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China Plans Manned Space Mission This Month
jamstar7 writes "From an Associated Press report: 'China will launch three astronauts this month to dock with an orbiting experimental module, and the crew might include its first female space traveler, a government news agency said Saturday. A rocket carrying the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft was moved to a launch pad in China's desert northwest on Saturday for the mid-June flight, the Xinhua News Agency said, citing an space program spokesman. The three-member crew will dock with and live in the Tiangong 1 orbital module launched last year, Xinhua said. The government has not said how long the mission will last.' China, who is not an ISS partner, plans to see if its Shenzhou 9/Long March 2F system can get the job done like the Dragon/Falcon9 system can. They plan on two missions this year to dock with their Tiangong 1 module, which was launched in September 2011. Their eventual plans include building a complete space station by 2020, though one of only about 60 tons, compared to the ISS's 450-ish tons."
I consider this a symptom of a serious, but by no means unique problem with the Chinese space program. Namely, that the leaders responsible for the program are extremely risk adverse. Various governments manifest this problem in various ways. The US government, for example, does a great deal of soul-searching and blame-finding when things go wrong.
Here, China, much as the Soviets did, attempts to hide failure. They don't mind killing people, but they do mind greatly any negative publicity.
An expedition to Mars would need a collaborative effort, going by what it'd take to get there.
Based on what? Fantasy estimates from NASA? My take is that with a cheap, heavy lift launcher (such as Falcon Heavy which is claimed to be able to put 50 metric tons into LEO), we could do an indefinite series of manned missions to Mars (say one to two manned missions to Mars every two years) on what the US pays for the ISS, roughly $2 billion a year. That's a bit too ambitious for private groups (who could do a scaled-down version of this), but easily affordable by a number of government.
I think it's a little sad to think that a figurative dick-waving is what you have to do in order to get anything done, the idea that "haha, we're better than you!" urging us on instead of, "OMG, if we'd all stfu and combine resources, we could be on Mars by such-n-such a year!"
I don't really care, if "peen" is what it takes to go to Mars. Seems good enough a reason for me.