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Europe and China Will Team Up For a Robotic Space Mission
Taco Cowboy writes with this excerpt from Space.com: On Monday (Jan. 19), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the European Space Agency (ESA) issued a call for proposals for a robotic space mission that the two organizations will develop jointly. "The goal of the present Call is to define a scientific space mission to be implemented by ESA and CAS as a cooperative endeavor between the European and Chinese scientific communities," ESA officials wrote in a statement Monday. "The mission selected as an outcome of the present Joint Call will follow a collaborative approach through all the phases: study, definition, implementation, operations and scientific exploitation." The call envisions a low-budget mission, saying that ESA and CAS are each prepared to contribute about 53 million euros (U.S. $61.5 million at current exchange rates). The spacecraft must weigh less than 661 lbs. (300 kilograms) at launch and be designed to operate for at least two to three years, ESA officials wrote in the call for proposals. All proposals are due by March 16, and the peer-review process will start in April. Mission selection is expected to occur in late 2015, followed by six years of development, with a launch in 2021.
I, for one, welcome our new marijuana overlords.
We Europeans have been trying to weed them out of our economy but apparently we need to approach it in an entirely different way, since we've only managed to hash it up so far. We'll now try to potshot them.
Ezekiel 23:20
They already have it, you can be sure of this.
You guys are beyond hopeless, man
Whenever there is something about the Chinese you guys sure to crawl out form the woodworks and heap baseless accusations on the Chinese
So you think you are better than those Chinese?
300 kg ( 661 imperial pounds)
That's a whole idea in doing something "jointly" - every party want to provide something valuable, be it IP, resources or manufacturing capability. Don't want to share those "valuable ESA technologies" - don't do joint ventures, you know.
Where is this mission to? What is it for? Would one sentence on that question have been too much for the summary?
Since Taco Cowboy routinely posts unrelated messages to the earliest post in a thread, I thought I would honor his own article by doing the same for him. Moderators: although this is just a simulation, you can further its realism by not down-modding me, as you typically do for him.
You're welcome, Taco.
Welcome to the new old world. Free copies have been reality for every software pirate since 80s and even before that. With 3D printers, even less stuff will be 'genuine'. If all goes well, the era of IP will end within our lifetime and people will have to do real work again.
Who knows, maybe we have to go back to using gold and silver coins again, because while mundane metal objects will be easy to copy, DIY total matter conversion won't happen in near future.
Which of the accusations are baseless?
Are you saying that because I am a Chinese you can accuse me for being a thief?
Is that what you mean, buddy?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Please read the announcement carefully
It is an open call for proposal, with the following restriction:
* The last day you can submit your proposal for the space mission is 16th of March of this year
* The payload must not be more than 300KG in mass
* The cost (not sure if the amount includes the transport charge) must not be over 106 million Euros, or $123 million dollars
* Mission (perhaps the robot itself) must be in operational mode within the range of 2 to 3 years
Other than that everything else is open --- like the destination (the moon, an asteroid, ISS, whatever), or what the robot gonna do, or what shape / material of that device, all those are open
Once again, this is an open call for proposal for a an open ended robotic space mission
We Europeans have been trying to weed them out of our economy but apparently we need to approach it in an entirely different way, since we've only managed to hash it up so far. We'll now try to potshot them.
You must be high. We've nothing to fear from those dopes. For some, the grass is always greener on the other side.
Yes of course valuable ESA technologies, because USA isn't producing anything of value.
Pretty sure NASA has been relegated to the status of "service provider" for SpaceX.
Let's see:
There's the famous Chinese company that had a contract with American Superconductor for wind turbine parts, and cloned the parts.
Allegations of China copying the German Transrapid maglev.
China had bought contracts, to manufacture the major high speed railcars from French, German, Canadian, and Japanese companies. It is developing an indigenous high speed railcar, combing the technologies together, and trying to sell high speed rail systems overseas.
Chinese hackers stealing designs of the F-35, V-22, and other american weapon systems.
China cloned the Russian su-27, in the form of the J-11b fighter jet.
I am sure there are many other cases out there.
Perhaps the EU scientists see China as being a future significant space science / engineering power and is exploring potential future relationships. Maybe EU space scientists don't see the USA and Russia as the only major players in town. Given that that Chinese are one of the two nations that are capable of launching humans successfully into space at present it would seem fair enough to take them seriously and work with them.
Then you would be pretty wrong. SpaceX is only viable because of the R&D provided by NASA over the past 50 years.. Sure China is active in industrial espionage just like every other country on the planet but they really don't need to steal the technology they just have to pay attention and take notes on all of NASA's successes and failures. Just knowing something is possible is half the battle when trying to develop technology. And by the way China jumpstarted their space efforts by buying a lot of Russian technology when the USSR folded.
That and the $370-odd million dollars NASA paid them while they were completing the development of the Falcon9.