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First Commercial Mission To the Moon Launched From China
mbone writes with news about the first privately-funded spacecraft to travel the Moon. Cold War competition between superpowers dominated the first decades of space travel and exploration. Individual governments took the lead, bankrolling most of the process in the name of competition and nationalism. Ultimately international cooperation and collaboration took root, and the landscape is already very different. The present and future of space exploration is more collaborative, more international, and involves both space agencies and private companies. One such project is the combination Chang’e 5-T1 and Manfred Memorial Moon Mission (4M), which launched together last Thursday. Both projects are testbeds for ideas: Chang’e 5-T1 is a prototype for a robotic probe intended to return samples from the Moon to Earth, while 4M is a simple communications experiment encouraging amateur participation. But the intriguing bit is that 4M is a project of the private Luxembourg-based company LuxSpace, while Chang’e 5-T1 is a Chinese project, and the whole endeavor was launched on a Chinese rocket.
Is it any surprise that when you regulate everything and anything - It pushes people who have money someplace else?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
You are equating socialism with communism ("pinko")? Really?! You'd think with a vested interesting in understanding the governments you'd have learned more by now...
Communism is a joke, there are no actual "Communist" countries. China is a capitalist totalitarianism (and interestingly Russia has basically become that as well, though through a very different path). The US is a capitalist democracy (and calling it socialistic is a joke as well - look to Europe for socialist democracies, some of which are doing pretty damn well).
And while the US may be poorly functioning with its democracy (as in deadlock), I'm still going to stand by a belief that mass idiots electing random idiots is still better than a few idiots telling everyone else what to do and imprisoning those that disagree with them.
You might want to compare the limits of freedom for individuals in both countries.
And then look at "Totalitarianism" and "Authoritarianism" in addition to "Socialism" and "Capitalism".
European Democracies tend toward Socialism without the "pinko" label.
Or, to put it another way, who ran against China's current President in the last election and how many votes did s/he get from the public?
LOL! If this remark doesn't end up +5, I'm gonna eat slashdot (please, no Dice-already-has jokes).
Seriously, Chinese are obsessed with food and cooking. It seems almost half their conversations are about food. (I took Chinese language courses once.)
Maybe that's a good thing. In the US we typically ignore food until we are really hungry, then grab a quick Greaseburger to satisfy our hunger. It's not working well. Planning may do us better.
Table-ized A.I.
I would think that something like a moon hab or station would be perfect for crowd funding.
I think that space is one thing that tons of people are willing to spend money on. I would be willing to put up a few hundred bucks, even if I get nothing in return. So long as the idea is realistic and gets us going in the right direction.
Maybe I will never be able to go into space. At my age, it is likely I won't, but I can at least dream that my kids will go.
Socialism gets a bad rap because humans aren't yet evolved to make it naturally work voluntarily on a massive scale; it works well enough at an intimate village scale, but not for an entire nation.
And that, friends, is why some of us fear a massive centralized government. I am not afraid of government, I am afraid of government not under citizen control. There is no representation in our supposedly representative democracy, and thus precious little democracy as well.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"