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China Completes Its First Lunar Return Mission
China's Chang'e 5-T1 mission to the moon has not only taken some beautiful pictures of the Earth from the craft's perspective (hat tip to reader Taco Cowboy) but as of Friday evening (continental U.S. time) returned a capsule to Earth. (The capsule landed in Inner Mongolia.) From the linked article: Prior to re-entering the Earths atmosphere, the unnamed probe was travelling at 11.2 kilometres per second (25,000 miles per hour), a speed that can generate temperatures of more than 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,700 degrees Fahrenheit), the news agency reported. To slow it down, scientists let the craft "bounce" off Earths atmosphere before re-entering again and landing. ... The module would have been 413,000 kilometres from Earth at its furthest point on the mission, SASTIND said at the time. The mission was launched to test technology to be used in the Change-5, Chinas fourth lunar probe, which aims to gather samples from the moons surface and will be launched around 2017, SASTIND previously said.
How curious that this comes in the same week the Americans lost two space vehicles in one week.
The future of space belongs to China. They are the ones with the cajones to do it. They'll be the first manned mission to Mars too because they'll just fucking do it. They won't be crippled with fear and pork.
China 2014 = USA 1960.
How curious that this comes in the same week the Americans lost two space vehicles in one week.
The future of space belongs to China. They are the ones with the cajones to do it. They'll be the first manned mission to Mars too because they'll just fucking do it. They won't be crippled with fear and pork.
China 2014 = USA 1960.
Oh shut up. They've managed to do something we did in the 1970's. Good for them, it's not a trivial accomplishment by any means, but it doesn't mean that Taikonauts will be owning near space for the next millennium. I do wish them luck and persistence - somebody needs to kick the US in the kiester and get us 'competing' against something.
Besides, the Chinese love pork.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
1972 Last US Moon Landing
1972 - No one does a damn thing
Nope, I don't really see any reason to pick on China specifically there.
At this rate they will be inventing the wheel in about 200 years but good for them because the rest of us will have forgotten how to do even that!
But don't worry, we still have junk food and reality TV.
US has never had an unmanned sample return mission from the moon. Soviets did, though, in the early 70's.
They can spin it, "US sucks, they have to send up humans because their robots are too dumb."
Table-ized A.I.
Just accept that the Chinese will own the 21st century of space exploration, ok. There's no need for your envy, be proud of our achievements as a race and commend China for taking the lead, for all of us.
And don't bring up the "we did it before you"-bullshit, because the Russians beat ALL OF US going into space. The Russians had crafts in orbit, people in orbit, and landers on the Moon, Venus and Mars, before anyone else. The Russians were the definitive pioneers of space exploration, period.
You're just some small envious person who have no idea what you're talking about. The U.S has been doing monumental spying for 50 years via the NSA, and most of your achievements are the fruits of European and Asian immigrants. Your suggestion that the Chinese can't achieve anything on their own is something only a clown and a loser would come up with.
and a replacement box set of Firefly.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Congrats China!
I think we can actually pin the blame on Korolev here. He died in 1966, and without him Soviet space program lost their main driver.
And without stiff and successful competition he provided, US didn't use the same resources as before on space exploration after clawing their one victory after series of losses. A very smart thing to do considering the costs of the program and the fact that people only remember your last victory, not the string of losses that came before it.
The rest of the world seems to have become so risk adverse and cost focused that it is very doubtful any significant space exploration will be forthcomming in the near future. Perhaps what little communal pride is left in China will help spur exploration for explorations sake, and not just the pursuit of profit?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
AFAIK, today, even the US is back to the pre-1970 era. IIRC, NASA has lost knowledge about the Saturn's engine. Even in the nuclear domain, the industrial knowledge on how to produce some critical element of nuclear warhead has been lost.
Actually, no, it would seem the US were finally able to re-manufacture FOGBANK after 10 years and nearly $100 millions spent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
Go China! A scientific victory for any of us is a scientific victory for all of us. Congratulations and keep up the good work!
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
People lost interest in seeing men walk around on the moon, or riding around in a golf buggy. And they had picked enough rocks to last a while. What reason would there be to keep going ?
Wrong: the specs are still present, and much of the institutional knowledge is still present.
What the US lacks is the financial will however, rest-assured that both the US and Russia could hop back into the space race whenever they chose. It would hurt financially, but they could do it.
These countries are choosing not to spend as much on space programmes as they once did. Back against the wall, they could switch priorities.
I wish people would stop playing-out their fantasy that former world leaders (US, UK, Russia, France) are wounded giants with buzzards surrounding them ... they pack a mean punch and will continue to for some time.
Oh my god, it's not full of stars... Seriously though, how come there are never any stars? Is the surface reflection really that bright, or are space-cameras just inherently shit?
cf. http://amyshirateitel.com/2011...
If the problem was only economical, there wouldn't be a problem nowadays for a new launch vehicle to go to Mars. The $6 billions NASA budget in 1966 would be equivalent to $43 billions today. Even at FY 2013 budget, $17 billions, assuming the R&D had already been done, documented, and tooling still exist, the saturn launch vehicle could easily be re-made. But strangely, it could not. you are also disproved by the fact the NASA engineer have only been testing the Rocketdyne F-1 engine quite... recently... http://www.nasa.gov/exploratio...
Let's face it, the US space program is not what it used to be, but hey, if you like to live in the past, good for you :-/
Clearly after going to the Moon, someone discovered there is no point anymore to go there. USA proved its superiority as intended when JFK launched the program. The only incentive was national superiority during the Cold War. The rest was pure waste of money and resources.
Comparison with aviation does not hold water. The aviation industry has proven to be profitable and fast transportation valuable to human activity and economy. No such thing exists for manned missions to the Moon or even Mars. In short, there is no incentive to do it again or even go to Mars, Cold War is over.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Even if they continued the missions, bringing samples from the moon would still be way too expensive to be handing them out to school kids.
AFAIK, today, even the US is back to the pre-1970 era. IIRC, NASA has lost knowledge about the Saturn's engine.
You mean the F-1? The funny thing is, NASA never had a lot of knowledge about the engine in the first place: the computers of the time were not powerful enough to allow them to simulate a lot of stuff, so a lot of the design decisions were simple guesswork. (The same actually goes for the Russians, too.) Here's a great article on a recent piece of "industrial archeology".
Ezekiel 23:20
Actually, the F-1B engine seems to be progressing nicely.
Ezekiel 23:20
Well, it depends on what "15% better" means. If it means "15% better parameters, regardless of 30%-60% higher manufacturing costs", it will be bad. If it means "15% cost improvement while keeping the parameters the same or somewhat better", that sounds like a better deal to me. I wouldn't blame computers for computer abuse.
Ezekiel 23:20
Forget the Moon, who knew there was actually an inner Mongolia ?
The government - if that is the word - of the middle Northern American country, colloquially known as the Americas [sic?],
In American English, "America" unambiguously identifies he United States of America. The Americas unambiguously refers to North, South, and Latin America collectively. The people I've found with the most confusion on this point is those who learn English as a second language, and the wording is different, and they tend to insist that their English is better than millions of natives, because it sounds like their native language.
Learn to love Alaska
Brilliant news, find water on the moon and we have found the moon's rocket fuel. Get that rocket fuel back to earth and use it to accelerate a craft to escape velocity, in the safety of the vacuum of space and we are on our way.
Please read my thesis http://dollyknot.com/nonlinear...
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
"It would seem the US were finally able to re-manufacture FOGBANK"
As with the manufacture of seamless tubing for SSMEs there was heavily reliance on the memory of retired staff.
Not the first technique that was lost and certainly won't be the last.
"What the US lacks is the financial will"
Not just the financial will. Even with an unlimited budget the USA could not resume manufacturing SaturnV-class launchers without at least a decade lead-time.
For what it's worth, before the "space race", the USA was planning the Dyna-soar project, using a truly massive booster (Sea Dragon), which would be fabricated in a shipyard. Long-term that kind of booster is going to be needed, unless the political will to build Orion-class launchers is somehow found (and short of a Footfall scenario I can't see that happening)
"NASA engineer have only been testing the Rocketdyne F-1 engine"
No, they've only been testing the gas generator from the engine. Firing the entire engine will take a LOT more work.
Just to clarify: The "gas generator" is the part of the engine which drives the turbopumps which supply fuel+oxidiser to the main combustion chamber. It's analogous in some ways to the high pressure injector pump in a diesel engine.
As one commentator put it "Even if there were gold bars stacked at the landing site ready for collection, it still wouldn't be worthwhile making the flight to collect them"
The issue was that the space race was about militaristic chest-thumping and was promoted as such. Because of that, interest was lost as soon as Apollo 11 landed. The USA had won, why bother with anything more?
There were plenty of opportunities to keep interest up but the media had other priorities and exo-geology still doesn't feature highly on their radar.