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China's Nuclear Rover Will Sample the Moon
HansonMB writes "After launching on one of the nation's Long March rockets and a three-day transit, Chang'E 3 will reach the Moon and enter into a 62 mile orbit. Once settled, the 2,645 pound lander will separate from the roughly 8,200 pound spacecraft and descend into a highly elliptical orbit 62 by 9.5 miles above the surface." Russia wants a taste, too, and plans a moon-sampling mission set for 2015.
Why send humans when you can just send robots.
It will have to take another one an hour later.
Why are they landing a "lander" on an elliptical orbit instead of the surface of the moon? Did this come from the Siri Translator?
Table-ized A.I.
The Chang'E 3 lander will rely on a plutonium-238 radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or RTG, for power. This is the same type of unit that's currently powering Curiosity's traverse across Mars. But unlike Curiosity, Chang'E 3 will only use its RTG to keep the spacecraft's systems humming during the two-week long lunar nights. Solar panels will allow the lander to take advantage of the free power during the two-week long lunar days.
I thought that once you put together an RTG, its lifespan was limited only by the radiation source and the degradation of the thermocouples.
So what's the purpose of not using the RTG all the time?
Will that extend its life?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Sorry, we can't run this story as it is not a duplicate of another story already run.
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
Patrick McGoohan will eventually escape.
Poor UPS guy. Imagine trying to get that up to the porch
RTG, not fission.
õ_Õ
This is NOT powered by a full blown nuclear reactor...
Correct. This is most likely why the article didn't claim that it is.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Info I gather from this link: http://www.cas.cn/zt/hyzt/16thysdh/zb/
and from this slide: http://www.flickr.com/photos/planetaryblog/8343205291/in/photostream
Rough translation:
"From 2017 onward, after the completion of China's unmanned lunar missions, China will embark on manned missions to the moon and also to build a permanent lunar base"
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Colonize space? Why? 3/4 of our planet is ocean, how about colonize that first? Deserts? Hint: it will be much cheaper and possible with today's technology without major sacrifices. So... where are the underwater cities, etc? No takers?
Because governments are too close?
For example, when the Republic of Minerva attempted to create an independent micronation by colonizing an area of the ocean, the US paid Tonga to claim it for the Kingdom of Tonga so the millionaires who were trying to found it couldn't get out from under existing national sovereignties.
For a lot of people willing to fly away to the far reaches of space, the limiting factor has always been the cost of getting out of the gravity well in the first place. The DC-X (Delta Clipper) would have remedied this, but it was killed off McDonnell Douglas as part of them being eaten by Boeing, in favor of the National Aerospace plane, which never materialized, and would have needed runways and to boost additional equipment to do landings out there, where there are no runways for the plane to use (an intentional limitation of the plane).
I can understand governments being wary of cheap access to space (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment#Project_Thor should probably not be put in practical reach of well to do Facebook emloyees, and more than you'd want them to have tactical nuclear weapons at their disposal).
That it would cost a whole hell of a lot for a cat's paw to fly up and try to claim the territory out from under them is a major advantage of basing something like this in space, and therefore a major draw to colonization efforts there.
There are also people even crazier than that who believe that it's mankind's Manifest Detiny to expand to fill the solar system, and from there the nearby stars, then on to the galaxy, and then on to the rest of the universe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny .
Either way, it means either getting rid of the small minds in the way, or working around them. Local end runs, like Minerva, have failed, and if you are just going to be an extension of an existing nation, and are in the top 1% of wealth there anyway, you can be a hell of a lot more comfortable under their thumb without going anywhere than you can be doing subsistence fish-farming on a floating city in the middle of the Pacific being a damn sight less comfortablr, and then finding yourself *still* under their thumb anyway.
Colonies are built by political refugees, economic refugees, indentured servants, disinherited heirs, bastard progeny, and, in general, people looking for a better life than the one they have now. For everyone in the middle class and higher, that's basically unavailable here on Earth, "better" being a relative term, and with orbital costs being artificially inflated, anyone below that level of wealth can't hope to go anywhere, except local regional border crossings, in the hope of a better life.
So you get a bunch of nerds, in the middle class and higher, where do you think they will be pointing their colony ships, Antarctica? It might work, but you are more likely to get booted off by whoever "protects" that section of Antarctica from someone doing that under the Antarctic Treaty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty which was designed to prevent something like that ever happening.
The closest you're going to get on-planet is taking over an existing state, and Charles Taylor pretty much nailed the door shut on that in 1960: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Taylor_(Liberia)