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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.
Let's just hope that the Chinese never find life on another planet, because the first thing they'll do is eat it!
You don't say overtly that it's a bad thing that the United States has socialistic constraints on its capitalistic economy... and it's not. Socialism - NOT Communism - done well is a far better economic system for advanced societies than capitalism. Better to call it mutualism or voluntary socialism. In the context of any advanced society pure capitalism can never be done well; it reaches a peak benefit - the United States has passed that point - and then begins to cause irreparable harm that leads to eventual economic and social collapse. It's a cyclic process that repeats as long as capitalism is the economic law of the jungle. We must evolve our species to more naturally cooperate rather than compete and combat.
The summary and article call it "the first privately-funded spacecraft to travel the Moon", but it appears to be nothing more than payload that will be dumped off a Chinese (publicly-funded) rocket in an orbit that will take it around the moon and then back to earth.
It would be more accurate to call it the first privately-funded piece of cargo carried to lunar orbit by a publicly-funded rocket, but I suppose that would kill the capitalism boner all the Randroids got upon reading this story.
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.
It's the first deliberate commercial mission to the moon.
I forget the details but there was a commercial satellite that ended up in the wrong orbit, and the easiest way to fix it was to send it out around the moon and back. Okay, it didn't do any actual science or anything, but still.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Even in the Nordic countries with their generous welfare states, the great majority of people get up and go to work everyday. Even among the people who don't work and get some kind of public support, many are pursuing a degree, or in fact working some small job under the table. A lot of people would be bored without some routine, and most people want the nice amenities they could buy beyond what a basic income scheme would provide.
In any event, as we move towards increasing automation, at some point we will have to stop thinking it a bad thing when a person chooses not to work, if the only jobs he/she could do would be artificial makework. In the past, retraining redundant workers allowed them to stay productive, but now so much of what people were retrained to do is being automated away. While the new "creative economy" or "internet economy" has offered some new markets, the world only needs so many Perez Hiltons, for example, and it would be unreasonable to expect the masses of unemployed workers around the world to become professional bloggers just for the sake of "not being unemployed".
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.
Let's face it, without some competition, the USA would sit around with its thumb up its ass.
Well, what could we expect, when the space programmes of the US and USSR were, in large parts, no more than dick-waving? The Chinese are quite naturally milking their space program for its publicity value, but they have their eyes firmly on the commercial and political power objectives in the long term. I wish them all success with it - it can only benefit us all, if space exploration becomes sustainable or viable or whatever the word is. And hopefully this will spur the West and Russia on to try to do better.