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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.
Or, as I Chinese understand it, a way to obtain valuable ESA technologies.
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)
They only copy shit and then run it for themselves. They should be allowed nowhere near European space agencies until they sort their censorship and democratic institutions out. They are playing a long game and still have bad memories of Europe.
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.
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
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.