require far too much infrastructure. Third, we have no vehicles for ferrying the He3 back to Earth. Fourth, it would be very, very expensive. Some estimates put it at 20 trillion dollars to get the mining equipment in place. That's just the launch costs. It doesn't count the cost of the equipment itself. For that kind of money we can build He3 breeder reactors right here.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
It's not the money spent on Iraq or anywhere else. You could all be driving fuel efficient vehicles right now without waiting for a few years, if Americans simply made a choice to buy a more fuel efficient car when they buy. The don't; the market for some strange reason penis enhancement chooses to buy inefficient SUV's or 5.8 liter cars rather than 2 litre cars that do the same job. You don't need any research to make a family sized car that is safe, fast, seats 5 and gets 30+ mpg or smaller cars that get 50mpg; you get need to get the soccer mom to buy the Honda Accord rather than the full sized SUV