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."

Comments

Re:That's weird

[CastrTroy]

That was quite a while ago. It was probably blown away by the wind. Who knows where it is now.

Why the LONG timelines?

[onetwentyone]

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.

Re:Why the LONG timelines?

[SailorSpork]

When we put a man on the moon, we were spurred to catch up & beat the USSR's Sputnik, which frankly shocked the crap out of the US. By 1965, Kennedy had ballooned NASA's budget from $500 million to $5.2 billion (or 5.3% of GDP), which meant that about 1 in 19ish US jobs were geared to the moon landing. Our budget as a % of GDP is back down to 0.58% of GDP. If we want to do something fast again, we'll need to pump in more money from somewhere.
 
Another problem with "going back" is that so many people worked on it that are now old or dead that we have no real working knowledge of how we did it or how to do it again (not to mention the vast tech changes), so we'd be starting over basically from scratch.

Re:Why the LONG timelines?

[AsnFkr]

1. Building public hype to go *back* to the moon is much harder than building hype to be the first to ever go.

2. No cold war. We are not currently afraid of another countries technological abilities, so we have no need to showboat ours. This was a big issue with both Congress and the public in the 60's.

3. The general public isn't interested in patriotism unless it has to do with winning a war or putting a yellow ribbon magnet on their cars next to the Dale Earnhardt memorial. And even then, most people nowadays seem to hate the current war.

4. The benefits of space development are not 100% crystal clear to the general public.

5. The first time we went to the moon that was 100% (or very close to) NASA's only objective. This means they had a larger percentage of their funding to throw in that direction. Now they have many other projects that need funding as well. In other to continue to operate these other operations it's a bit of a trade off in the time it will take to develop the new equipment for another moon shot.

Re:43 years after USA did this

[AsnFkr]

And the US was only 5 years behind the Soviets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_3

ain't that hard...

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ...

Disappointed

[Vampyre_Dark]

I'm disappointed that the images aren't censored.

Confused

[lightsaber777]

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"?

Re:Confused

[Quiet_Desperation]

And a successful lander on fricken' Titan. Everyone seems to forget that one, which I personally think kicks the ass of every other space endeavor out there. That was international cooperation at its best: American spacecraft and ESA lander.

Re:Confused

[cozziewozzie]

The fact that the US, Europe and the USSR have done it countless times and China hasn't is exactly the reason why this is seen as important news.

It means that China is catching up very fast with the other space powers. It means China is capable of launching satelites without help, which has military consequences.

It means their technology is catching up with the West's, which has all sorts of impact on the society. Remember the outsourcing woes where cheap jobs are lost to the third world? If China becomes a technology superpower instead of just a cheap labour superpower, this will have great economic consequences. These projects clearly show that there are people in there capable of great technological feats.

It also opens possibilities for scientific cooperation in the future, like the one between the NASA and the ESA.

It could also affect the funding of NASA, ESA, etc, more than their own (interesting and scientifically relevant) missions can.

There are many reasons why this is interesting. For one, when the first lunar missions were taking place, China was a mostly illiterate country barely subsisting on farming, with no industry to speak of. Now they're sending people into space. There is a new kid on the block, and that is interesting.

Re:Nah

[Beorytis]

Which were faked to begin with!

Re:Actually, it is easier to go to mars, than the

[Mindwarp]

"once out of the earth's gravity well, it is the same diff to get to one place or another"

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 /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.

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.