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China Reveals Its Space Plans Up To 2016
PolygamousRanchKid writes "China plans to launch space labs and manned ships and prepare to build space stations over the next five years, according to a plan released Thursday that shows the country's space program is gathering momentum. China's space program has already made major breakthroughs in a relatively short time, although it lags far behind the United States and Russia in space technology and experience. The country will continue exploring the moon using probes, start gathering samples of the moon's surface, and 'push forward its exploration of planets, asteroids and the sun.' Some elements of China's program, notably the firing of a ground-based missile into one of its dead satellites four years ago, have alarmed American officials and others who say such moves could set off a race to militarize space. That the program is run by the military has made the U.S. reluctant to cooperate with China in space, even though the latter insists its program is purely for peaceful ends."
At this rate, if we want Star Trek to remain at all within the thinnest stretches of credibility, the next reboot of the series will have the Enterprise captained by Sulu and Kirk will be pitching manure in Iowa.
we should start nuking nascar events. biggest concentration of retard mutants I can think of.
Just to correct, but it was the research team led by Carle Pieters of Brown University which discovered water on the Moon, using the M3 instrument on the Indian-launched Chandrayaan-1 space probe.
NASA just followed up with a bunch of announcements after the fact, to drown out that landmark announcement with their own also-ran announcements.
a) Repeat after me: China will NOT shoot at the US any time soon. The two nations are connected at the hip economically. They'll continue to play games with each other, for sure. there will be some sabotage, some espionage, some tensions, but China and the USA have the dollar bill version of Mutually Assured Destruction.
b) Both the Russians AND the USA have weapons in space regardless of treaties. How's that World War with Russia going?
c) How much did the USA expand their military budget last year? Or the year before that? Or before that? Heck, when's the last time it DIDN'T? How did that affect the ability of the last space race to allow a man to walk around on the moon?
d) Doesn't the tinfoil hat itch?
e) Given current sentiments(as demonstrated by your post) and the fact that the USA owes all the money, it's technically more likely the USA would act first. but again, see point a) for why this won't happen any time soon.
They're making breakthroughs in THEIR space program, not in ours. Yes, for us it just looks like catch-up, and it is. But they have to start somewhere, and the point is that they are catching up very quickly while we seem to be going nowhere.
Case in point: NASA's 2010 budget was $19 billion. The Chinese Space Agency's annual budget is estimated by analysts at $1.3 billion. NASA has 14.6 times the funding and yet the technology gap is rapidly closing. China may not be doing things better just yet, but they're certainly doing it faster and cheaper.
Let's also not forget that the cost of the Apollo program was $136 billion, adjusted to 2007 dollars. That's enough to keep the CNSA at current funding for the next 100 years. China is nowhere near committing itself to the level of funding that we needed to put a man on the moon; why would you even make the comparison to Apollo unless you are simply ignorant of context? If they manage to do it on their own terms within the next century, then they would have done it more smartly than we did. Personally, I think they have plenty of breathing room to make it happen, which is not very good news for 'patriotic' types clinging to something that happened over 40 years ago. I remember as a child of the 80s that WWII seemed like ancient history, but at the time it was also only about 40 years past. Does that put things in context? Children of today and tomorrow can't relate at all to the Apollo program. You might as well be talking about the thirteen colonies for all it means to them. Sure they'll see Neil Armstrong on hilariously old tapes, but they'll be seeing the Chinese space program in the here and now, streaming live on the interwebs (okay, with censor delay), something happening within their own lifetimes. No amount of "we got there first" is going to save NASA's reputation. Ford did it first too, and nobody cares now because Honda eventually did it better.
Politically, China has the advantage that it's not involved in a dick-waving contest with some Soviet boogeyman, and instead of racing toward a symbolic goal that serves no tangible purpose, they're slowly and steadily building up a knowledge base to make the space program a sustainable benefit for their society. Instead of figuring how to get to the moon first, they're trying to figure out if the moon can be exploited somehow, and the best way to do so. Their goals are strategic and practical, compared to NASA's which seem to be made up mostly of unspecific ambitions fueled by the academic curiosity to study things far beyond our grasp, and being content to leave them there.
Here's a "mil-spec" tidbit for you. Back with my first job at SED Systems in Saskatoon, SK fresh out of university two weeks before I started with them, I was assigned to work on a project delivering to the Canadian military.
We failed a mil-spec inspection because some valves we were shipped were the commercial versions. The difference between the mil-spec and commercial versions? mil-spec meant they were spray painted Canadian military olive green; the commercial version was spray painted black.
We took out the valves, spray painted them green, and put them back. We passed the next inspection.
You wouldn't believe how much extra the company charged to spray paint the valves green instead of black.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.