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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."
One giant leap for mankind.
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"which is reserved for privately funded, previously enrolled teams, not government agencies"
doesn't that make this article completely irrelevant?
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.
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.
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?
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Rooting for a weak home team hoping that the stronger team fails is pathetic.
The correct attitude is to make the home team better.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
It will explode from using low quality components.
Many of the quality product you associate with "american-made" or "european-made" are in fact made in China, part or whole.
If you still think China churns out shite copies of good products like in the 70s and 80s, you need a reality check. Many, MANY China products are brilliant, quality made and innovative. Granted, many are still shite and copies too, but that's changing fast.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I largely agree, but the original objective was binary -- "round-trip completed intact" | "round-trip not completed intact" -- and since the US & USSR didn't fail partway through the trip, there isn't a whole lot of room for doing it "better." They might do it more cheaply, complete the round-trip faster, or succeed against the most overwhelming odds, but those are all different issues, IMHO.
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
Too bad the US leaned back on the "we're #1, why try harder" position. Just think where we could be by now.
At some point, they needed to have something in space which generated a return on investment. Apollo didn't do that. And the Shuttle ended up being even worse (for about ten years till 1984, no one in the US could actually launch a payload on a private launch vehicle).
China is an expert in manufacturing in both ends. They can make weak stuff but also extremely professional robust stuff.
I work in China. Even the Chinese don't believe that their products are any good. Their manufacturing skills are sketchy. Their design skills are weak. Raw materials are sub par. Their key asset is low cost. Not quality.
It's just like Japan in the 50s and 60s.
First Woman in Space : Vanetina Terechkova
First Manned Space Station : Salyut
First Lunar Orbit : Luna 10
First Venus Landing ; Venera 7
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