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Chinese Lunar Probe Lands Successfully
China's Chang'e 3 moon probe made its intended landing earlier today, setting down softly in the moon's Sinus Iridum, as reported by Reuters. From the article: "The Chang'e 3, a probe named after a lunar goddess in traditional Chinese mythology, is carrying the solar-powered Yutu, or Jade Rabbit buggy, which will dig and conduct geological surveys. ... China Central Television (CCTV) broadcast images of the probe's location on Saturday and a computer generated image of the probe on the surface of the moon on its website. The probe and the rover are expected to photograph each other tomorrow. ... The Bay of Rainbows was selected because it has yet to be studied, has ample sunlight and is convenient for remote communications with Earth, Xinhua said.
The rover will be remotely controlled by Chinese control centers with support from a network of tracking and transmission stations around the world operated by the European Space Agency (ESA)."
Interestingly, this landing may affect NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer operation:
http://www.space.com/23675-china-moon-lander-trouble-nasa-ladee.html
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
In case anyone cares, the first soft moon landing was on January 31, 1966 by the Soviet lander Lana-9. It still boggles my mind how they were able to achieve that without anything remotely resembling a modern computing device.
Better known as 318230.
I'm happy that the ESA is willing to let the Chinese to use their transmission infrastructure. This way hopefully more science will be done.
Mars next!
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
There is a cool animated gif of the descent imager pictures of the landing, and a false color image of the surface.
Now the question is when are we going again and to stay?
Science and "luck" culture make strange lunar bedfellows.
China has no debt? Really? China is no paragon of fiscal virtue, they're barreling down the road to financial ruin unless they do some significant restructuring.
The real question is how the Chinese intend to continue their exchange rate manipulation (aka the peg) without buying lots of treasuries.
The exchange rate moving to a free market will change the world. In the meantime China will learn the downside of keeping it's exports cheap.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Ok I'm just poking fun. Seriously, India has a probe on its way to Mars. The US has to step up its game!
The WSJ and the other wall street minions have been saying that since 1990.
Not really since 1990, but for awhile, In every bubble in history the predictions of collapse were wrong every time, except one.
I genuinely hope it is successful. The rise of China is one of the great humanitarian stories in history, lifting hundreds of millions from poverty. I expect the people of China to make great contributions to the world.
However, it's still 2013 and China's government is still authoritarian, unaccountable and non-transparent, and the Chinese press is still restricted. If the mission failed, would they admit it, or release some photos anyway? (Could they get away with it? Could other governments or amateurs with telescopes see for themselves?)
What about money? We have resources lying around the country already - both human and material. We have the ability to do it all over again, any time.
What we lack, is backbone, initiative, the dream, the drive, the balls. Our leaders today are less than men, and there seem to be no real men to run the worthless bastards out of power.
Money. Money is important, in it's own right, but money doesn't control our ability to aim high. That ability is only governed by our lack of courage.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It was a radio transmitter packed into a cannon ball, just like Sputnik...not exactly 'space age' and certainly not requiring a modern computing device
Techies today have kind of fetishized the command line, but there are other ways to program a machine.
You can hurl a wad of electronics at a world and send pictures back or you can **EXPLORE**
Guess which one this China mission is?
Thank you Dave Raggett
Maybe the women can do it instead?
"hard landing" and "soft landing" is one way to think of it...
a better way might be "controlled landing"...but even that could be nitpicked
the difference is the level of control
think of it as the difference between a plane landing vs an object dropping by parachute
the implication is that if you're just doing it as a Cold War publicity stunt, you can get away with just flinging shit up there willy-nilly, whereas if you are actually trying to explore you use the landing sequence as an opportunity to iteratively improve mission capabilities for further exploration.
Thank you Dave Raggett
wake me up when one of them walks on the moon or has a bot/rover sending selfie tweets from another panet
Thank you Dave Raggett
Backed by private investors and tycoons, I fully expect that America's next moonshot will be lead and funded by SpaceX. Not NASA.
Life is not for the lazy.
You mean like importing craploads of gold?
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
It is only a matter of time until they wok on the moon.
The rise of China is one of the great humanitarian stories in history
I think it's great the Chinese were successful at landing on the moon, but... greatest humanitarian stories in history??? Do you remember just how many TENS OF MILLIONS of people died during the communist takeover and resulting purges? Or the famines?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Hopefully everything outside earth is managed peacefully with no single country laying claims to exclude others.
Not good enough. They would drive up the currencies in the gold producing regions, not the dollar and euro as they need.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"Hey you! Look up name for space probe in dictionary!"
"Looks like a lot of these 'probes' are called 'Rabbit'!"
"Excellent!"
For guys my age (I turned 50 last week), the first Moon walk was a pivotal event. July of 1969... I was 6 years old, and my father was a squadron commander in the 318th Fighter Squadron flying F-102s, and I lived on Cherry Hill on the Air Force base in Anchorage Alaska. We all watched the first steps taken on the Moon, and as the son of an Air Force fighter pilot, there were high expectations for me. I remember when pilots where heros. Everyone expected even greater things from my generation.
We totally let them down, at least in terms of space exploration. I blame politics, and to some extent NASA (though mostly because of politics). I also have my hopes pinned on commercial efforts like SpaceX. We were on the Moon in 1969, while people in China were still starving. I'm glad China has revived some of the dream, and I hope they do well. In the meantime, our generation gave birth to personal computers and cell phones, so it's not a total loss, but there never was another OMG moment like the Moon walk.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
i came...
then bookmarked the post for posterity...it's like my own personal APK
Thank you Dave Raggett
But we teach our youth to have high self-esteem.
Isn't that enough?
Space is not the USA's!
Your leaders, sir, have been put there by voters. One of those voters may even have been you. So don't put the blame on them. In democratic and pseudo-democratic countries, leaders are just reflections of their populaces.
Oh, and just to make sure you don't think this comes from some partisan BS, the other side would have done precisely the same thing.
Now go and get yourself a serious government.
it will find the US flag from 1969.. :)
Just don't blame NASA, blame a short-sighted congress.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Chang’e is coming.
BTW, SciFri Ira Flatow interviewed David Shukman, BBC Science Editor, about a week ago nice coverage what Chinese are up to with their project, it was possibly best lay summary what I've heard up to this date.
ac
They can instead buy stock in American companies.
Your leaders, sir, have been put there by voters.
No, they've been put there by the people who get to choose who's on the ballot, mostly by throwing tons of money to ensure one of their kind of people wins. You can hardly blame the voters when they're given a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledumber.
Posting AC because I modded you up. I'm just turning 49. My earliest memory is being woken by my dad to watch Neil Armstong descend that ladder on out tiny B/W TV. That memory shaped my life.
My doctor prescribed that after my nasal cancer.
"The people who get to choose who's on the ballot" are the party members. In a two-party system like the US, you really need to become active inside the party of your choice if you want to have a reasonable amount of say on who gets elected.
... as I said, reflections of their populaces.
Dickhead! How many Americans got evicted from ther homes by way of the last financal crisis?
Very few? And also BTW they could find alternate shelter in a number of other ways including just spending less on housing, or declaring bankruptcy and staying where they were?
I find it pretty ironic you are saying *I* am the one who is a dickhead for pointing out tens of millions of people being tortured or executed or starved to death, while you are pointing out people that number a few orders of magnitude less in number who have to move into cheaper housing... I mean really, if there ever was a dick move what you have just done is the very definition.
But who cares if 80 million Chinese die, right? Isn't that your thinking process? I guess non-Americans really are more racist.
I dub thee Super Dick. And I ignore all further communications from Super Dicks on the grounds that they are mentally incapable of defending their Super Dickitude.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think the GP was referring to the post-1980 era, which really was a great humanitarian story.
Oh yeah, that was Awesome!
Sorry, but pairing the term "China" with "Humanitarian" just doesn't jibe with any period of time you care to name. Any lifting of the Chinese people has pretty much been accomplished by their own efforts, not the Chinese government...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Whatever they buy (real estate, stock), they will pay too much for it. By the very manipulation they are engaged in.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Perhaps they will just adopt their own "non-currency-manipulating QE" programs?
Already did. Which is why we cause inflation in China when we print dollars. Perverse economic incentives abound.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I don't believe we do lack any backbone, initiative, dream, drive, or balls. What we are is re-tooling for the future. The past was big, single issue drives. It was what we could afford, and what we could do. Now we have a crossover moment in the historical record when sweeping change goes from being a government- or big corporate-driven event, to a massively multi-polar, crowd-driven one. Look, it used to be you had to spend thousands of dollars to buy enough computing power to run a graphical display. Now it's so cheap it's throw-away. It used to be you had to have massive investment to manufacture things, now you can do so at commodity prices.
In that context, let's re-ask the question, what does it mean that China has landed a probe on the moon? It's great for them, as evidence they have mastered the state-driven quest for achievement. But what's really got to blow your mind is that private individuals are about to do the same, and more. If you are old, and set in your ways, that's quite threatening. Me, I find it incredibly exciting. It puts a spring in my step. It means the era of nation-state primacy is coming to an end, and that the Age of Human Potential is about to explode. I am glad for it, and grateful I get to be alive to see it.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Pity they couldn't have landed in Mare Tranquillitatis. Would have been fun to have the rover trundle over to the Eagle's descent stage to take some pictures of the flag and Neil and Buzz's footprints. Take that, whack-job conspiracy theorists.
"The people who get to choose who's on the ballot" are the party members.
Who get a choice between half a dozen guys funded by the same special interests, and one outsider who has no chance, just for grins.
... as I said, reflections of their populaces.
How were Romney and Obama, 'reflections of their populaces'?
They just won't do anything with you.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
There's a generation of us.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It is wild how times change. When I wasn't much older than you were then, I was in a classroom watching the Twin Towers fall and remember the feelings of hopelessness, and the following years of insanity.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
It's funny that you blame politics for "letting us down" with regards to space exploration, but fail to acknowledge it's responsibility for getting us there in the first place.
No, scratch that. It's not funny. It's frightening as hell that you're either so ill informed or so blithely unaware of what really happened and why.
Amazing! Congratulations to China, the whole world is proud of you! You will be at the forefront of space exploration, and if there is anyone who can establish a permanent base on the moon it is you. The 21st century belongs to China, no doubt!
Signature intentionally left blank.
China has no debt, China as a nation has a gigantic surplus and it has enough savings in the Treasury to negate a tiny external debt that exists for strategic reasons. Inside China there are debts to other Chinese and while it is problematic, the fact that some Chinese owe other Chinese something that cannot be repaid in the long run, this does not change the fact that China is a productive nation without international debt and it can afford an internal housing market crash for example without negative consequences to the economy. On the contrary, while the housing market crash in USA caused it a recession due to the fact that purchasing power of USA consumer is tied so much to their ability to refinance their mortgages, in China the housing market crash would only strengthen the economy, because their economy is not dependent on an asset bubble constantly inflating. In their case if the housing prices go down, it doesn't affect their ability to purchase consumer goods, it increases this ability, as the housing prices, rent will go down as well, so it's a boon. Falling prices opens up new markets, only the backwards Keynesians can't figure out that falling prices is a good thing for the consumers.
Anyway, good luck with your theories, they are not yours of-course, they are created for your consumption.
You can't handle the truth.
In the meantime, our generation gave birth to personal computers and cell phones, so it's not a total loss, but there never was another OMFG moment like the Moon walk.
FTFY
China lands a small rover on the moon. Meanwhile, the USA has the most advanced rover ever built chugging around on Mars.
Seriously? Last time USA engaged in this type of activity (of-course coupled with Medicare introduction, SS expansion, business regulations expansion, basically creating and expanding all the worst parts of government), USA ended up DEFAULTING on its promise to the world to keep a gold reserve, USA defaulted on the gold dollar in 1971, all the current problems can be traced to that default and that default can be traced to government expansion of power. So you are saying: all that USA lacks is backbone. You ever stop and think, what exactly is the end goal? Is it to completely wipe out the economy? Well, you are pretty much there already.
You can't handle the truth.
Thank you Chinese government troll.
There have been plenty of economic collapses over the years, and in every case SOMEONE has predicted it.
You clearly aren't getting his point. IMO by definition "the populous" would imply the majority, when in fact it's the few percent of those with money who really end up deciding the primaries. So then at that point the "populace" gets to decide on the cherry picked candidates from the left and the right.
The only way to stop this absurd process is to ban campaign contributions, "Super-PACs", etc. Though even that may be a lost cause. A lot of the problem is just that 535 people just can't reasonably listen to or properly represent the interests of 300 million (when this system was devised the population was ~3M, ie. 1% of what it is now!) It's obvious that the current legislature is completely beholden to a few wealthy and influential special interest groups rather than actually listening to "the populace" that supposedly elected them. Something in the system sure has to change, and (duh) it's not going to be the populace.
i trust the chinese as much as i trust the romulans
Or maybe the problem with space exploration is that the moon was the cherry (ie. cherry picking). It was mostly an exercise in engineering and money at that point. Now the distances (or masses, if you want to start a moon colony) involved are such that something fundamental has to happen to make it worthwhile - and just because we haven't figured out how to break the (known) laws of physics doesn't mean there was no effort expended since then. It just has to be a lot smarter, since spending orders of magnitude more money to accomplish the same thing on planets orders of magnitude further away does pose a moral question when so many people are suffering on Earth in the here and now.
Here's one example: we officially eradicated smallpox in 1979. Which effort do YOU think has done more to improve the lives of the entire population of the world? If people had their priorities straight that could arguably be the greatest scientific and logistic accomplishments of the 20th century. Of course, there are TONS of other examples of amazing scientific/engineering accomplishments (superconductivity, nuclear fission, discovery of DNA, the transistor, etc) - the problem is they just weren't designed to be broadcast to the world on TV.
Some white knights think small, only defending a single damsel in hopes of receiving affection; I like your ambition, wizard.
Posting AC because I modded you up. I'm just turning 49. My earliest memory is being woken by my dad to watch Neil Armstong descend that ladder on out tiny B/W TV. That memory shaped my life.
It's with sadness that I don't recall that specific event, though the parents assure me that I was watching.
I do recall other, related events though, just not the big one.
Also, posting AC will remove your given mod points, unless perhaps you logged out altogether.
Easy to test: check score on some post, then give it a unique moderation. Check the score to ensure it was recorded. Post a reply as AC. Check score again: your mod will be gone.
Freedom isn't free! It takes folks like you and me,
and if you don't throw in your buck o' five who will?
oooooo, buck o' five.....Freedom costs a buck o' five.
And yet through all these 40 years, dumbass Americans still can't spell China! Or is "Chine" the actual spelling and those fucking chinks just stole that too? I mean, you do certainly seem to think those Chinese guys are all thieving little ninjas or something, ya racist prick. Holler back at us when YOU put a lander on the moon, umkay?
The most pivotal event when I was young was the USSR collapse, and the Berlin wall coming down. It wasn't of technological significance, obviously, but there was a lot of hope that international politics would become a lot more cooperative, and less confrontational. It has done to some degree, but everything has fallen far short of what most of us hoped for back then, which was a new world order with David Hasselhoff at the helm.
it was immediately surrounded by a cloud of smog
Fortunately the US has never stolen technology from anyone right?
Heck, didn't Lincoln even encourage it?
Everyone gripes about how the "US has given up in space" or fallen behind or some other bull, but it is just wrong. The US currently has two functioning rovers on Mars (which is two more than anyone else) , a probe on the way to Jupiter, a probe on the way to PLUTO, a functioning orbiter around Mercury and a probe which recently left orbit around the asteroid Vesta on the way to orbit the dwarf planet Ceres, and a functioning orbiter around the moon. The US spends more money on space operations, both civil and military, than any other country. The US has a temporary gap in the ability to launch crewed missions but has at least three funded projects in place to build human-rated launchers (Space-X Falcon 9, ULA Atlas 5 , and NASA SLS) and at least three funded crewed capsules in work (Space-X Dragon, Boeing CST-100. Lockheed Orion). Other countries are doing things in space, -- great!!, but the USA remains the premier spacefaring nation in the world, due to the nation's technology and will to devote the resources to do it. China or anyone else putting crews on the moon is a great thing, but the US has been there, done that, and is moving on.
In every bubble in history the predictions of collapse were wrong every time, except one.
Trying to determine the timing of a bubble collapse is something of a fool's game since as the saying goes, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. But actually predicting that a bubble has happened is not that hard. For example, a common sign that things have gone too far is that serious errors and fraud are ignored.
For example, during the recent real estate crisis, some loans had faulty paperwork such that it couldn't legally be determined who owned the loan. During the California electricity crisis (of 2000-2001), it was a bubble for electricity producers. A key player was Enron who was already engaging in huge levels of fraud to cover huge mistakes it had made. And there were many, many crazy businesses with insane plans during the dotcom bubble.
Another indicator is that outsiders get involved. For example, here's a story about Bitcoins. The relevant part for us is the first few paragraphs where the narrator is talking with her family at dinner while a few of her relatives consider whether Bitcoins are the get-rich ticket they've been looking for. When you see people with very little knowledge of a market jumping in, that's a big sign of a bubble.
Huge volatility is often a sign of a bubble. If something rises and falls greatly for little reason, that's an indication that the price of that good or service is based on fellow traders' perceptions not any underlying value.
Finally, there's the psychological side. A sound investment with good return isn't going to be hurt by people talking bad about it. When people get upset over negative talk, it's a sign that the market in question isn't healthy.
The two problems you need to solve are decedance and entitlement.
In Australia we've seen distinct waves of immigration: Europe after WWII, Vietnam in 70's. The parents work hard in low skilled jobs and push their kids to study hard. The kids become the doctors & lawyers, but the grandkids start to assimilate and don't work as hard. Coupled with this, the majority of society expects handouts from the government, but do not contribute back.
As for real men, what you are asking for is a benevolent dictator. The problem is very few have the moral character suitable for the job and they are almost always betrayed by corruption of the next couple of levels down.
Finally, I find it sad that rather than celebrating the achievement of the Chinese, there is more discussion about decay in the USA.
consists of Russian technology
So what? If the Chinese want to build an aircraft should the reinvent the airfoil as well, so that it doesn't "consist of US technology"? Really? Technology progresses by building on what went before, if it works you use it and you add to it. It's just bizarre that I keep hearing this same stupid non sequitur every time the topic of the Chinese space program comes up. "They're using Soviet/US/EU technology!" Big fucking deal.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Shut down the useless money pit of the Pentagon and there will be all the funds and resources you want for all your pet projects, and mine to.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
I used the term "leader", and that is exactly what I meant. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and other institutions have worked over the years to define "leadership". The US Navy has it's Leadership and Management Effectiveness Training, which is largely derived from some of those studies - primarily Princeton. A good working definition of leadership is, "The art of motivating people to do that which they ought to do anyway."
Today's "leaders" lack any vision which I might identify with, or if they have a vision, they utterly fail to convey that vision to us, in the population at large. How can they motivate, if they lack a vision, or fail to communicate that vision?
The closest things to leaders in America today, are those corporate heads who are bent on fleecing the population. They are very effective at transferring wealth from the lower end of the food chain to the higher end.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
So I gave you an Interesting mod and now I'm posting AC. Lets see what happens.
So when I posted AC the mod you your comment was removed but I was able to mod another comment below successfully. Let's see if it sticks after I post this.
It's just a bunch of rocks
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
Yep, that mod got removed too. So I guess I can still mod but if I post AC any mods I've done so far will be removed. Good to know.
(And now I have to wait a while before posting this, queue the Jeopardy music.)
Now go and get yourself a serious government.
I have concluded that Americans, as a nation, simply don't believe in government.
But increasing the number of lawmakers at the national level by a factor of 100 wouldn't improve anything, it will just result in bigger nosier gridlocks. Perhaps devolving power to more local and regional control would help. Like, the state governments, perhaps.
China fucked up human procreation...their *whole population* is now 60-40 male thanks to their ridiculous culture...I think they can manage to fuck up the moon somehow given enough tie...
And yes...Billions...the Chinese have spent Billions on this mission of destruction...are you saying a moon mission can be done for LESS than a billion dollars?
NASA spends 1 Billion dollars on janitorial staff for crying out loud.
Stop commenting on this thread you're an idiot
Thank you Dave Raggett
" Everyone expected even greater things from my generation. We totally let them down...."
Yes, you did. The baby boomer generation is the most selfish generation in American history. You have left the country in worse shape than you found it.
The most recent two presidents are from your generation, and they are arguably the worst in American history.
But we see no apologies. Instead, we finally see attempt at marijuana legalization, to lessen the pain as you head to your graves.
That's how Americans get to the ISS these days. There's no shame in it.
Inform us then.
Tell us why Skylab fell despite there being enough bits of Saturn V and years to do something about it. It looked a lot like politics to me.
the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
Which is why the logical, rational way to build society is to concentrate power into the hands of a few. A rational market may be like a gradual rising tide that lifts all boats, but an irrational market is like a storm that capsizes and sinks the smaller boats. The logical answer is to centralize and create a smaller number of bigger boats.
Love it or hate it, but all the government and socialism the world has seen in recent human history is not done out of greed or corruption by malicious men seeking power and delighting in other people's misery. Well, some of them might be, but that's not why the rest of them - and rest of society - lets them do it. They're doing it because it's logically sound.
Of course.
If they had been American, it would have been careful planning by the world's best and cleverest country.
Since it was Russian, it involved a bit of second-rate agricultural persistence, and a lot of luck.
Now it's China, so it's bound to be cheating, spying and copying American ideas...
...You can hurl a wad of electronics at a world and send pictures back or you can **EXPLORE**
Guess which one this China mission is?...
Well, it looks like we're going to get the opportunity to find out pretty soon.
The WSJ? Really, a bunch of conservatives writing about the demise of a country they perceive as a threat. LOL.
I'm in China and all I can tell you is that you still haven't even seen half of what's coming. The only issue I see is the high cost to acquire real estate, but the Chinese being what they are, just tackle the issue by making it a top priority or a must in a family to buy the house first and then get married. So the main thing is that they are used to a lot of hardships Western people would not be able to endure for a week, especially the jobs where they treat you like crap and only pay 3000 yuans. But by basically eating 10 yuan noodles every day and actually saving as much as they can, the Chinese thrive. Sorry but humankind need to go through periods of crap to become better and the Chinese had their fair share and now they will just keep going up for at least two more generations from what I see. Even the 1-child policy had the unintended effect of making a large portion of the population a lot more educated since families poured all the resources in their single child instead.
So again dude, you still haven't seen the half of it. If you want to get a glimpse, go to Chengdu, the New Century Global building and you will see what I'm talking about.
Not to mention that China's space program consists of Russian technology...
And the US and Russian programs only worked because they stole Nazi technology and Nazi rocket scientists. And those Germans were themselves following the American pioneers (like Goddard), who was following from Russian pioneers (like Tsiolkovsky)...
You, meanwhile, contribute nothing and inspire no one.
I always wondered: if they want to keep the value of their currency low, why don't they just print some more of it every time it goes too high?
Too lazy to log in, but all the countries in the world is building the debt towards the only one that can give it, the earth. And soon we all have to pay back. That's not green party idiology, that's just the truth. Now we're looking for helium 3 on the moon to explore^H^H^H -oit it further.
Well... let's see. There weren't any operational Saturn V's, and there weren't years.
Skylab was nearly thirty years ago, if you insist on believing nonsense rather than acquainting yourself with the facts, the problem isn't politics.
In this day and age of breathtakingly realistic CG and China's intense desire to be viewed as a dominant first world nation, why would anyone believe this is real? A feasible achievement? Yes, but only at a cost too extravagant for even China.
Final argument: Do you think China would have reported a failed mission?
Answer: No. Even if real, they would have had a fake backup plan because this mission cannot fail.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
You misunderstood his clever saying.
He is saying "For every bubble that bursts, only one prediction of it's demise will have been the correct one- and it won't have been the first prediction". It's a variant on "it's always in the last place you look" (because once you find it, you stop looking).
His point is, people have been predicting China's bubble will burst since the '90s. So far they've always been wrong- but it only takes one prediction to be correct.
The first pictures are in.
Count me "disappointed".
What we get is much like what we got 37 years ago.
Today I would have expected multi-megapixel pictures with good sharpness and colour.
The Chinese do know how to produce the camera's for that.
Because we've cornered the market for high quality printing presses?
If fact they do, this is how economic wars are waged. All players smiling at each other.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
A key player was Enron who was already engaging in huge levels of fraud to cover huge mistakes it had made.
No, they were engaging in fraud for the sake of fraud. They knew exactly what they were doing.
Electricity in deregulated markets is sold reverse-auction style. Electric producers bid down each other, the regulating body takes all the lowest bidders, up until the point where the demand is met. Here's how their scam worked-
Enron would bid well below their costs for a couple of the power stations under their control. They would do this for say, a 6PM to midnight block, whereopon they changed their bid (for those couple of stations) to $999/MW-Hr at midnight. OK fine- the regulator could see this and have other companies spool up their generators starting at 11:30 or so and then at midnight the regulator could drop Enron at midnight and buy electricity from someone else. This is perfectly acceptable.
The fraud comes when Enron would purposefully drop their "cheap" stations off the grid for "maintenance" at 12:01AM. The grid couldn't cover this using reserves of other companies only. So the grid regulator would be forced to buy at $999/MW-Hr from Enron until they could spool up MORE power stations owned by others.
All of Enron's scams were like this, using their control of multiple power stations to game the grid auction. There were many variations but they all followed the same general theme.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Are you kidding? This is /.
The closest thing to a damsel around here is that 'dude with with boobs' (girlintraining).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Implementing existing technology is a lot different than creating it. I can plug a power cord into the outlet to power my computer and use it but I sure as hell couldn't build a computer from scratch or construct a power grid. Using existing technology also allows you to bypass the costly R&D expense. There is really nothing wrong with using existing technology no matter where it came from but in this case some people seem to believe China is leaping ahead of others when it comes to technological innovation. To be fair the US, USSR, France, England, and a few others all benefited from the German technology and scientists seized after WW2. The US actually brought Von Braun to the states to lead their rocket programs and he played a significant role in the first Moon landings while advancing the development of the US ICBM's at the same time. My comment is a response to all those who are claiming that the Chinese lander means they are somehow leaping over the US when it comes to advancing space technology. The same people who use the termination of the shuttle program as an example of disappearing US space programs. The shuttle program ran it's course and provided a wealth of data on space operations as well as provided a test bed for new technologies over the past 25 years. The shuttle program was replaced by the unmanned X-37 space plane which has been conducting orbital ops for the past 3 years and a manned version that holds up to 6 people is already being tested.
I gotta see a source on your figures...bigger the claim = bigger the evidence
Thank you Dave Raggett
The fraud comes when Enron would purposefully drop their "cheap" stations off the grid for "maintenance" at 12:01AM. The grid couldn't cover this using reserves of other companies only. So the grid regulator would be forced to buy at $999/MW-Hr from Enron until they could spool up MORE power stations owned by others.
I was thinking more the hiding of 12 billion dollars in losses, but there's some fraud here too.
That's a lot like saying you shouldn't make sure your buildings are up to code for the expected San Andreas big one, because it hasn't happened yet...
Yeah, the choice is between no representation and useless representation. Good times.
Or at least don't send them off to spend $6 trillion dollars on military actions based on false information. There's no question the US needs a strong military. But why does it have to spend more than the rest of the world combined?
Which is why the logical, rational way to build society is to concentrate power into the hands of a few. A rational market may be like a gradual rising tide that lifts all boats, but an irrational market is like a storm that capsizes and sinks the smaller boats. The logical answer is to centralize and create a smaller number of bigger boats.
Sorry, that's not logic. First, you assume that irrational markets are more harmful to small players than big ones. Rather irrational markets are more harmful to irrational traders than rational markets are. Size doesn't correlate with rationality.
Second, centralization is actually a big contributing factor to market irrationality. A lot of wealth and economic power in the hands of an incompetent leader or a coterie of parasites just results in big, irrational perturbations of the market.
Love it or hate it, but all the government and socialism the world has seen in recent human history is not done out of greed or corruption by malicious men seeking power and delighting in other people's misery.
So what if they have good intentions (which incidentally, I think is a rather generous assumption on your part)? Outcome is far more relevant. I see centralization actually making the problems you claim it fixes worse.
hey thanks that was indeed a very informative and interesting article
about the figures, indeed you quote them correctly, but we're talking past each other...the figure for the one launch/mission may be under a Billion but the budget for the whole of their moon missiions is surely above $Billion but that's not the point.
about the ground radar...and China in general, I just don't take what a Totalitarian country bursting at the seams w/ pollution and population desperate for having "Good Face" on the world stage seriously. Their press is **fully** a propaganda arm for their government (which is only true of Fox News here)...imagine that...all the national news in a country is like Fox News.
god bless their endeavor...I don't begrudge their work, my negativity comes from the fact that I don't like bandwagon jumping or fake excitement over Public Relations and Propaganda of a Totalitarian regime
Thank you Dave Raggett
Oh, they believe in it. They just won't do anything about it.
I was 22 when Armstrong and Aldrin walked about. Watching, my reaction was "Wow. Yes! Fantastic!" followed by "'Bout time" and "Now let's build. Go places."
Down-thread a guy blames boomers for crapping out. Yeah, could be. A lot of shit went down. Vietnam, Watergate, Church hearings, Watts, oh, man, a lot of stuff. Some burnt out early, others hunkered and got through, some went high-flyer and made money, a lot just tried to muddle on through. So, yeah, we blew it. Bite me.
One thing always bothered me, by the Census Bureau's def of boomer generation as births from '46-'64. Somehow counting somebody born the same year I'm a high-school junior doesn't set right - ain't no way they're part of my generation - and they never acted, lived, or worked like it either. For me, the boomer generation is precisely all the issue from all the women knocked up in the first couple-three years when all the guys came home from overseas. Call it '45-'48, '50 tops. Lumping the next ten or fifteen years of births into it is absurd. But that's just the way it feels and the way it played. The experts differ.
Sorry, that's not logic.
Sorry, it is.
First, you assume that irrational markets are more harmful to small players than big ones.
No, I did not assume. One does not need to assume reality.
Rather irrational markets are more harmful to irrational traders than rational markets are. Size doesn't correlate with rationality.
I didn't say anything about size correlating with rationality. I'm talking about size and solvency. Again, no need to assume reality. In reality, the bigger and richer you are, the more options you have when you need cash flow: sell/mortgage assets, call in debts and favors (you can be bigger by having more friends and connections), call government to bail you out...
So what if they have good intentions (which incidentally, I think is a rather generous assumption on your part)?
Did I say good intentions (I don't feel like checking, I'm pretty sure I didn't)? I mean logical intentions. Logic isn't bound to your silly morals my emotional friend.
Outcome is far more relevant. I see centralization actually making the problems you claim it fixes worse.
You must be blind, as the outcome of human history is all about centralization and pooling resources together to increase the group's chance of survival. And it does work as humanity is still here, and the humanity we have today is based largely on empires of the past (Romans, European kingomds, China came from a history of dynasties), not the random small groups that were defeated by the big boys or faded away to obscurity.
The WSJ? Really, a bunch of conservatives writing about the demise of a country they perceive as a threat. LOL.
Actually, WSJ is about the most trustworthy source out there and has been for decades. They make money because people read their paper to make money. They can only do that if they actually provide factual information. Unlike Fox, if they put a spin on the economic situation is in China and investors steer clear when they should be investing, then somebody has lost billions because of their false information and will go elsewhere. They may be pro-business, but are probably one of the most factual sources of news out there. This is why they can actually function with a pay wall, because people with money actually find their information worth paying for.
No, I did not assume. One does not need to assume reality.
Then already you need something beyond mere logic. You need evidence for your assumption.
I didn't say anything about size correlating with rationality. I'm talking about size and solvency.
Well, I did. But let's look at things in your limited sense.
In the past few years business bankruptcies in the US peaked just above 1% per year (in 2008) of businesses that employ workers while individual bankruptcies peaked about 0.5% per year (again in 2008). There's no real difference between how businesses as a whole and individuals fared in the recent economic crisis.
2008 was also the year that banks, investment firms, pension funds, etc were suffering from solvency issues that frankly affected the individual far less. There's no indication that size and solvency are correlated IMHO.
You must be blind, as the outcome of human history is all about centralization and pooling resources together to increase the group's chance of survival.
Really? So this is your "logic"? Argument from an appeal to obviousness is a fallacy. But then so is merely claiming stuff is true because you assert without evidence that it really happened.
The US has better things to do than waste resources on running a orbital delivery service. The US still retains the capability to deliver supplies to the space station if there was an emergency using their X-37 space plane. I wonder when Russia, China, or any other country will voice strident protests concerning the X-37 which gives the US a perfect platform from which to conduct anti-satellite missions.
There you have it. Naked nationalism is ugly folks.
I wonder how these losers will react when they find out that NASA has been an international effort since day one?
Yep, thirty years ago is when the politics let us down thanks to Nixon's cuts to start with. It shouldn't be too hard to work that out from what I wrote above if you don't know enough modern history/current affairs.
There WERE enough bits of Saturn V as seen by the pieces which are now on display but were operational back then and there WAS a bit over four years between the final mission and when it was too late to boost the space station into a higher orbit.
I did read what you wrote, but what you wrote (both in that message as well as this one) is complete bullshit utterly disconnected from reality.
ROTFLMAO. No. Nixon's cuts 'let us down' almost not at all, not after LBJ's cuts (almost 50% over four years).
No, there were not enough bits of the Saturn V - not only are most of the displayed bits non flight items to begin with there was no IU available.
Your plan requires a time machine as well as more of the Saturn V than we actually had - because it wasn't until less than a year before it was too late that they knew it was too late.
Sorry - epic fail on every count. I suggest your write about something you know about instead of making shit up.
It certainly has had non-US nationals working with and for NASA ever since Von Braun was sent to the US after WW2. He was the key rocket designer used in the first moon landing while also working on the US ICBM program. China sends their scientists and astronauts to the US for consulting and training. And it is not nationalism to point out anything that might be considered good coming from the US. Of course I know that is preposterous in today's climate when history is being re-written everyday by people who do not know anything about history outside of what they read on their favorite online blog. One idiot throws out a line of unsupported bullshit and 40 more idiots join the fan club. After all If 40 people agreed with the first idiot it has to be true doesn't it? And then the facts get replaced by dogma and idiocy the continues spreading.