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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."
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!
To which I say, "Great! I'd rather the US get into space, but I'll settle for damn near anybody!"
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!
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.
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make install -not war
Cracking down on the massive academic fraud and rampant plagiarism would probably go a long way towards earning a reputation for innovation. As would ending the practice of locking up academics for saying things that the government doesn't want heard.
Right now, we in the US are mostly coasting, but if the American exceptionalists and the conservatives could lighten up and allow things to sort themselves out we could still retain our leadership position on technology. Of course that would anger the creationists and the climate change skeptics.
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.