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

[Farakin]

The Simpson's already did it? Seriously, what is the fascination with the moon? I guess in China's defense unless they make a Louisiana Purchase sized purchase from Russia they need somewhere to put 1.3 billion people.

Re:Space Superiority

[stox]

So the Chinese have caught up to where we were in 1961. I'm not too worried, yet.

Re:Space Superiority

[east coast]

Yeah, we're falling behind.

China? Yawn...

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

[Weasel5053]

This has nothing to do with technology. The US achieved this in 1966 with Surveyor 1. This is about political will.

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

[Token_Internet_Girl]

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

That's because in the US, technology is the devil's work and SATAN lives on the moon!

Re:Space Superiority

[MightyYar]

I think that you are a bit out of the loop! We are in fact designing a system of rockets designed to deliver us to the moon once again. They are largely based on existing hardware that is being built today in the USA. Much of it shuttle derivatives, but also some older stuff - like some engines that trace their roots back to Apollo.

Check out Project Constellation.

Compared to NASA's aborted shuttle replacements, this project is pretty low-risk and has a high likelihood of success.

Sending an unmanned probe around the moon is cool, and I'm happy to see Asia exploring space... but it is a far cry from sending men there.

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

[east coast]

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.

Re:Space Superiority

[jay-be-em]

Beyond the fact that your engineering friend is apparently not aware of current developments
at NASA, would a new system really be designed with pencil/paper drafting? Is your friend
also unaware of the advances in CAD in the last 40 years? It seems to me that CAD is a lot
more practical as it can integrate with [astro|aero]dynamics testing software and such.

Re:Space Superiority

[Red Flayer]

Heh. With our economy heading the way it is, who is surprised?

The USSR could not, in the end, compete with the US in the space race because their economy could not support it.

Currently, we're still the leader, but the technology gap is shrinking -- a lot of this is due to where we choose to focus our resources, but how long until, like the USSR, we don't have the economy to compete? How many decades is the US from being in the same unenviable position?

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:Space Superiority

[cayenne8]

"The Simpson's already did it? Seriously, what is the fascination with the moon?"

Actually I see it as a grand experiment into finding out what needs to be established first before man can comfortable occupy a place.....Chinese restaurants, sushi houses, or the Quickie Mart.

Re:Space Superiority

[the_arrow]

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.

Re:Space Superiority

[Coryoth]

Build the orbital satellite factory and you have the infrastructure to get anywhere. Err, you've lost me. Why would we want that exactly? To build a satellite you need raw materials. Raw materials to make satellites don't, generally, exist in orbit. That means you need to ship the raw materials to your satellite factory in orbit. Now if we're shipping those raw materials up from earth... explain to me why we'd want to do that again? Why not leave the raw materials down here until the been processed put together into a satellite, since ultimately you're going to have waste material in such a process so the finished satellite is going to be lighter (and hence) cheaper to ship up to orbit.

If you're not talking about getting the raw materials from earth... well where then? The moon? The asteroid belt? Those aren't exactly nearby. Perhaps we could build a nice spacecraft factory on the moon, in or the asteroid belt, but that's really quite another step again above an orbital factory.

Re:Space Superiority

[MightyYar]

I think you might be on to something... If you want to search for intelligent life, just start sending random nuclear weapons out - program them to hit planets likely to support life.

If there's intelligent life out there, it'll come to US!

Re:Space Superiority

[MightyYar]

The answer is simple: Volume

Re:Space Superiority

[RealGrouchy]

I was discussing this with an engineer friend. Let's say we wanted to get back into the race? Is this the only problem you could find for your solution?

- RG>

Re:Space Superiority

[ackthpt]

Poor public transporation support, dumbing down of education, can't afford universal health care, but Hey, that war with no end in sight is keeping a lot of men and women out of the job market to leave holes for others to fill, even if on a temp basis (since many of these people will eventually return to their old jobs, in theory.)

Every time George hits up Congress for another round of war funding it's the equivilent of hitting every adult and child in the USA for $260+. That sort of pull-together could certainly accomplish a lot of infrastructure, science, quality of living.

Re:Space Superiority

[slashdotlurker]

I think you and many of the people on this thread are royally missing the point.

The issue is not space superiority, but direction.

Yes, we have some impressive achievements over the past few years - landing on an asteroid, the current probe to Pluto, etc. The question is - why aren't we out there in person ?

I am not from the 60s generation. However, could one be forgiven for thinking that if we had put 17 people on the moon by 1974, we could have had a permanent presence on the moon by now ? Like a lunar base ? And perhaps, if all the Presidents from Nixon and forward had kept their eye on the ball, we could perhaps be talking seriously about terraforming Mars, given the mess our planet is in (from a resource standpoint) ? And given that we cannot do much right now if a comet or an asteroid decided to pay a personal visit to us in 2020, might it not be prudent to have the human race have another home in the solar system in case the unthinkable happens. Yes, we do not matter much in the larger scheme of things of the Universe, given that we inhabit an obscure corner of an average galaxy, but isn't the instinct to survive the strongest human instinct ?

The projected population of Earth for 2050 is about 9.5 billion people. Do you honestly think that this planet can support this many people, and if not, do you think that the task of colonizing other planets (with Mars being the prime candidate), can be done quickly in a decade or so ?

It is the job of leadership to foresee these problems and think ahead. One of my oldest uncles, who was a Marine, died two years ago. He used to say that you do not pay for the same real estate twice and you never surrender momentum if you have it. We had the momentum in early 70s. Instead of moving forward, we met with the Soviets in space once (1975), got giddy eyed, got our head buried under the sand, and started dicking around with relatively minor pursuits like building a space station (something we and Soviets had already individually done, with the Soviets being more advanced than us) and building a space shuttle system (when none of that seemed to be needed for any of the Apollo's - and in any case, that effort could have been a separate one). This is not to say that a space station is not important, but it cannot be the sole focus of a space faring power that has previously sent men to another heavenly body in the past.

It comes down to leadership, our pathetic and borderline treasonous mainstream media (and I mean both the allegedly liberal and conservative sides of it), and how addled our people's brains have become with worthless pursuits (like figuring out who is dating whom in Hollywood). I used to be a member of that media and I quit in disgust last month after years of watching my reports being filed away because the consultants thought that another shot of Anna Nicole Smith's cleavage might be more important than a report on the educational rise of India.

The issue is not whether we have done that. The issue is what have we done in space that has a direct and chilling bearing on our future in a few decades. Our absence from space is more than a mere act of allowing the Chinese and Indians to catch up in the space version of "I am the big kahuna", it is incredibly short sighted from the point of view of the future of the entire human race.

Re:Space Superiority

[MyrddinBach]

I really don't think we are slipping behind..

And not only are we going back to the http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/mmb/why_moon.htmlmoon we are setting up a base there.

Re:Space Superiority

[ChatHuant]

We DO spend enough on technology and education. It's been a while since I've seen the numbers, but I believe that we spend more, both per-capita and in absolute terms, on education than most other countries.

You're confusing spending on education with quality of education. Many countries spend less than the USA and have much better standards of literacy and numeracy in primary schools. Here's a quote from "The Economist": Australia has almost tripled education spending per student since 1970. No improvement. American spending has almost doubled since 1980 and class sizes are the lowest ever. Again, nothing. Actually the whole article is very interesting: find it here

Re:Space Superiority

[MightyYar]

I'm not confusing it at all - I was just claiming that Americans are willing to provide funding for education, not that it was being spent effectively.

Re:Space Superiority

[DerekLyons]

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.

Neither you, nor your engineering friend know what you are talking about.
 
Other posters have mentioned Constellation - but what about SpaceX? Or the old standbys - Boeing or Lockheed? There isn't anything magical about the Saturn V that these companies couldn't do today with sufficient cash and a bit of lead time.

Re:Space Superiority

[p0tat03]

Well, there are two sides to this issue. First is that we're seemingly spending a lot of money in the wrong places. Of the huge amount of money spent on education, how much is going towards graduate research (where, ostensibly, most of the truly innovative economy-changing technologies are invented)?

Second is the general culture of the United States. Sure, the Apollo engineers were nerds by all measures, but they were respected members of society, and for the most part that community was made up of extremely dedicated people who had a real passion for what they did - otherwise they wouldn't be strapping a bunch of guys to a rocket and sending them to the moon.

Looking around in the engineering profession today you simply do not see that anymore. Engineers and technical people are being sidelined in an increasingly materialistic society, where EVERY kid out of school has their eyes on a big fat signing bonus, not the work that they are truly interested in (if they are interested in anything at ALL). This is true in my university, and indeed it was true way back when I was in high school. It's resulted, IMHO, from what I've seen in Canadian universities, an overwhelming rush to the financial sector, at the expense of every technical sector out there (including the pure sciences). Everybody wants to be a Wall Street trader, and nobody wants to invent and innovate.

Part of the problem is that we as a society have placed so much of a man's worth in how fat his wallet is, and also the lack of respect for people skilled in their trade. You can throw billions at basic research funding, but it will do no good if the intelligent students of your country are flocking towards commodities trading and not science. The Apollo era was before my time, but I've always been under the impression that there was a certain glamour to be associated with that program, and even the cutting edge engineering fields altogether. That clearly does not exist today.

Re:Space Superiority

[timeOday]

I agree that current policy is hurting science in the US. In a bizarre attempt to keep terrorists from coming into the country, the government has made it very hard for ANYONE to get in.

It's worse than that; it's hard to get in legally, yet easy to get in illegally.

Re:Space Superiority

[ericartman]

Wonder how big a rock you would have to throw at the earth to get through the atmosphere and do some real damage? Wonder how many rocks the moon has to meet these requirements? How big a launch device would you really need to hit the earth accurately? Wonder how good the Chinese are at math?

Cart

Re:Space Superiority

[Touvan]

It isn't the technology front slipping, it's public investment that's slipping. While the United States continues to harp on the benefits of the (cleverly, and inaccurately termed) "free market", its being left out of the benefits of effective national investment. This includes industry specific unprofitable scientific investment - like exploring space, or medical research (like keeping up with biology with antibiotics - pharmaceutical companies don't do that research), but also includes investment in information infrastructure, bridges and equal access universal healthcare - all of which are higher quality, and cheaper overall with government investment and effective oversight (just ask Canada - who despite all the rhetoric, ranks higher than the US in terms of quality of care, and ranks lower than the US in terms of cost per capita, all while covering everyone).

There are a great many civic benefits to national public sector investment, in addition, there are enormous new opportunities for business to exploit created by that investment. These are the benefits the US is missing out on. The slipping technology front is just one symptom.

Re:Space Superiority

[mikelieman]

The point is the current crop of high school kids/community college kids, don't have the mechanical drawing skills and training to deliver.

Re:Space Superiority

[cdrguru]

We can afford universal health care. Just not the kind you would like to have. It isn't going to be pay-everything no-limit health care when it comes, it will be very restricted and controlled. Managed, you might say. But with that extra special governmental sauce that makes it mismanaged from the start.

The big issue would be elderly folks. They won't vote for it if it is carried out like it is everywhere else. Old people die. Fact of life. Except in the US where old people die after spending zillions of dollars in health care. Nobody else does this, which is partly why "universal health care" looks like it would be affordable in the US.

What this means is young = healthy, old = dead. This might not be real popular with the folks over 50.

So sure, you can pay for 20-somethings with a broken leg from skiing but the old guy with cancer just goes to the hospice.

Re:Space Superiority

[MightyYar]

Yeah, there's a certain type of person who will always go where the money is. Some of these people are really, really smart and are good at just about whatever they put their effort towards. In a way it is a shame when they go into something like Wall Street.

But, in a way, it's kind of nice. For instance, take medicine. It used to be a very lucrative field. Many a millionaire doctor has been made. Now... not so much. Yes, many doctors are still paid well, but most are not exactly getting rich. The result is that a lot fewer of these money-driven folks in medicine... and you know what? It's getting more pleasant. The doctors entering the field now tend to care more about the field then they did when it was primarily money-driven. It also is becoming predominately female, whereas it used to be a very male-dominated field. The highest-paid specialties still tend to me alpha-male-dominated.

My point is that I'm not sure that a field suffers much when the people in it are doing it because they like it and not because the pay is high. Yes, I know some good physicists and engineers who were lured away by Wall Street... but I know some real prima donnas that were as well, and on balance I'm not sure how much engineering has suffered.

That said, I sure do work with a lot of foreigners! :)

Re:Space Superiority

[petermgreen]

There are advantages to doing some construction work in space, mainly that you don't have to design stuff to survive storage on earth then a launch then conditions in space. Also there is the issue that some projects may need more than a single booster can lift.

The real problem is that switching between orbits can often take as much delta-v as going from the ground and the more delta-v you use in a mission the harder it is to add more so any construction station would be limited to particular types of mission.

Re:Space Superiority

[BlackSmithNZ]

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

Re:Space Superiority

[bigpicture]

Well it is reflected in human values and purpose, and is it about applied knowledge for human benefit, or is it about money, power, greed and corruption?

The US turns out more lawyers and less engineers and scientists than any where else in the world. So what do you expect to get from this? "suppression of innovation" through patent, copyright, and propriety information law suits. The stifling of the use of knowledge. I believe that China now probably has or will have, more engineering graduates than the whole population of the US. All past great cultures or empires, had an edge in engineering and science for their time. Hence they were able to create construction projects, public works, buildings and infrastructure, and effectively defend their way of life. The increase of lawyers and politicians indicates a society in decline.

Re:Space Superiority

[Token_Internet_Girl]

I think we make a good point here, but obviously we're being modded as trolls :(

Re:Space Superiority

[KevinIsOwn]

I agree with most of your post, except the "enough" part. If we spent enough on science, my high school physics class would have had enough money to conduct experiments. Considering that I attended a fairly well off suburban high school in Connecticut, and the only experiment we performed involved Popsicle-stick bridges and some elmer's glue, the state of science funding across the US can't be particularly good. (That and the teacher was an idiot. My Physics teachers in college were much better..)

Re:Space Superiority

[MightyYar]

Yeah, they go and tie funding to how the worst students in the school perform. Any half-baked pea brain can pass a state standardized test, so the school has to spend most of its effort on the complete and utter fools and miscreants. All in some misguided bid to keep un-parented kids from being "left behind" - as if the government could undo bad parenting or bad genetics.

So you have record amounts of money being spent per-student, even in poor areas - and little to show for it.

I think that we should get a little less egalitarian and let the smart kids excel. Spend the money on our brightest hope - and for God's sake keep art, phys-ed, and music! Oh, and some budget for copper wire to wrap around nails and hook up to a battery in physics class :)

Don't knock popsicle-stick bridges! You can learn a lot about statics and trigonometry with popsicle-stick bridges! In my school it was straw and straight-pin bridges, though :) Chemistry is where you need the fancy (and dangerous) stuff. Either way, a bad teacher is a shame - it's not like they are under-paid. Then again, their hands really get tied as to what the curriculum has to be.

What were we talking about again?

Re:Space Superiority

[meringuoid]

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.

Since the job is 'get me, and only me, 24 miles to work in the morning and 24 miles home in the evening', I drive a 1.3 litre car.

My fuel economy is slightly impaired by the fact that I do so at around 90mph wherever possible :-(

The "Space Race"

[Pojut]

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.

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.

Re:The "Space Race"

[Pojut]

Which is something I addressed in my post in a single sentence...our club is better than your club.

I'm aware that humanity as it stands now is in no position to unite and work together, but the longer we travel down the road we are on now, the more backtracking we will have to do.

The sad thing is we have the resources, intelligence, and DRIVE to do these things...we are just using them all in a useless way that leads to one ending: our extinction.

Just because it might not happen in our lifetimes does not mean it won't happen.

Re:The "Space Race"

[east coast]

Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, there will hopefully be a point in time where that it happens but why dwell too much on it today.

And we do have the resources and the intelligence but we certainly don't have the drive. When it comes down to it Mr and Mrs Sixpack are still paying the bills on these types of things and, contrary to what some around here think, there are ears in Washington that do listen. If we can ever get the masses to see the virtue in scientific spending we will develop quickly but in the meantime we need to hope that corporations see some virtue instead because it's really the Sixpacks of the world that are doing the back-peddling.

It's just like the internet. Where would we be today without pr0n and the Exchange servers? Everything that has come about as far as wide spread advancement in this relatively new field was sponsored by the masses being entertained and the needs of corporate types. Scientists made the initial headway but the real motivation to get things moving was brought about with dollar signs not research papers.

Re:The "Space Race"

[MagicM]

You must be new here.

(And by "here" I mean planet Earth.)

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.

Re:The "Space Race"

[FleaPlus]

Keep in mind that while international collaboration is nice, it certainly isn't a panacea. Recall that international collaboration is the basis of the ISS, which is largely an overbudget boondoggle.

Re:The "Space Race"

[ktappe]

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.

And if you don't try to make things better, the world will never improve. Stop being a "they all want to kill us" downer and try having some vision and hope. Taking a defensive posture never got anyone anywhere.

Re:The "Space Race"

[davidsyes]

WHICH is why I advocate putting out of business ALL "state" navies, deprecating (not combining) them to the status of own-nation coast guards (in such a scenario, the USCG would FINALLY get to be THE maritime/policing authority and wouldn't the USN HATE that!) and supplanting the UN to some extent. State-based navies are shitty excuses for government billy clubs.

See one of my sites.

No, they're not about "bringing down the government", but they ARE about putting out of business a bunch of activities that need income curtailment, and need to be put closer to home. A stateless navy being attacked by a state force would make such a state force the official SCOURGE of the planet.

The primary missions would be to:

- protect commercial shipping and shipping lanes
- chase down and apprehend terrorist, pirates, and other scofflaws
- conduct counter-espionage action against nations spying on or infiltrating other nations
- rescue shipwrecked or storm/disaster victims displaced from safety
- other peacekeeping/monitoring/non-combat instigating operations
- reducing the effect of "flag-waving navies' power-projecting" nations will impositions

Liken it to a "federation" if you will, but we've got way to goddamn much fiefdom, redundancy, and international bullying going on, and most of it is power concentrated in the hands of just a few countries.

Officers would have to be FLUENT (R/W/S) in at LEAST 3 non-home languages. Enlisted personnel would have to be able to SPEAK at least 2 "foreign"/non-home languages, and maybe write in at least 1 non-home language. The ships would be stateless, meaning not OWNED by a state; they would not be subject to being boarded by STATES; they would be the local authority in the event a ship in international waters being told "heave to and prepare to be boarded" says, "I elect to be boarded by a Unified Nations Anti-Unilateral action Navy (UNAUN) ship, not your (name any nation, particularly western ones) ship, since we're in international waters...)

No two ranking officers on each ship can be from the same home country, this being to reduce the chance that the local chain of command would go off playing Lt. William Cally or the like. It could end up being a jobs-creation organization, but for the higher-IQ of humans, officer AND enlisted alike. Launch-capable weapons would be range limited to say (50 miles) meaning they legally and physically have no ability to launch strikes onto, into or over most nations. The ships would be highly-defensive, with a mandate to sanitize the local waters of ANY nation, clearing them of lurking foreign subs of ANY nation. The ships would (despite Greenpeace and other environmentalists) tow mines and noisemakers to wreck or force the surfacing of subs trying to conduct espionage. Don't want to be sunk? DON'T FUCKING SPY ON FOREIGN NATIONS, then.

If anyone can propose if for space exploration, then we owe it to humanity to first do it with some portions of military. "State Superiority" is a bullshit notion and fact and needs to be put into the past.

Re:The "Space Race"

[vertinox]

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?

Eventually, we'll either start a universal space program after we have an impact event killing millions of people showing us that space is a nasty place and we need to deal with it or we'll get hit with a really big one killing all life on the earth's surface making it a moot point.

"The dinosaurs died because they didn't have a space program." -Larry Niven

Re:The "Space Race"

[RealGrouchy]

Exactly. While different people competing to achieve the same goal will cause waste in the form of duplication, attempts at teamwork will cause death by bureaucracy.

Just compare the Apollo missions to the ISS: the country was willing to spend as much as necessary to beat the Russians to the moon, but when it came time to work with them, the whole project just sort of atrophied into a minimalist version of itself.

Competition creates an artificial sense of urgency, and (especially when governments and bureaucracies are concerned) it's damn hard to get anything done unless there's a sense of urgency (cf. War in Iraq --> 9/11 & WMD).

- RG>

Re:The "Space Race"

[east coast]

Vision isn't going to make everyone stop their hostilities. That's the whole point of what I'm saying. The GP said "And a lot of those problems would go away if we stopped acting like little children". This simply isn't true. There is still going to be plenty of in-fighting and quarrels.

Just look at the Linux crowd; so much cooperation and so many different distro because there are so many with different visions.

Re:The "Space Race"

[ShannaraFan]

Sadly, until religion and politics are eliminated, Utopia will never be reached...

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. ;)

Re:The "Space Race"

[CatrionaMcM]

"We are designed by nature to live here, we fit here."
Up until we screw up the climate or the next ice age or a comet strike or multiple volcano eruptions or someone uses nuclear/biological weapons.
"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."
People do live in the Artic or the middle of the desert, for the same reason that they will volunteer to live on the Moon or Mars. The urge to expand and explore is the reason we've survived long enough to even contemplate colonising celestial bodies. If you spread out, one sabre-tooth can't eat us all. And throughout history, colonists have been prepared to put up with a hell of a lot of suckyness in order to settle somewhere new- I don't imagine the Frontier was a cake-walk.
So putting some of your eggs in another basket may only help mankind in the worst case scenario, but who cares, it satisfies the monkey's urge to expand their territory. And wouldn't a Moon-base be kinda cool?

Re:The "Space Race"

[mdielmann]

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. Because there are no natives to exploit.

Ooo, my first (intentional) troll! I feel special!

Re:The "Space Race"

[mdielmann]

Sadly, until religion and politics are eliminated, Utopia will never be reached... Nice strawmen you got there. Neither religion nor politics have a bearing on the fact that people treat people who are different poorly. Where is the religiopolitical reason for teasing the red-headed kids, the ones that talk a little funny, the ones who look at things differently, the ones that have different priorities. I'll bet most geeks have been teased because they're geeks. I was, and it had nothing to do with my religious leanings or the people teasing me. The things people use to justify the actions they want to take are called excuses, not reasons. Adults are just a little more refined about how they do it. The simple fact is, far too many people take their beliefs as facts without seeing if the evidence supports it first.

Re:The "Space Race"

[PhetusPolice]

I partially disagree.

Two divided efforts competing towards the same goal can indeed achieve more rapid productivity. However, I believe that if a single combined entity is more effecient if its bureaus are large enough to promote inner competition.

In my opinion, divided efforts can produce wayward results, such as if Company A achieves a result 2x faster than B would have, Company B would have to diverge its focus from other departments to stay in the race, or else would have to suffer other losses, having to choose the lesser of two evils.

Inner competition is more friendly, less stressful, and if one department/bureau gets 'ahead of schedule', others would be pressured into catching up, but not in a detrimental way.

Too bad I'm just a theorist, and I don't base this on much. Inner competition really thrives if the single entity is large enough to Utopian-like proportions any-hoo. We will have to settle for our divided efforts, but it suffer from its division.

Re:The "Space Race"

[cdrguru]

Right. But vision and hope aren't a solution. Killing all the folks that oppose the use of reason would however be a step in the right direction.

You cannot reason with someone who has discarded reason. If they are content to stare into their navel, you can ignore them. When the person who has discarded reason decides the world isn't big enough for you and they, you have one choice left: you or they.

We have spent perhaps the last 100 years trying desperately to avoid that conclusion. England tried it with Hitler for a long time. We're now trying it with a bunch of other zealots.

Re:The "Space Race"

[DarkAce911]

The biggest problem is just getting off this rock. Until someone invents anti-gravity we are not going anywhere. there is a reason we are not mining the Asteroid belt right, mainly it is the cost of getting to Geo-sych.

Re:The "Space Race"

[davidsyes]

You know, this got scored and marked as funny, but when I went to read if via my cell phone (sprint, carrier) it was censored. The part that does NOT show up in my phone is:

"want to be sunk? DON'T FUCKING SPY ON FOREIGN NATIONS, then."

Why the fuck is Sprint censoring or editing MY cell-phone reading of a posting having profanity? (Or, is it S/D?, censoring before it gets to the phone, worried that some sensitive kids or squeamish adults might run across profanity on the net?) But, not just the WORD is whited out, the entire portion in quotes is removed. I don't have the quotes in the S/D posting, as you can see, and I have not special characters embedded, either.

I've seen profanity on other sites on the net, so I'm starting to think it might be S/D.
Now, let's see if THIS posting is manipulated.

.. Duck ...

[gentimjs]

Whoa there! You just suggested international cooperation rather than competition! Better duck quick to dodge all the chairs that are going to fly from the nationalism crowd as they call you a communist pinko or whatever.

only one valuable reason to go back there

[ti-coune]

i can see only one valuable reason to go back to the moon: clean all the shit the first comers left behind (golf ball included). Honnestly: is there one planet in the solar system that has not been spoiled by man made stuff yet ? Pluto maybe, but not for long i guess.

Re:only one valuable reason to go back there

[ti-coune]

a flag and a golf ball ? care to browse that list before posting ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_on_the_Moon 170 tons of it and the only artificial objects on the Moon that are still in use are the retroreflectors for the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment left there by Apollo astronauts Actually it's not so much the heaviest equipment that bothers me, difficult to imagine they would have taken it back. But when a guy swings a club and throws a golf ball away, this is highly irrespectuous in my opinion. But then who cares, if it is just a "hunk of rock".

Re:only one valuable reason to go back there

[SIIHP]

I'll worry about it when the natives ask me to clean it up.

Seriously, you sound like a fucking idiot.

IT IS A HUNK OF ROCK. If you can explain why having that stuff there devalues it, apart from being "irrespectuous" then I'm all ears, but you won't be able to so don't bother.

The shit you people pretend is important...

I won't repeat the name the AC called you but he was right.

Want space? Start learning Chinese!

[RealAlaskan]

Repeat after me:

Nie hao ma? (How are you?)
Wo hun hao. (I'm fine.)

Ke bu ke yi wo qui nie de huo jian? (May I go in your rocket?)

Re:Ummm....

[tmosley]

They probably did, as it would be a public relations coup if the US revealed that China DIDN'T reach the moon. Tracking a launching rocket and checking if it was moving at escape velocity on a course towards the moon should be trivial for them. Not to mention that it could probably be tracked by telescopes from anywhere on Earth.

Re:Space Superiority???

[LWATCDR]

What?
Gee what about this Lunar orbiter? http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/lunarorb.html
Take a look at the date.
Yea it was 40 years ago.
Your right it isn't like the US has done anything recently. Like say a mission to the asteroid belt http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=2007-043A
Or a fly by of Mercury http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=2004-030A
Or a mission to Pluto...
But what about the moon?
Well there was at least two missions to the moon in the 1990s Clementine and the Lunar Prospector.
Does it look like China is getting interested in space? Yes.
Seems like you are getting a little worked up with the US just having a 40 year lead at this point.

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.

All your moon base

[josquint]

are belong to us...

Re:All your moon base

[skoaldipper]

Yes, but do they realize it's made of cheddar? Man, I'd like to melt their base down over some Doritos in my microwave for some killer moon nachos. Mmm.

China Changing

[JoeShmoe950]

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?

Re:China Changing

[dbIII]

There are loonies that look back to the "good old days" of the Cold War and want to start another one with China, but I suspect it has got to the point where the Chinese can ignore them and wait for them to be replaced due to encroaching old age. We still see bursts of propaganda from old Nixon cronies that feel unwanted but I don't think much is taken seriously internationally.

They Bought into the Rumor

[Nom du Keyboard]

The Chinese have clearly bought into the rumor that that Moon is absolutely littered with alien technology. Now they want to be the first to bring it back to China, clone it on the cheap with virtual slave labor, paint it with Pb paint, and sell it to the western barbarians.

Re:They Bought into the Rumor

[Mattsson]

No, they trying to find the old US lunar-landers so that they can bring them back and steal all their base!

Hughes beat them to it

[jbeaupre]

Hughes beat them to it by 9 years. Yeah, a private company.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E7D7143EF933A05757C0A96E958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
Kind of cool how they saved a satellite by sending it to the moon. Or if you don't want to count it as Hughes, count it as a Russia-US-Kazakhstan-Hong Kong moon orbiter. And in that sense, this is the second time China is sending an orbiter.

Re:Hughes beat them to it

[vertinox]

Hughes beat them to it by 9 years. Yeah, a private company.

That was Howard Hughes's company. Which basically built the much of the equipment of Apollo landers and the majority of communication satellites today.

Of course when you have WWII military contracts make you the richest man in the America, your private company can rival the size of any corporation today.

So unless you've got a 100 billion dollars to hand out in military contracts, I don't think a private company to pull it off.

The more, the merrier.

[Penguinisto]

Seriously - the US had a chance to do something with the thing in a serious way, but we literally pissed away 35+ YEARS of that opportunity (at least since Apollo 17 returned).

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...

/P

Re:The more, the merrier.

[mh1997]

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...

I'd like to think that when people wish for something, that they were actually working on a solution, but I guess we'll both be dead by the time our thoughts come true.

Wishing and hoping is for marketing, engineers solve problems - except for the ones we create by "fixing" a working design.

Re:The more, the merrier.

[GreggBz]

I wonder where is the public outcry then? We certainly have the resources, and for the most part, NASA does what the government (for the people right) tells it. I think they have done a reasonable job with their ever dwindling resources, their not perfect but their not to blame either.

I try to elect a scientist who cares about these issues to congress, but none of them seem to want to get into politics. Why?

Re:The more, the merrier.

[slashdotlurker]

Isn't it obvious ?
Scientists can't be bothered to spend time and money on intellectually dumb and street smart political consultants who tell them to take version 3456 position on Iraq war, or abortion, or triangulate, etc.
There are some scientists in politics. Congressman Bartlett of Maryland is one (not my congressman, but I like him).
A deeper reason is that our media (I quit my job with the newspaper and am going back to school) are more interested in discussing the size of Anna Nicole Smith's unmentionables than anything that really matters. We deserve the leadership we get. Years of living outside the US has convinced me that we are an incurably provincial and short-sighted people, good natured enough to let every Murdoch or Bush or Clinton fool us and take us for a ride.
While my uncle and his wife are busy having fights with their youngest daughter about what prom dress she is going to wear and precisely how much alcohol is appropriate for her brother to drink, kids in India are busy studying calculus or laboring hard under an afternoon sun to get enough money for their hungry family (in spite of their labor laws). I have no reason to think that China is any different.
We show every sign of a once great people in terminal decline. All great civilizations of the past have fallen by suicide and not murder. Why should our lot be any different ? Our priorities are wrong and getting worse, day by day.

define "technology"

[Quadraginta]

Oh I don't know about that. Seems to me the Chinese are merely proving they can do in 2007 what the Americans and Soviets did in 1966. Indeed, the Chinese are having it way easier, since (1) they don't have to invent the ideas and technology, it already exists, and (2) one of the biggest problems in early space shots was the immense amount of calculation that couldn't be done quickly and in a small machine. That problem has been solved by the development of microprocessors.

Furthermore, you're overlooking many other "technology fronts" that are arguably more exciting. What about networked computing software? Hear of any killer Internet apps (other than viruses) that have come out of China lately? What about biotech? Have the Chinese come up with any novel AIDS or cancer drugs? (Or any AIDS or cancer drugs at all, for that matter.) Where do you expect breakthroughs in treating Alzheimer's to come from? Or how about materials? Boeing is building a composite airplane (the 787 'Dreamliner') that will be 20% more fuel efficient than any other passenger plane in its class. Can the Chinese do that? Nope. Lockheed-Martin is building an air superiority fighter (the F-22) which is fast and stealthy, due in significant part to clever computer-assisted design and new materials. Can the Chinese do that? Nope, not even close.

Even in the space-related front, the Americans have a probe on its way to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt (New Horizons) and another on its way to Mercury orbit (Messenger). They've got 2 spacecraft in orbit around Mars, 2 rovers driving around, a lander on its way, and a bigger rover in the works. Cassini is still sending back marvelous pictures of Saturn. The Space Shuttle is delivering another chunk of ISS this week. NASA is busy with a new crew exploration vehicle (Orion) for lunar or possibly even Martian manned trips. The Americans even now have a private space industry. Virgin Galactic is taking reservations for suborbital flights on Spaceship Two, and Bigelow has put up prototypes of inflatable orbital hotels.

If you compare China and the US in terms of population or GDP, the Chinese ought to be behind the US by at least a bit. But they are way behind. I know it's popular to think they're "catching up," but they're not. They're certainly moving, catching up to where they might have been, had they not indulged in the spectacularly suicidal folly of Communism for 50 years. But you can't forget the US is moving, too, and generally faster. Maybe it's not moving as fast as you'd like it to, but that's a different story.

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:That makes NO sense

[R3d M3rcury]

"Well, if you could do something 40 or 50 years ago, and you can't do it now, that, by definition is slipping."

Fair enough. How about if you could do it 10 years ago?

NASA's Lunar Prospector launched in early 1998 (so a little less than ten years ago today). Are you saying there is no way we could send a satellite to the moon like we did 10 years ago?

Re:That makes NO sense

[DerekLyons]

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.

Then, by your own definition, we aren't behind. Because we do have that capability - and more. Or have you not noticed that not one but _two_ US commercial operations offer launchers off the shelf with the capability of launching a moon probe? (And a third coming on stream any day now.)
 
 

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 guess you haven't noticed the half a dozen planetary probe missions currently flying, and more under construction. Or the multiple probes in LEO, with more of them under construction too... Putting together a moon probe is just a matter of getting someone to sign the checks.
 
 

I own a physics textbook, but that doesn't mean I have any technology -- it means I have the theory.

My old smoker finally rusted through this summer, and I don't have any pork shoulders in my refrigerator anyhow. But I still have the technology - because I can buy a new smoker pretty much any day I want to, and my butcher can deliver a shoulder trimmed to my requirements with about two days notice.
 
 

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.

Nonsense. Two of the biggest are still in the space business (never having left), and not only are a goodly number of the small fry still about (and still in space) - but a whole crop of new small fry have sprung up.
 
 

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.

Boeing is rolling launchers off the assembly line and building satellites even as we type. Hughes is still in the satellites business, and Lockheed is still in both. No need to ramp up - just need somebody to write and sign the checks.
 
 

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.

That, unfortunately, is a belief utterly and completely at odds with the facts.

Re:Space Superiority or what?

[thx1138_az]

OK! Get your tin foil hats ready... Three words: Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. A "space program" is (and was) the technological basis for a full fledged nuclear weapon's delivery system.

But seriously, the technology does transfer over quite nicely. Just maybe???

Objective pictures!

[erroneus]

Perhaps we can get some pictures of the US moon landing hardware left behind on the moon from the Chinese. If they send us pictures THEY took, perhaps we can lay to rest the notion that we never went to the moon at all.

Re:Objective pictures!

[Extremus]

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

So, If they DON'T send the pictures, finally we will prove that anybody has been there, right?

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!

[lee1026]

Not at all. Anyone who is determined to believe that we didn't can just say that the Chinese didn't go either, and forged these pictures.

Re:Objective pictures!

[Anonymous Coward]

The cameras don't have enough resolution to discern the landers. Not that it matters. Even if they did it would be obvious to any dyed-in-the-tin-foil moon-landing-deniers that the landers were photoshopped into the pictures and the alien cities were photoshopped out.

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.

Re:Space Superiority???

[nschubach]

What the "space race" lacked for 40 years was competition...

All empires come and go...

[fantomas]

The USA may be the dominant 'empire' (or world power if you prefer) now but at some point it's very likely it will decline, maybe 5 years, 50 or 500 years from now. History seems to show that dominant powers tend to come and go.

Don't get too upset, accept that this will happen, and spend some time ensuring that the current minor powers who may influence authority over you in years to come will look upon you fondly when they are in the ascendency. I think that would be a valuable lesson to learn from other countries whose empires have come and gone. Some European countries that were world powers seemed to do a better job than others in this regard...

Re:Want space? Start learning Chinese!

[chad_r]

Nie hao ma? Does it really help to speak Chinese with a Russian accent?

At Last! The Start of a Good Red Scare!

[Snowtide]

Maybe if we all scream "commies in space" loud enough the feds will get up and get things rolling again similar to what happened after Sputnik.

I know, the Chinese are not really communist anymore.

And as a nation the U.S. is already in deep, deep red ink from invading Iraq and the ongoing occupation.

But a red scare seems to be the only thing to ever to really jumpstart american space exploration, so I can dream. :)

Re:At Last! The Start of a Good Red Scare!

[cdrguru]

As a nation the US is deep in red ink because we export NOTHING and import everything manufactured with cheap overseas labor. This shows no sign of changing anytime, ever. If anything, we are going to lose more and more manufacturing capability.

This means that we will be owing China and the rest of the low-labor-cost world more than the net worth of the US.

In contrast with this, any pseudo-expenditures within the US itself are irrelevant. It is just taking money out of one pocket and putting in a different one.

Re:At Last! The Start of a Good Red Scare!

[Snowtide]

I was referring to the U.S. income from taxes vs. expenditures rather than balance of trade, but I agree with you the US trade balance is a serious problem that is going to cause us a lot of pain some day.

The Sport Of Great Civilizations

[blueZhift]

One of the marks of a great civilization in these technological times is advanced space capability. So the Chinese and others are going into space for the same reasons the US did decades ago, national pride and to some extent national security. And what better distraction from local problems and lack of political freedom than lunar missions to stir up the bonds of nationalism?

In itself, space exploration is a good thing. But I don't think any of it would be happening without some national/political interest first, followed by commercial interests later. Going just for the science has always been a hard sell. Space exploration is the sport of great civilizations.

Re:Ummm....

[mh1997]

They probably did, as it would be a public relations coup if the US revealed that China DIDN'T reach the moon.

Not only that, China and Russia both had the technology to verify that the USA went to the moon in the late 60's. If you believe the fake moon landing conspiracy wackos, China and Russia knew we faked a moon landing, yet didn't use that for propaganda during the cold war.

Unless that was the plan, they didn't tell on us in exchange for us not telling on them almost 40 years later. It all makes sense now.

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:Want space? Start learning Chinese!

[Guano_Jim]

Ke bu ke yi wo qui nie de huo jian? (May I go in your rocket?)

Bu ke yi.

Wo men mei xu yao mei guo ren. Wo men zuo so you de ni men de dong xi.

Re:Want space? Start learning Chinese!

[RealAlaskan]

Nie hao ma? Does it really help to speak Chinese with a Russian accent?

Without the right tones, pronunciation really doesn't matter.

With the right tones, the pronunciation features we English speakers focus on don't matter much, anyway.

The Chinese are going to be laughing at you anyway, but they'll be pleased that you're trying, and they'll make an effort to communicate. Just learn to write the characters, or even the pinyin (which I've obviously forgotten) and you'll do fine.

Why don't they...

[syntaxeater]

Distribute a pirated copy of America's moon landing?

Re:Why don't they...

[humaniverse]

They may discover a fake story of American's moon landing.

Re:Want space? Start learning Chinese!

[jollyreaper]

Repeat after me:

Nie hao ma? (How are you?)
Wo hun hao. (I'm fine.)

Ke bu ke yi wo qui nie de huo jian? (May I go in your rocket?) Fei-oo - Junk
FAHNG-sheen - Don't worry
gun hoe-tze bee dio-se - Engage in a feces-hurling contest with a monkey
Geo-shung yong-jur goo-jang. Jien-cha yong-chi gong yin. - Life support failure. Check oxygen levels at once.

Oddly enough, all of these phrases are appropriate when flying Chinese rockets, particularly the one about the monkey.

competition test more designs

[peter303]

The first space-plane (US shuttle) did not live up to all its predictions of economical reusability. China is using a modified Soyuz as atarting point. The US is goinf back to that type of model. We probably learned more from variety than if Russia had switched to the space-plane spin-off.

Re:Want space? Start learning Chinese!

[kj_in_ottawa]

So how do you say in Chinese: I'm sorry I moderated you -1 overated, I meant +1 funny, but my chubby fingers had a mouseing accident. Would somneone make sure jolly reapers Karma and mine both get the appropriate adjustment.

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:Want space? Start learning Chinese!

[jollyreaper]

So how do you say in Chinese: I'm sorry I moderated you -1 overated, I meant +1 funny, but my chubby fingers had a mouseing accident. Would somneone make sure jolly reapers Karma and mine both get the appropriate adjustment. You mean your gorram fingers had a typing accident. Stick with the theme here.

Heres a stupid question and observation

[lordmage]

If the US is the only space society to visit the Moon itself. Did the not USA claim the Moon as part of its territory? If so, would not China or India landing there without permission be an act of War?

Space Wars: Where Lunar wars is just not enough!

Re:Pissed away? Seriously: No.

[blueturffan]

No mod points, but for that post, I will mark you as a friend.

Well done!

Hmmm.

[WindBourne]

First off, there are no plans for the saturn. In fact, NASA had to go study one of the spares sometime ago to figure things out. Secondly, your engineering friend is clueless. We have the ability to fab currently. We do a lot of it. What we do not do, is cheap fabing. For that, you go elsewhere. But rockets are NOT built on cheap fabs. They are built on high quality machines. And as to an inability to build it, well, I suggest you go look at scaled composites, Spacex, spacedev, armadillo, and even new shepard, as well as Boeing AND l-mart. We are building plenty of rockets . In fact, we launch more in less than a year than China does in 5.

And since you got the previous stuff so wrong, well, then I will tell you that your ISS comment is way off. Why? Because it allowed us to do a number of things. It taught us to work with other countries. In fact, NASA has disseminated a load of information to Russia, Canada, and Europe. What did we get in return? We have learned how to survive in close space. That has been hard. It was hard for USSR/Russia with Mir. It is hard for the ISS. We have also learned about what works and what does not work. Now, I know that kids like you say the same thing. But lessons are not always about what works, but many times are about what does not work. America, and the world, assumed that Russia had all the knowledge about building and surviving. Have you seen how well their oxygen generator has done? It has not been bad, but not great either. Likewise, the computer malfunction was interesting to note. New approachs have been designed at NASA and RSA because of these 2 items. Likewise, the construction of the ISS lead to transhab, which lead to bigelow. Bigelow will end up building not only local space stations, but will be used for transportation to the moon AND mars, as well as surface buildings on both luna and mars. Yes, the ISS has been far more expensive than it should have been. It is also not in the orbit that it should be. And finally, if we are really going to make it extremely useful, we need to bring up the CAM. But this has been about crawling, before walking. And all this info is going well beyond NASA. It is also going to scaled composites, Spacex, spacedev, armadillo, etc.

If you buddy is a real engineer, then tell him to find a new line of work.

Re:Hmmm.

[DerekLyons]

First off, there are no plans for the saturn.

That's a common myth. It's also wrong, as we *do* have the plans for the Saturn.

Re:Hmmm.

[WindBourne]

No, it really is true. The problem with projects like that, is that we have blueprints, but they typically were not quit correct. When practice takes over, parts are adjusted. IOW, the builder becomes part of the plan, and rarely is that fed back to the blueprints. So what would happen is that from the current plans, we build the parts, then try to assemble them. We would find that they do not work quite right, so go back and re-build with slight differences. You will find that lots of projects that are older than 2 decades are like that. For example Boeing's 747-100 ( and the pratt-whitney engines who was the same builder of the F1). They had the blueprints for the parts. But when first assembled, parts did not fit correctly. That is why back in the 60's and 70's, it took multiple years, builds, and test to bring something to market. Now, you look at the 787, and once it has a maiden flight (i.e. assembled totally for the first time), they will be in full production within 3 months. Yes, technically, from a businessman's POV, we have the "plans", but from an engineering POV, they would have to be redone.

Re:Hmmm.

[DerekLyons]

Wow. Just wow. That has to be one of the most nonsensical and logic free posts I've ever read.

Re:Want space? Start learning Chinese!

[markbt73]

Yet another reason to watch Firefly .

Re:Want space? Start learning Chinese!

[gstoddart]

Bu ke yi.

Wo men mei xu yao mei guo ren. Wo men zuo so you de ni men de dong xi.

Get bigger rocket.

Women love big rockets. Women will love you if you buy our "big rocket" pills, only $9.95.

(I abjectly apologize to any actual Chinese speakers, I have no idea what any of that says. :-P)

Cheers

Emperor - President - Chairman - all failed.

[NekoYasha]

the spectacularly suicidal folly of Communism for 50 years.

It's more like 500 years. The Imperial Chinese government of Qing and classical Chinese philosophy were oblivious, or even hostile, to modern technology, as it conflicts with the ideologies and the reign of Qing. That's why China has been stalled from developing technology for so long.

To quote Joseph Needham (via Wikipedia):

Needham argued, and most scholars agreed, that cultural factors prevented these Chinese achievements from developing into what could be called "science".

The Republic and the People's Republic (before the "reform" that started in the 1980s) didn't do well on tech either. Before the reform, the Party-led People's Republic only embraced Soviet technologies. Nor did the Republic had the ability to develop technologies until the civil war was over and they retreated to Taiwan (which gave them a head start).

Re:Want space? Start learning Chinese!

[NekoYasha]

Dui4 bu4 qi3 wo3 gei3 ni3 ping2 le -1 guo4 gao1 de fen1, wo3 ben3 xiang3 ping2 +1 you3 qu4 de, dan4 shi4 wo3 de shou3 bu4 xiao3 xin1 hua2 le yi2 xia4. You3 shei2 ke3 yi3 que4 bao3 jolly reaper de Karma he2 wo3 de dou1 de2 dao shi4 dang1 de tiao2 zheng3 ma1?

(Not 100% a word-to-word translation.)

Re:Want space? Start learning Chinese!

[NekoYasha]

Aww, I did a literal translation when I could have gone for a satirical comment...

Oh, I just remembered that I have 5 mod points now, and if I didn't post in this thread, I could have modded you guys up. ^______^

Re:Want space? Start learning Chinese!

[NekoYasha]

Translation of this:

Cannot.

We no need Americans. We make your all stuff.

A more sane translation would be "wo men bu xu yao mei guo ren. ni men de suo you dong xi dou shi wo men zhi zao de."

The fascination is.... Helium 3

[Joce640k]

Helium 3 could solve the worlds energy problems, the only place to get it is the moon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3

If China could be in a position to sell He3 to the USA they'd be far richer than the oil magnates.

Re:The fascination is.... Helium 3

[camperdave]

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.

Re:If you listen hard enough....

[fbjon]

Are you saying they've been actively trying for 40 years? Hardly.

You are a VERY confused boy

[WindBourne]

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. China's largest rocket will lift 12000KG to LEO Delta 4 will take 25,800 kg to LEO. Not really certain how you figure that America is behind Japan or China in tech? We have a space station in orbit. We regularly space walk. China will do its first space walk late next year (late 2008). It will be followed up with its first station (just a copy of the USSR stations from the 60) in over 3 years (2010).

BTW, All of our rocket equipment is made here in America (save some of the resold rockets use russian parts). Parts of the ISS are produced in other countries, but that was the deal. AND if you examine the new private rockets that are up and coming, well, they are not from china.

Re:You are a VERY confused boy

[bornwaysouth]

Ok, I'll accept that Delta 4 lifts twice as much.

But the Chinese have not announced their plans. Testosterone is a remarkably heavy molecule. If they cunningly send Chinese women to the moon, then than halves the weight.

Course, they'd have to be careful that none of them were blond.

Re:Want space? Start learning Chinese!

[dbIII]

"In English and German I know how to count down.

And I'm learning Chinese" said Werner Von Braun.

Considering they invented the rocket...

[camperdave]

So the Chinese have caught up to where we were in 1961.

Yeah. And it's only taken them 800 years.

it is an achievement, but not as great at all

[Teriblows]

america and the soviets when we did this feat actually were on the cutting edge of possibility. things were unknown and had to be discovered, even our computers were pretty laughable by todays standards. the chinese are basically following in a trail that has been blazed by others, it is a much easier path to follow, let alone 40 years on with todays technology and computing power at their disposal.

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