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China's First Lunar Satellite Sends Back Pictures
Fantastic Lad writes "Chinese leaders hailed images sent back from the country's first lunar satellite on Monday, saying they showed their nation had thrust itself into the front ranks of global technological powers. China plans to launch its third manned rocket, Shenzhou VII, into space in October 2008 and may send an astronaut on a space walk, a Shanghai paper said. But a space official downplayed plans to put a man on the moon."There are no plans at the moment to send anyone on to the moon. I've heard of foreign reports which say China will put a man on the moon by 2020, but I don't know of such a plan," said Sun Laiyan, head of the China National Space Administration. "Please don't give us any more pressure. But I'm confident one day we'll put an astronaut on the moon," he told a news conference."
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Congradulations! Science has no political boundaries. I just hope they are willing to share their results, much like we and the ESA has.
That was quite a while ago. It was probably blown away by the wind. Who knows where it is now.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Ok, the US put a man on the moon in a really short span of time. We even got a whole flurry to repeat the trip in the following years. So why is it that we can't seem to get anything done with that level of efficiency again? Yes I know there is the lack of money which is a huge problem but you might think that NASA would spend what they could on getting someone exceedingly charismatic to work Congress for the dough.
If NASA were to start hyping themselves up again (and not relying on past glories), we could really start to see some great achievements coming out of those brilliant people again.
Which brings us to China. This new endeavor is a point of pride for the country and its government much like it was for us 40 years ago. I'm actually going to root for China in the hope that it will get we Americans to start looking back into space.
Ahh yes, lunar wind. Another glorious American discovery!
And the US was only 5 years behind the Soviets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_3
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Well going on the moon shouldn't be to hard for China, all they have to do is put a chinese over a chinese over a chinese over a ...
I'm disappointed that the images aren't censored.
Dude, get your joke-meter fixed. One of the we-didn't-go-to-the-moon conspiracy theory pieces of evidence was the flag "blowing" in the "wind" on film.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
We are sending satellites to the far reaches of the solar system and beyond. We have rovers exploring Mars as we speak, which send back spectacular pictures and have performed far beyond the original specifications. We have a telescope in space that monitors distant galaxies. We have intercepted and collected samples from a comet. I fail to see why it is big news when the Chinese replicate a feat that was done nearly half a century ago by two other countries, one of which has sent humans there multiple times using computers less powerful than some people's cell phones. Are they also going to tell their people they were the first ones there and everything else is "Capitalist Propaganda"?
The reason is that once out of the earth's gravity well, it is the same diff to get to one place or another (assuming that time does not matter, such as for cargo). OTH, to land on mars, we can use the atmosphere to slow down the craft (via parachutes or even with wings). OTH, the moon will require a FULL LANDER all the way down. Of course, take off is much easier from the moon, but in terms of simply putting something on the surface, mars IS easier.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Which were faked to begin with!
"once out of the earth's gravity well, it is the same diff to get to one place or another"
/landing module for any Mars mission will be far larger than that required for a Moon mission (it's got to contend with the fact that there IS an atmosphere for a start), and (d) entry speed for a Mars mission is massively higher than a Moon landing due to the fact that you have to be going so much faster just to get to Mars in any 'reasonable' time frame.
A journey of a few days vs. a journey of a few weeks (insanely optimistic) to eighteen months (far more realistic.) If one of your success criteria is having live astronauts at the end of the trip then I'm putting my money on the latter being the one that's orders of magnitude harder.
"to land on mars, we can use the atmosphere to slow down the craft"
(a) Mars' atmosphere is very thin, (b) its gravity is far higher than the moon, (c) the crew capsule
Handling a Mars orbital insertion and landing is hugely more technically challenging than a Moon landing for all of those reasons, and more. The science and engineering behind designing parachutes that could slow a capsule down to landing speeds alone is daunting. Don't forget that due to (a) they have to be enormous compared to parachutes used on the Earth, and they have to open in such a way that the mechanical stresses don't tear them or turn the capsule occupants into paté.
The Moon is easy in comparison. There's no atmosphere to worry about so the lander was delicate and above all light, and the Moon's gravity is low enough that you can gently touch down using just a single moderately powered descent engine.
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
Oh, I agree with you entirely. There are three methods currently in use for slowing spaceships down, but unfortunately they all have their own quite serious down-sides.
The most common is atmospheric breaking, but as mentioned before that has issues with how thing Mars' atmosphere is, how heavy the entry vehicle has to be due to the stresses involved and the added weight of the chutes and heat shield, and how difficult it is considering the extreme speeds involved in a Mars insertion.
You can use orbital dynamics to slow yourself down. This is typically done on missions to the outer planets, but unfortunately takes much longer than a direct insert due to the additional orbits and manouvers needed to complete deceleration. This is a big problem for any manned mission.
Finally you can just flip your ship 180 degrees and fire the main engines in a deceleration burn. This is effective, but means that you have to take twice as much fuel with you as you'd otherwise need. This is a BIG issue for any future Mars missions, as we don't yet know how we're going to drag the bare minimum of what we need over that distance and time period.
It's a very interesting set of engineering problems that we still need to solve for Mars missions. I hope that we keep working at them until we find solutions.
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
A colony on the moon is the first step towards a manned Mars mission as learning how to survive on an alien surface for long periods of time is a major part of learning how to properly execute such a mission. We didn't just launch Apollo 11 in one shot and land; we had the entire Gemini and and four manned Apollo missions to work out all the details (Long term flight, EVA, rendezvous, docking etc) before making the actual moon landing attempt. In fact, the space station(s) have been excellent in educating us on how to have multi-month/year missions which will also be beneficial in a mission to Mars.
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