How China Will Get To the Moon Before a Google Lunar XPrize Winner

An anonymous reader writes in with this link about the advances in China's lunar program. "A $30 million Google-backed competition to land a spacecraft on the moon may be about to be scooped. China's Chang'e 3 probe successfully put itself into lunar orbit on Friday in preparation for an attempted touchdown around Dec. 14. China won't be winning the prize money, which is reserved for privately funded, previously enrolled teams, not government agencies."

Comments

One small post for man

[Boronx]

One giant leap for mankind.

Re:One small post for man

[Anonymous Coward]

One giant leap for mankind.

This.

I live in America. I like its culture. I like its people. I'd like to see it propagate offworld. But if my tribe is no longer interested in taking the high ground, I'd rather see my species - be it 50, 500, or 5000 years from now - speaking some variation of Mandarin than not living offworld at all.

My tribe's ancestors went there in peace for all mankind. Good luck, Chinese dudes.

Re: One small post for man

[iamhassi]

Considering the number of chinese that learn English in school compared to English speaking children that learn chinese, I have a feeling we will all be speaking a hybrid version of English and Chinese in hundreds of years. English isn't going anywhere, not when billions of chinese are all taught English from ages 4 thru 18.

Well really..

[Anonymous Coward]

"which is reserved for privately funded, previously enrolled teams, not government agencies"

doesn't that make this article completely irrelevant?

Re:Well really..

[savuporo]

Because everyone of the "new space" followers was high at the SpaceShipOne X-Prize victory at the time and they all believed space is much easier than government has made it out to be. So they thought putting a lunar lander together takes a blog, two guys in a garage, github and attending a summit - they will all have Chinese beat by years.

Apparently, it doesnt quite work that way - and Branson is still waiting for his rocket to take him on his worlds highest rollercoaster.

China scooped by the Soviet Union

[erice]

If you are going to include government probes than China was itself scooped by the Soviet Union's Lunokhod_1 rover more than 40 years ago.

missing the point

[stenvar]

The point of the X-Prize is to show that private space exploration is possible, i.e., that the costs have come down enough so that it makes sense for businesses to start engaging in space exploration, or that it has become cheap enough so that people can do it for fun.

The ability of space exploration by tax-payer funded government entities doesn't need to be established, it was established half a century ago. Communist nations tend to be even better at doing such things in the short run because they can redirect money more easily to such projects even if they don't make sense.

Re:missing the point

[Savage-Rabbit]

Hmm. Apparently capitalist governments are even more effective at sinking funds into projects like that, because its widely recognized that US beat the Soviets in the early space race.

Dunno about that. IMHO the Soviets did every bit as much good pioneering work with the Lunokhod program and Mir as the US did with the entire Apollo program and the space shuttle program. Apollo was a spectacular propaganda Lunokhod represented a way of doing the same amount of scientific work the Apollo missions did with less risk and at a fraction of the price. Lunokhod set the pattern for the way space exploration is done today and Mir yielded a mountain of data on the problems of really long term missions in space. In my book it is rather uninteresting who gets there first, what counts is the scientific work you do once you get there and the what technologies you pioneer in the process. I also respect anybody who turns a profit in the space industry, especially people who manage that without any government subsidies in any form (direct or indirect) since that's not an easy thing to do by any means.

Re:missing the point

[Dodgy G33za]

Bloody bean counters. It was not a waste of money. Any more than climbing Everest, or the race to the South Pole, or finding the Higgs Boson.

The space race inspired the current generation of rich people prepared to put funds into private space initiatives.

We don't want a robot to land on mars. We want a human to tell us how it feels to stand on an alien planet and try to spot the Earth in the nights sky.

You want to look at a waste of money? Look at how much Coca Cola spend to try to make you buy their flavour rather than the oppositions. Now that is a REAL waste.

Re:Is it wrong

[savuporo]

Yes its wrong. China has lots of scientist and engineers that have put their hard work into this - and they are doing something that nobody has done for decades, and they are doing it better, with more modern and even completely new instruments.

Why would you want this to fail?

Re:Is it wrong

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Rooting for a weak home team hoping that the stronger team fails is pathetic.

The correct attitude is to make the home team better.

Re: I when wonder...

[Luckyo]

It's just like Japan in the 50s and 60s.