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Chinese Spacecraft Enters Orbit Around the Moon
mpicpp sends this report from Scientific American:
A Chinese spacecraft service module has entered orbit around the moon, months after being used in the country's landmark test flight that sent a prototype sample-return capsule on a flight around the moon and returned it to Earth. The service module from China's circumlunar test flight arrived in orbit around the moon this week, according to Chinese state media reports. The spacecraft is currently flying in an eight-hour orbit that carries it within 125 miles (200 kilometers) of the lunar surface at its closest point, and out to a range of 3,293 miles (5,300 km) at its highest point. Earlier reports noted that a camera system is onboard the service module, designed to assist in identifying future landing spots for the Chang'e 5 mission that will return lunar samples back to Earth in the 2017 time frame.
Reader schwit1 adds a detailed report on Russia's next-gen space station module, writing, "The Russians have always understood that a space station is nothing more than a prototype of an interplanetary spaceship. They are therefore simply carrying through with the same engineering research they did on their earlier Salyut and Mir stations, developing a vessel that can keep humans alive on long trips to other planets."
No, the Russian's were hoping to do a manned flyby as part of the Zond program, but the Proton rocket had a number of teething problems and it took awhile to become reliable enough to even consider putting people on (ultimately it never flew manned). There were also a number of problems with the Soyuz 7K-L1 spacecraft. US intelligence thought the Soviet's were closer to flying a crewed lunar flyby mission as Zond 5 was largely a successful test. However Zond 6 depressurized and crashed on re-entry (killing the animals aboard) which ended any immediate plans of a crewed launch. Apollo 8 was originally to be a "D" mission, testing the Lunar Module in Low Earth Orbit with Apollo 9 an "E" mission testing it in Medium Earth Orbit. Due to delays with the Lunar Module, they decided to swap the missions and instead send Apollo 8 into lunar orbit (with no Lunar Module). Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders became the first humans to leave low Earth orbit Dec 21st, 1968. They successfully orbited the moon 10 times on Christmas day and returned Dec 27th After that the Soviet's pretty much gave up on the flyby in favor of a manned lunar landing, but they could never get the N-1 rocket to work
America wouldn't and simply can't do something like that
It's not really a matter of technology that has been lost, rather than safety requirements that have been increased to the point that nothing passes them right now.
I'm a Chinese (well, Hong Konger, but after the fucking handover now I'm technically Chinese) and I've worked in the mainland, so listen to me. China is NOT communist. Not even close. Sure, the Communist Party is in power there, but they are just crooks. If you actually go to the mainland you can see the elders walking the streets, begging for money and food. It's everywhere, from the biggest city to the little town. A communist government would actually care about these people and provided them shelter, foods, health care, and so on. And on the other hand, you see the CPC people with thousand dollars hand bags, luxary goods (all imported, because despite the CPC says China is the best nation in Earth they don't like or trust China's products), 5 star meals every night cooked by chefs who make maybe 300 USD a month. There's no way China is even close to Communism. It's a corrupted dictatorship.
How can you say that technology has receded? That is so far from the facts that I cannot believe that you said that deliberately.
Did you forget that last year we landed on a Comet? Did you forgot the Titan Landing, the minor issue of our presence on Mars for what - 15 continuous years now? Did you forget Cassin, Voyager, MESSENGER? Did you forget that even at this moment we are on the brink of our first good look at Pluto?
You live in a bizarre world.