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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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: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