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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."
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.
I stand corrected, the clause was already dropped:
A recent update in the teams’ legal agreement with the X Prize Foundation removed a $5 million penalty if a government entity got to the surface of the moon first.
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.
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.
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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
. 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.
No wonder they failed, they forgot to make a kickstarter page :)
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.
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.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
So what you're saying is that Firefly got it right?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.