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China Aims To Build World's Largest Rocket
hackingbear writes "Back in March, China revealed it is studying the feasibility of designing the most powerful carrier rocket in history for making a manned moon landing and exploring deep space, according to Liang Xiaohong, vice head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology. The rocket is envisaged to have a payload of 130 tonnes, five times larger than that of China's current largest rocket. This rocket, if built, will eclipse the 53 tonne capacity of the planned Falcon 9 Heavy from SpaceX. It will even surpass the largest rocket ever built, the 119-tonne Saturn V. China's next generation rocket Long March 5, currently scheduled to debut in 2014, has a payload capacity of 25 tonnes to LEO."
Trying to compensate for something China?
Anyone know the cost/weight? Absolute capacity is nice but dammit I'm not getting my trip to moon at these prices.
SpaceX and NASA are studying the possibility of a 150 ton payload class heavy lift launcher, based on SpaceX Falcon technology. NASA Studies Scaled-Up Falcon, Merlin
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Ah yes, but this might be what the US needs in the way of a kick up the arse to improve it's space programs. We should have been on Mars ten years ago. A new space race should be healthy for the world again. I want to see an orbiting construction station or something considerably bigger than the ISS. We have the technology, but no real desire/need to do it.
The Annihilatrix cost 20 billion.
What's the point of going to Mars? All you can do is walk around and then, if you're lucky, leave again.
that's made in China.... is funding this rocket
http://www.moonsociety.org/whitepapers/moonreturn_positionpaper.html
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Mr. President, I'm afraid we have a missile gap!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
will the fireworks be visible from the other side of the Pacific?
There's no point in people being on earth either. We just are.
Stick Men
A Soviet design or a US design?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Kind of reminds me of Obama's state of the union 2011. The new "sputnik moment may not be that far off... can you say "permanent self-sufficient moonbase", and maybe with a good deal of ingenuity and ambition a dockyard for deep space exploration using moon resources?
If they actually manage to pull such a feat despite naysayers just watch the US struggle to catch up.
Exactly. There's no point in sending people to Mars either.
The Earth is already terraformed, so we might as well stay here.
Also, I don't buy your claims that we can easily reach Mars, and/or basically terraform it for free. And even if we could, there's not much to be gained in doing so.
You left out the best part, only 0.05 ppm of the upper lunar regolith is helium-3, not like there is a concentrated "ore" to mine. However, we do have two materials with tensile strength sufficient for space elevators, carbon nanotube and boron nitride nanotube, the trivial difficulties in fabrication into space elevators are left as exercise for student 8D
<1492>
What's the point of going to America? All you can do is walk around and then, if you're lucky, leave again.
</1492>
We now get rid of 2000 dissidents one time!
This is not about a paid moon trip but about a states ambitions to power itself from a backwater nation to a world power.
So money is not counted in a way that makes sense on a small individual scale. It is not like if the claim is made that it costs 1 billion dollar that Bill Gates could buy 6 rocket developments. And as to what it is worth. Well, what is GPS worth? The US launched it with tax payers money and the research leading up to it also was payed by the tax payer, but at what total cost and for what total benefit? Even foreign benefit?
The press likes to print big numbers because simple people think money at this level still is real. But government has one advantage business doesn't have. It gets to take back a lot of your salary right at the start and then often also a large portion whenever you spend. So even a simple salary isn't exactly the same as it is for normal business.
Suffice it to say, a lot, no it won't break China's bank and no, you can't fly on it. But the real cost to the US will be that China has a manned space program and the US won't. And that is something the Chinese might find very amusing.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Why bothering going to Mars when man is busy Marsiforming Terra.
In the event you're lucky enough to be on Mars when an extinction level event happens on Earth, you have the benefit of getting to continue to live (if self-sufficiency has occurred by then).
Going to America was a billion times cheaper, and you didn't have to leave. Instead, you could claim a piece of land, and live there more comfortably than the place you came from.
The point of Mars is: it is the only planet in the Solar System we can easy reach and basically terraform for free with our current technology.
Terraform Mars. Yeah, right. Mars barely has an atmosphere, less than 1% of Earth's pressure. It's mostly CO2. Enough to blow sand around, not enough to be useful.
Cheaper than on the Moon? Using Phlebotinum I presume?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It would be simpler and cheaper to protect yourself from such an extinction event right here on earth, than to build a self-sufficient society on Mars.
and how many China astronauts will die in testing and how much will be covered up
Of course, just like the first race for the moon, much of this is about national pride, so maybe the Chinese want the biggest booster just for bragging rights. Some things never change.
Why is Snark Required?
Could this be China's final solution to its population crisis?
Life's a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
In 1492 sailing to America from Europe was about like going to the moon, today...
Sir, I think you're overly optimistic to think we can defend ourselves from everything. We can't even fix our own damn problems (i.e. climate change).
Then read here: http://www.marssociety.org/ Or read the red mars, blue mars green mars novels. Or: just think about how you would do it, lol. It is *that simple* angel'o'sphere
That simple? If you actually looked at "Red Mars" carefully, he lives in a "Star Trek" world of virtually infinite resources. Need a nuclear reactor? Just drop ship a Rickover. Need compressed gasses? Just drop ship a 737 with a bunch of compressors. It's great science fiction - it broad brushes little details like money, and especially later, the ability to create extremely complex high technology items from robotic factories. It would probably work out better if we figured out those little issues here as opposed to there. Hell, we aren't really at the level of technology that we would need to be to bolt the Ares together. Construction in outer space is slow, tricky and dangerous.
Yes we can get better. If the Chinese are trying to do it then great, we can come from behind like usual (insert tasteless joke here). But the Mars Trilogy is not yet an instructional video.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Uh no, humans had been sailing for quite a long time at that point.
The point of Mars is: it is the only planet in the Solar System we can easy reach and basically terraform for free with our current technology.
Terraform Mars. Yeah, right. Mars barely has an atmosphere, less than 1% of Earth's pressure. It's mostly CO2. Enough to blow sand around, not enough to be useful.
The main problem is the lack of a magnetosphere, isn't it. Actually, now that I say this I have a distinct memory of googling this, and getting a bunch of 'internet ideas' on how to make one for Mars. In other words : nonsense.
In 1492 sailing to America from Europe was about like going to the moon, today...
Except America had abundant resources, shared the same atmosphere, gravity, and temperature?
They had to have a project to use the money they saved from the (now illegal) time machine program..
-- Don't call me "Sir," I increase entropy for a living!
Yeah, exactly like goin to the moon. There was no food or water there when you got there and you would be killed by radiation.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Sir, I think you're overly optimistic to think we can defend ourselves from everything. We can't even fix our own damn problems (i.e. climate change).
Sir, worry not! I have a diamondonium sphere which will defend you from any attack. Also a gun of some sort.
yrs, etc
gilleain
Ah, but it's the CHINESE doing it this time. They will fly up, and then paint the moon red with cheap labour.
Then the US will HAVE TO resurrect the lunar program, to go up and write "Coca Cola" on the red moon.
*** Recycling old Jokes since 1970 ***
This is the best comment in the thread; possibly ever.
Earth is being slowly de-terraformed. It is also overpopulated, and it is in humanity's nature to expand.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
Venerforming is what results from greenhouse emissions.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
The Soviet Union produced th biggest rocket ever, bigger than any the US ever produced (and bigger than SpaceX's new "biggest ever"). Financing its space race in competition with the US was the final stroke that killed the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the US is devolving launches into what will be a healthy industry serving global customers, but by US rules.
I like the way this story looks to develop. Because I'm an American who wants to beat China in a race that takes us all into space.
--
make install -not war
I read that in Farnsworth's voice ;)
"Good news everyone!"
Adapting to the climate change on Earth is easier than adapting to the climate of Mars.
And defending against huge extinction events (assuming we'd even care), isn't going to be easy, but I'm pretty sure it's easier than trying to escape to Mars. Don't forget we don't have to defend everybody. Put a few thousand people in a big bunker inside a mountain, for example. No doubt that's cheaper than putting the same people in a self-sufficient habitat on Mars.
Yeah, exactly like goin to the moon. There was no food or water there when you got there and you would be killed by radiation.
I see you've read my novel "Christopher Columbus and the Hordes of Radioactive Zombie Indians", then?
No, that is an internet myth or in other words an urban legend.
Yes, Mars has only a neglectible small magnetosphere, but that has nothing to do with the atmosphere, hint: see Venus.
I fail to parse this sentence, you googled and found nonsense? I'm sorry for you.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
While this is correct, the main problem is only temperature. Raise it by a few degrees and all the CO2 frozen at the poles is released.
Melt the water and you have even more pressure. Start producing hydro carbons and you easy get the pressure to 10% earth level. THEN: you automatically have effects releasing the bound O2 from the "soil" and at that pressure levels you dont need an 28% oxygen atmosphere to breath but only like 12% - 15%.
See: http://www.marssociety.org/
Dr. Robert Zubrin is working on ways how to perform this since over 50 years.
Albeit not very well known all majour problems are solved, "Earth" only lacks the will to do it. No problem in 50 years the Chinese will start without us.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
China's space program makes pronouncements like this all the time, but they don't yet have the ability to make things like this happen. Heck, just the other day personnel from China's aerospace organization said that they were confounded by SpaceX's price/kg and unable to compete with it:
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=space&id=news/asd/2011/04/15/11.xml&headline=China%20Great%20Wall%20Confounded%20By%20SpaceX%20Prices
Heck, SpaceX has designs for both 125 and 140 tonne vehicles, but it doesn't mean it plans on building them before it makes economic sense.
Overpopulation ? The Gobi desert is still mostly empty, last time I looked, as is the Australian outback, the Sahara, Antarctica, Greenland, and our oceans. All of those areas are much more hospitable than the surface of Mars. There's more room too. Don't forget Mars is a lot smaller than the Earth.
Besides, you can't fix overpopulation by going to Mars. How many people are born on Earth every minute, and how many could you realistically send to Mars ? Not enough to make a difference.
Yes, but the point of a magnetosphere is that it prevents earth-creature destroying radiation from...well...you know, destroying earth creatures. The size of the atmosphere is meaningless if the radiation will kill you. Maybe you are RadiationMan, able to eat radioactive isotopes others would choke on, able to leap over piles of plutonium far beyond the ability of mortal man...who, disguised as Atom Smasher, an obscure disc jockey who sometimes fronted an Indianapolis band called Pure Funk in the '70s, laughs hysterically at brain destroying particulate matter dispensed regularly by that big friendly star in the sky we know as The Sun.
So what do we lack? ... or what ever you want to define as base, culture, willpower, vision ... whatever.
Ofc we are on that level of technology. We where on the moon. 40 years ago, or?
It is not a matter of "technology" it is a matter of resources, organization, will, money, etc.
In an synchronous earth orbit it does not matter how long the actual construction needs, it does not matter how many lifters need to start to bring the parts up. A synchron orbit is perhaps not best, but high enough that you have no atmosphere drag is enough.
All problems we have are barely engineering problems, not technology. And beyond engineering it is money
Keep in mind the ISS got assembled in space.
Ofc the novels are science fiction. But the novel basically starts with our tech level.
We have infinite resources, we only make them artificially scarse. Do you really think the earth can run out of iron? Do you have an idea how incredible big our coal reserves right now are? Sure Gold, well, we only can mine a swimming pool full every year, oki, Uranium only lasts for a bout 1000 years, some think 10,000.
But no, the earth has no resource problem, it has political problems and from that coming distribution problems.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Hm, being such a radio man would at least be funny. Until you go with your new spouse into the cinema ofc and al complain about your glowing :-/ ;D
angel'o'sphere
P.S. you are ofc partly right but only partly
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
No, that is an internet myth or in other words an urban legend. Yes, Mars has only a neglectible small magnetosphere, but that has nothing to do with the atmosphere, hint: see Venus.
Haha! "Hint", yes. Oh my : how cutting. Yes, I can see Venus - probably even through a telescope if I tried. I expect that the highly poisonous atmosphere of Venus is something to aim for when settling Mars.
I fail to parse this sentence, you googled and found nonsense? I'm sorry for you.
angel'o'sphere
Don't be patronising - it's annoying. Let me be more clear : badly written webpages describing how to restart the spin of Mars' magnetic core are not the same thing as methods that are feasible within realistic energy, cost, and resource constraints. Furthermore, sci-fi novels, no matter how entertaining they are (the Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy was very good) are not actual predictions of the future. Of course you know that; I'm just reminding you...
Learn more about interplanetary colonization and the technology needed. It would be nice to have less eggs in this basket we call earth.
Realistically speaking though? It's mostly my inner nerd wanting to see it happen rather than it being something practical...
That's assuming there'd be a mountain left to hide in.
Sir, I think you're overly optimistic to think we can defend ourselves from everything. We can't even fix our own damn problems (i.e. climate change).
plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
I have read, extensively. The technology is vastly beyond what we have right now. I think it's much more reasonable to stay put on Earth until genetic engineering improves or the human body is merged with machines, which even those skeptical of Kurzweil-esque Singularity talk could see happening within a century. Then, colonizing space will be much easier.
Or instead of colonizing space, we could lock ourselves into a virtual reality here on Earth, which many thinkers believe would be just as fulfilling for the human race in the long term. Or we could decide that propagation of the human race is no longer desirable and voluntarily go extinct.
There are several paths open and I don't understand why trying to colonize space right this minute is so imperative.
The machines described at the beginning of Red Mars which can essentially transmute matter without complication are more or less fictional. Sure, they might be feasible in the future (Red Mars opens in 2024), but they are beyond our tech level. The spacefaring in the novel also depended on a large amount of empty hulls left in orbit over the previous two decades, which hasn't even started.
Lol
parsing your posts is indeed difficult.
You know: Venus has no magnet field (magnetosphere is only a stupid complicated new word which makes no sense) just like Mars. Venus has a a high pressure very dense CO2 atmosphere, just like Mars. ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H while Mars has a very low density CO2 atmosphere. Nothing is really poisoning there.
If you found brain dead google results suggestion to "reactivate the magnetosphere of Mars" than I feel with you. That indeed is an insult to a humans brain.
I'm glad you liked those stories though. I got a bit lost at the part where they talked about losing their memories due to aging and side effects of the anti aging medicals.
Hey, btw: I did talk about atmosphere for terraforming, not magnetosphere. Magnetosphere is irrelevant ... Mars is far far farer out from the sun than Earth ...
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
That machine must be missing in my book.
Sorry, or I dont remember it correctly. OTOH I red a german translation (one of the last SF novels I bought as german translations ... )
Sorry for overlapping answers to different posts, ofc, the novel assumes stuff we did not do.
But keep in mind the shuttle program was originally ment to leave the extra large fuel tanks in orbit in a parking position for later use to assemble mars vessels and ISS like stations.
However that got later scratched.
E.g. look at this to see what is easy doable with our days technology: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Viva el Consumismo!
Besides, you have to ask yourself what kind of product you would be able to manufacture locally, that would benefit from electricity, and clean energy, and where the profit would pay for the huge setup and shipping costs.
Most likely, this product can be replaced by something that's a little easier to make - in China.
I am very glad that you are so supportive of the space conquering efforts of our new/old Chinese overlords.
There will a special place in the "consuming lines" for you and your progeny once everything starts being imported from the People's Republic of Yueliang.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
the Chinese have something to offer
That's engineering effort, or man power, or what you would call cheap labor. I think if China and American could work as one nation, humans could be on the Mars a lot sooner.
I much preferred Rainbow Mars, it didn't have so many damn escarpments.
But I agree, while the Robinson trilogy was great read (escarpments aside) there was a lot of reliance on super genius to fill plot gaps. Extended age developed on Mars, not Earth? You would think them a bit busy just staying feed for that to happen. It was a good discussion of the various ways Mars could be terraformed and one of the more popular series to take an extended look at what may be required for a colonisation. It's sci-fi, and it got a lot of people dreaming, job fulfilled. Clarke didn't have all the science needed to get a bird up to geosync, but he did get the right people thinking about it.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
... to travel back in time! :D :D
...to get the last humans to Utopia!
You might not have noticed s/he said "Anti-Asian" comment. Apparently s/he considers "Asian" as a single race, so that "Asian American" is a concept to build on.
The Earth nutters just bitch and complain about nothing.
Mars is a one way / long term trip with a lot of stuff that needs to be worked on. Even for 1 way you need to have a lot stuff worked out so people are just not stuck there to die if things go wrong.
In manufacturing, there is something called the "learning curve". As you run a production line and optimize how you do things, you learn to do it faster and cheaper. But one thing Boeing learned is production below 2 units a month did not produce a learning curve. People were not doing the tasks often enough, and *forgot* between repetitions when they were more than two weeks apart.
For a conventional rocket that climbs from the ground, they all have the same amount of atmosphere to push through. The drag is produced per square meter of frontal area, so you want a certain amount of mass of rocket per unit area to keep the drag losses within reason. That's why most rockets are around 50-100m tall. Once drag is taken care of, you get more efficient by going closer to spherical tanks. So rockets tend to get fatter once they are tall enough.
So at the lower payload limit you are bound by efficient shape for the rocket, and at the upper limit you want to launch often enough to learn from experience. In between will be the optimal size for lowest launch cost.
I think you over estimate how easy it is to "just do engineering". It takes immense resources and thus immense political will. Yes, bolting something like the Ares really is feasible given purely technologic contstraints but the ISS is just a toy compared to the tech needed to get something like the Ares built and out of earth orbit. We understand the physics OK, the nuts and bolts not so much. We have never built anything in orbit that has been stressed like a Mars orbiter would be. It would be rather embarrassing to have the thing fall apart as soon as you try and get it into Mars orbit.
But it's all science fiction unless we spend the money and the time. That is why as space loving Americans (or Brits or Germans or Indians or whomever) should privately applaud the Chinese for their efforts and publicly complain loudly of our booster gap.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
We spend a minuscule amount of human effort on space exploration. I like to think we should go to Mars because we can. To prove to ourselves that we can. NASA's budget is just shy of $20 billion and 'we' spend at least 5 times that much on fast food. Considering what we've accomplished so far with so little effort I fail to understand why so many people fight it. We waste so much on other things is it really that awful if we waste a tiny amount to climb a mountain?
...from all those instructional videos from 1950s about living on Mars - weren't there supposed to be domes over human habitations for first couple of generations anyway?
You know, radiation or no radiation, Mars ain't exactly t-shirt and shorts climate.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Besides, you can't fix overpopulation by going to Mars. How many people are born on Earth every minute, and how many could you realistically send to Mars ? Not enough to make a difference.
Did people living in USA and Australia today all come from Europe? Are those two technologically advanced countries?
Colonization is not about exodus, you know? It is about populating an area, preferably one rich in exploitable resources.
Also, there is nothing really there to fix regarding overpopulation. You know... kinda the way nothing needs fixing about unicorns.
But you know what there is on Mars? A basket.
Not really big one, not really safe one... but a spare basket none the less. And one that we could spit-shine into a much better basket with a bit of elbow-grease.
And then we would have two really nice baskets - plus all the basket spit-shining tech we came up with in the process.
Just all the Hobbit-tech (there and back again) is worth the trip or two, not to mention A WHOLE FUCKING PLANET for us.
And by us, I mean us. Not you. You just lost your chance. Along with your Nazi friends you will have your face melted off while we go to Mars and beyond.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Except America had abundant resources, shared the same atmosphere, gravity, and temperature?
In 1624 Capt. John Smith published a list of supplies he thought absolutely essential for every immigrant to Virginia.
Everything needed to keep your family warm, dry, housed, clothed and fed for at least a year. Harvests fail. The fishing in poor. Winters are cold.
The supply ship is lost at sea. Never assume you can live off the land. John Smith's Bill: Then & Now
China has a lot of problems that need solving, yet like Korea or Iran they spend tons of money on all this grandstanding and demonstration of useless technology or military applications.
I'd be more impressed if they could feed their people real food instead of distilled garbage water garnished with shredded plastic bags for 'soup', than some huge rocket that has nowhere to go and nothing to do.
I think if China and American could work as one nation, humans could be on the Mars a lot sooner.
There's no value in this goal. First, it's unrealistic because the US and China won't be a single nation. Second, why have one attempt to put humans on Mars when we could have two or more attempts? Competition is the best form of cooperation, after all.
The counter to the first part of your post is the obvious fact that humanity routinely "just does engineering" and solves problems (such as widespread terrestrial colonization or developing the next generation of CPUs) on the scale of a project like Mars colonization. We've also done things that we haven't done before. And it's likely that someone will test the expensive Mars vehicle before its first manned trip to Mars.
Everyone forgets that a space elevator has to be built in geosynchronous orbit as well. If each meter only weighs a ton (about a meter in circumference and about the same density as water) that's what, 80 million tons that needs to be lifted to geosynchronous orbit at a minimum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
in spite of the obvious lack of meaning in our existence and the pointlessness of everything we do
The "obviousness" of the above statement is matched only by the lack of empirical evidence for it. I am fortunate that you are neither in charge of deciding for me how pointless the things I do are and the meaning of my life.
Don't forget Mars is a lot smaller than the Earth.
Not disagreeing but actually Mars has about the same land area as Earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Columbus didn't set out to go to America, he erroneously believed the Earth was much smaller and he sailed for India.
No one else was interested in the trip because it was common knowledge that the journey was too long to carry supplies and he lucked out in finding inhabitable lands before running out of supplies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
SpaceX most clearly has credibility in terms of launching larger payloads into orbit. I guess the Dragon capsule doesn't count as something credible?
As for anything that Senator Shelby wants to fund, most especially the SLS system, I have my doubts that anything will clear the launch tower much less actually make it into space. It is going to be canceled before it gets built, much like Constellation before it, and the dozens of other NASA projects for manned spaceflight that all showed promise but never really went anywhere.
The last manned spaceflight program to actually make it to orbit was the Space Shuttle, and that was originally started under the Johnson Administration (although the heavy work on it happened during the Nixon Administration). The singular failure of NASA to put any sort of meaningful program together is a sign of what that bureaucracy is able to accomplish, and I doubt any change in the Presidency is going to make any difference on that. Neither Ronald Reagan nor Bill Clinton were able to make any significant moves in that arena... except for the ISS project if you want to give both of those Presidents at least a little bit of credit.
Exactly. There's no point in sending people to Mars either.
Only in the short term.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
You're a racist. I compete with China solely out of my self interest as an American. As do my fellow Chinese Americans, and all other Americans of every race. You don't know what race I am. And indeed your lumping all the billions of Asians together in your baseless insult to me is quite racist.
You're also an idiot. Every age is a "new age". 2012 is no special boundary.
--
make install -not war
As a Chinese-American. I do not support those views of the AC. He/She is probably some sort of brain-washed youth from China (commonly called as "Fenqing" ) that display a high level of Chinese nationalism, and they interpret your original comment as "America will destroy China" type of comment.
2012 is commonly refereed as the beginning of the new civilization, or at least many people believe so.
New Economic Perspectives
What a horrible comparison. The point of going to America was obvious in 1492. There was gold. There was land. There were furs, and trees. The timber alone was an impossible luxury to a European at the time. The natives were willing to trade valuable things for cheap glass beads. Europeans knew why they were going and what they hoped to accomplish. People could buy shares in an expedition and become wealthy if things worked out.
The moon is a lifeless rock. Travel costs are so high there are no resources you could bring back profitably. There's no point, and there never will be as long as we're using rockets to get there.
The people who believe 2012 is the beginning of anything except the regularly scheduled events and surprises are even dumber than simple racists. I look forward to competing with them :).
--
make install -not war
A real elevator would have a counter-balance with the center-of-gravity of whole system slightly past geosynchronous height to maintain tension. Lot of weight to go very high unless starting from asteroid (moving asteroid and putting cable factory with materials inventory there another bagatelle left to student)
"What's the point ? All you can do on the moon is walk around, and then leave again."
I was not your moderator, so I can only offer a guess as to how you received a "Troll" moderation, but I think the main reason was that the brevity of your statement makes it appear flippant or curt, whether or not that was your intent.
To quote wikipedia's definition of a "troll" on the internet (emphasis mine):
"In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, [B]with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response[/B][2] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[3] In addition to the offending poster, the noun troll can also refer to the provocative message itself, as in "that was an excellent troll you posted". "
Without offering elaboration on your skepticism, this statement simply dismisses a raft of arguments in favor of traveling to the moon without specifics. Without specifics, meaningful responses are impeded. It would be far more productive to recognize the pro-moon travel arguments, and explain why you disagree with them, and in turn, present your own arguments as to how the resources might be more efficiently spent, or even moral arguments on why resources should be spent in certain ways, etc. The other possibility is that you truly do not know of any arguments in favor of travel to the moon, and are unable to comprehend potential benefits, however remote. This would be ignorance that is most likely willful given Slashdot's obvious enthusiasm in favor of travel to the moon, it would be trivial to read further to discover reasons offered for what can be accomplished.
Slashdot has an obvious bias in favor of space travel, and posting a short message simply dismissing all arguments in favor of space travel, neatly fits the image of an internet trolling. Even if it was not your original intention.