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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)."
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.
There is a cool animated gif of the descent imager pictures of the landing, and a false color image of the surface.
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.
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
Not even the English can claim a continent, right?
Anyone can claim any damned thing they like. If they are the only people around, they get to set the rules. If China puts a crew up there, with orders to confiscate the US flags already there, and replace them with Chinese flags, WTF are we going to do about it? Run to the United Nations, to whine and snivel?
"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
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
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.