Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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 :-/