Slashdot Mirror
Japan Wants To Put a Man On the Moon, Accelerating Asian Space Race (cnn.com)
Japan plans to put a man on the moon around 2030, according to a new proposal by the government's Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). From a report: It is the first time JAXA has revealed an intention to send Japanese astronauts beyond the International Space Station, and it will mostly likely be part of an international mission, the agency said. The announcement from Japan is just the latest in a series of ambitious space exploration plans by Asian countries, with the increasing competition for space-related power and prestige in the region echoing that of the Cold War space race of the mid-20th century. In December 2016, China announced plans to land a rover on Mars by 2020 as well as a manned mission to the Moon at some point in the future.
oh, some other country has sent probes to every planet? footed the bill for more than a third of the costs of the ISS?
1. Develop freeze dried sushi
2. Overcome SJW objections to putting a *man* on the moon instead of a person
3. Escape Godzilla's clutch
No, but Musk and SpaceX are. In a lot of ways that is better as long as SpaceX continues to do well and can afford to set sights beyond orbit. Mainly because they will be trying for a financially sustainable business and not just research/bragging rights.
"off this rock"
Space nutter detected. At least you didn't mention "gravity well".
but I'm not sure they don't. I don't know enough about the country except that they're economy is in permanent recession and their only solution so far has been to try and get more women to work. I've also read that income inequality is worse over there than here in the States, which outside of the 2nd world is hard to imagine. If this spread some of that money around it'd be a good thing. Nationalism has so far been the only reliable way to pry money from the hands of the ruling class short of a plague or war crashing the population.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
i can't believe somebody actually modded the parent tripe up :(
We haven't really "conquered" the moon yet.
We would first establish a continuously inhabited moon base, begin to build some infrastructure. This would make the leap to Mars SO much more practical! We might even get to Mars sooner by leveraging a moon base, than by trying to get directly to Mars.
There is no appetite in the US to spend what it would take to make this happen. I hope Japan and China succeed. Maybe it will wake us up and get things moving again.
The more countries trying to get us off this rock the better. Too bad the USA isn't in that list.
There's not "getting us off this rock". They're going to plant another flag, maybe pick up some rocks and do some science, and then come back home.