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China's First Lunar Satellite Sends Back Pictures

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Nov 26, 2007 10:46 AM
from the new-race-is-on dept.
Moon Space
Fantastic Lad writes "Chinese leaders hailed images sent back from the country's first lunar satellite on Monday, saying they showed their nation had thrust itself into the front ranks of global technological powers. China plans to launch its third manned rocket, Shenzhou VII, into space in October 2008 and may send an astronaut on a space walk, a Shanghai paper said. But a space official downplayed plans to put a man on the moon."There are no plans at the moment to send anyone on to the moon. I've heard of foreign reports which say China will put a man on the moon by 2020, but I don't know of such a plan," said Sun Laiyan, head of the China National Space Administration. "Please don't give us any more pressure. But I'm confident one day we'll put an astronaut on the moon," he told a news conference."
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Submission: China's first lunar satellite sends back pictures. by Fantastic Lad (198284)
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  • But I'm confident one day we'll put an astronaut on the moon," he told a news conference.
    In related news, Chinese scientists have been found to be studying old episodes of the 1950s American television show The Honeymooners [wikipedia.org], hoping to actually the find the episode where Alice goes to the moon.

    • The Moon is suddenly becoming a hot zone, with the Japanese and Chinese having satellites orbiting it and the United States thinking about a return, both publicly and via private-sector initiatives. Makes you wonder who will discover the Monolith in Tycho first...

      • Makes you wonder who will discover the Monolith in Tycho first...
        Only if you can't distinguish science fiction [wikipedia.org] from fact, ha-ha! ha-.. ...oh.
      • There seems to be a lot of interest in He3. I do wonder if some break through in Fusion happened but HE is required for it.
        Wouldn't getting it HE3 from tritium decay be cheaper? I don't know but we will have to see.
    • That was just a metaphor for beating his wife.

  • Despite politics (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jshriverWVU (810740) on Monday November 26 2007, @10:49AM (#21479579)
    Congradulations! Science has no political boundaries. I just hope they are willing to share their results, much like we and the ESA has.
    • until they find something interesting. At that point, I expect it to be skipped. Keep in mind that while the chinese ppl are fine, the gov. is still the same one that has always been in place; secretive and having intentions other than what is said (i.e. they are like any other gov).
        • America, like nearly all of Europe, hides ALL sorts of information. W. has been spying on Americans for sometime, ILLEGALLY (and wants to get off scot-free). That makes W NO different than Chinese leaders. The ONLY difference between a "democratic entity" (really, it is a republic), is that we get to vote out the ppl that we do not like every so often. But if you look at how America has behaved over the last 6 years ( e.g. holding American citizens in Gitmo sets a precedent that other Americans can be held
    • Appreciation of good science should have no political boundaries. But the Chinese, of course, are doing this for political reasons, just as the Americans did before them. Doesn't besmirch in any way their results, but the choice of what science gets funded is almost always political and economic.
  • Everyone knows the only reason China's putting so much effort into examining the moon is in the hopes of finding "Made in Taiwan" written in its dust.
    • Of course, this only works so long as they pwn Taiwan. There's a lot of people that want to see Taiwan independant [wikipedia.org] of the People's Republic of China (PRC).

  • Please don't give us any more pressure. But I'm confident one day we'll put an astronaut on the moon
    But he sounds pretty sure they will get there eventually. But how many decades of research do they have to build off of? Still this push back into space and a new "space race" is neat to watch.

    • But he sounds pretty sure they will get there eventually.

      If there's a real desire to get there, it'll happen. We know it can be done, that's been proven. Sure, there's a lot of work ahead of China... Plenty of R&D... But it can be done. And if China as a nation wants to put a man on the moon, there's no good reason they won't be able to.

      That's what's missing here in the U.S. - desire. Folks don't seem to care much about NASA/space anymore, and funding keeps getting cut.

    • If the US could do it in under a decade 40 years ago, what makes you think the Chinese with 10x the population and 40 years of technological advancement can't?

  • Nah (Score:2, Redundant)

    by jotok (728554)
    They just ripped off existing American photos of the Moon.

  • Why the LONG timelines? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by onetwentyone (882404) on Monday November 26 2007, @11:03AM (#21479783) Homepage
    Ok, the US put a man on the moon in a really short span of time. We even got a whole flurry to repeat the trip in the following years. So why is it that we can't seem to get anything done with that level of efficiency again? Yes I know there is the lack of money which is a huge problem but you might think that NASA would spend what they could on getting someone exceedingly charismatic to work Congress for the dough.

    If NASA were to start hyping themselves up again (and not relying on past glories), we could really start to see some great achievements coming out of those brilliant people again.

    Which brings us to China. This new endeavor is a point of pride for the country and its government much like it was for us 40 years ago. I'm actually going to root for China in the hope that it will get we Americans to start looking back into space.

    • Re:Why the LONG timelines? (Score:5, Informative)

      by SailorSpork (1080153) on Monday November 26 2007, @11:21AM (#21479989) Homepage
      When we put a man on the moon, we were spurred to catch up & beat the USSR's Sputnik, which frankly shocked the crap out of the US. By 1965, Kennedy had ballooned NASA's budget from $500 million to $5.2 billion (or 5.3% of GDP), which meant that about 1 in 19ish US jobs were geared to the moon landing. Our budget as a % of GDP is back down to 0.58% of GDP. [slashdot.org] If we want to do something fast again, we'll need to pump in more money from somewhere.
       
      Another problem with "going back" is that so many people worked on it that are now old or dead that we have no real working knowledge of how we did it or how to do it again (not to mention the vast tech changes), so we'd be starting over basically from scratch.
      • Your telling me that putting something on Mars is easier than the moon? I think the knowledge of placing a craft on another solar body still exists.
        • The reason is that once out of the earth's gravity well, it is the same diff to get to one place or another (assuming that time does not matter, such as for cargo). OTH, to land on mars, we can use the atmosphere to slow down the craft (via parachutes or even with wings). OTH, the moon will require a FULL LANDER all the way down. Of course, take off is much easier from the moon, but in terms of simply putting something on the surface, mars IS easier.
          • "once out of the earth's gravity well, it is the same diff to get to one place or another"

            A journey of a few days vs. a journey of a few weeks (insanely optimistic) to eighteen months (far more realistic.) If one of your success criteria is having live astronauts at the end of the trip then I'm putting my money on the latter being the one that's orders of magnitude harder.

            "to land on mars, we can use the atmosphere to slow down the craft"

            (a) Mars' atmosphere is very thin, (b) its gravity is far higher than the moon, (c) the crew capsule /landing module for any Mars mission will be far larger than that required for a Moon mission (it's got to contend with the fact that there IS an atmosphere for a start), and (d) entry speed for a Mars mission is massively higher than a Moon landing due to the fact that you have to be going so much faster just to get to Mars in any 'reasonable' time frame.

            Handling a Mars orbital insertion and landing is hugely more technically challenging than a Moon landing for all of those reasons, and more. The science and engineering behind designing parachutes that could slow a capsule down to landing speeds alone is daunting. Don't forget that due to (a) they have to be enormous compared to parachutes used on the Earth, and they have to open in such a way that the mechanical stresses don't tear them or turn the capsule occupants into paté.

            The Moon is easy in comparison. There's no atmosphere to worry about so the lander was delicate and above all light, and the Moon's gravity is low enough that you can gently touch down using just a single moderately powered descent engine.

              • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                by Mindwarp (15738)
                Oh, I agree with you entirely. There are three methods currently in use for slowing spaceships down, but unfortunately they all have their own quite serious down-sides.

                The most common is atmospheric breaking, but as mentioned before that has issues with how thing Mars' atmosphere is, how heavy the entry vehicle has to be due to the stresses involved and the added weight of the chutes and heat shield, and how difficult it is considering the extreme speeds involved in a Mars insertion.

                You can use orbital dyn

    • Re:Why the LONG timelines? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by AsnFkr (545033) on Monday November 26 2007, @11:21AM (#21479999) Homepage Journal
      1. Building public hype to go *back* to the moon is much harder than building hype to be the first to ever go.

      2. No cold war. We are not currently afraid of another countries technological abilities, so we have no need to showboat ours. This was a big issue with both Congress and the public in the 60's.

      3. The general public isn't interested in patriotism unless it has to do with winning a war or putting a yellow ribbon magnet on their cars next to the Dale Earnhardt memorial. And even then, most people nowadays seem to hate the current war.

      4. The benefits of space development are not 100% crystal clear to the general public.

      5. The first time we went to the moon that was 100% (or very close to) NASA's only objective. This means they had a larger percentage of their funding to throw in that direction. Now they have many other projects that need funding as well. In other to continue to operate these other operations it's a bit of a trade off in the time it will take to develop the new equipment for another moon shot.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by stud9920 (236753)

        2. No cold war. We are not currently afraid of another countries technological abilities, so we have no need to showboat ours. This was a big issue with both Congress and the public in the 60's.
        The Boogeyman changed. Hey! I hear their is a terrorist training base on the moon !
      • 6. We've already been to the moon and collected data. There's lots we still don't know about the moon, but there's even more we don't know about Mars, Io, Titan, Alpha Centauri...
      • Why don't we push the bar further and start working on a manned mission to Mars? If not that then perhaps other big and useful things like a space elevator.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by AsnFkr (545033)
          A colony on the moon is the first step towards a manned Mars mission as learning how to survive on an alien surface for long periods of time is a major part of learning how to properly execute such a mission. We didn't just launch Apollo 11 in one shot and land; we had the entire Gemini and and four manned Apollo missions to work out all the details (Long term flight, EVA, rendezvous, docking etc) before making the actual moon landing attempt. In fact, the space station(s) have been excellent in educating u
    • Well, the situation is different:
      Back than, spaceflight was a) a matter of _extreme_ national pride. b) a propaganda race with the soviet uninion and c) had lots of military synergies (all the reasearch in missile technology, ect).

      Just to make a bad comparison: If the money for the war in iraq would have been spend for a moon mission, we would be there now (or the next 2 years).
      Just pushing 100 or 200 billions a year into it and stuff gets going.

      But thats not very economic, and as there is no "real" payback

    • So why is it that we can't seem to get anything done with that level of efficiency again?

      What makes you think it was done efficiently? It was done basically by throwing an enormous amount of money at the problem. All respect to the engineers who made it happen, but it was NOT done inexpensively or efficiently.

      I'm actually going to root for China in the hope that it will get we Americans to start looking back into space.

      Some people keep looking for a space race to happen again, but it never will. W

  • ain't that hard... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2007, @11:18AM (#21479953)
    Well going on the moon shouldn't be to hard for China, all they have to do is put a chinese over a chinese over a chinese over a ...

  • Disappointed (Score:3, Funny)

    by Vampyre_Dark (630787) on Monday November 26 2007, @11:21AM (#21479981)
    I'm disappointed that the images aren't censored.

  • Confused (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lightsaber777 (920815) on Monday November 26 2007, @11:55AM (#21480491) Journal
    We are sending satellites to the far reaches of the solar system and beyond. We have rovers exploring Mars as we speak, which send back spectacular pictures and have performed far beyond the original specifications. We have a telescope in space that monitors distant galaxies. We have intercepted and collected samples from a comet. I fail to see why it is big news when the Chinese replicate a feat that was done nearly half a century ago by two other countries, one of which has sent humans there multiple times using computers less powerful than some people's cell phones. Are they also going to tell their people they were the first ones there and everything else is "Capitalist Propaganda"?

    • Re:Confused (Score:4, Informative)

      by Quiet_Desperation (858215) on Monday November 26 2007, @12:03PM (#21480585)
      And a successful lander on fricken' Titan. Everyone seems to forget that one, which I personally think kicks the ass of every other space endeavor out there. That was international cooperation at its best: American spacecraft and ESA lander.

    • I fail to see why it is big news when the Chinese replicate a feat that was done nearly half a century ago by two other countries

      It's big news because it's a sign of the times.

      Rather than these things being the rare and exclusive preserve of the richest country in the world and it's arch-rival, this level of technological achievement is now becoming common place.

      Hopefully, this is the beginning of a new era in human history, where scientific exploration of space is routine for most countries, but I have

    • Re:Confused (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cozziewozzie (344246) on Monday November 26 2007, @01:55PM (#21482189)
      The fact that the US, Europe and the USSR have done it countless times and China hasn't is exactly the reason why this is seen as important news.

      It means that China is catching up very fast with the other space powers. It means China is capable of launching satelites without help, which has military consequences.

      It means their technology is catching up with the West's, which has all sorts of impact on the society. Remember the outsourcing woes where cheap jobs are lost to the third world? If China becomes a technology superpower instead of just a cheap labour superpower, this will have great economic consequences. These projects clearly show that there are people in there capable of great technological feats.

      It also opens possibilities for scientific cooperation in the future, like the one between the NASA and the ESA.

      It could also affect the funding of NASA, ESA, etc, more than their own (interesting and scientifically relevant) missions can.

      There are many reasons why this is interesting. For one, when the first lunar missions were taking place, China was a mostly illiterate country barely subsisting on farming, with no industry to speak of. Now they're sending people into space. There is a new kid on the block, and that is interesting.
  • Tell Bush that Osama is on the moon with WMDs. We will get there again.
  • I think there might be more competitive spirit strung in tension between China and Japan.

    The Chinese and the Japanese have quite the long-time rivalry. I suspect that the hi-def pictures Japan's lunar orbiter sent home a few weeks back did not go without notice in China. What a crummy way to have the wind taken out of China's sails barely a month before the completion of their own lunar mission. --And the political models of each country would certainly support another space race.

    I'd be excited to see so

    • Re:That's weird (Score:5, Funny)

      by CastrTroy (595695) on Monday November 26 2007, @10:57AM (#21479703) Homepage
      That was quite a while ago. It was probably blown away by the wind. Who knows where it is now.
      • Ahh yes, lunar wind. Another glorious American discovery!

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Kjella (173770)
        The moon has next to no atmosphere and so no wind either. I don't know how long it takes for any of the other effects of basicly being a rock directly exposed to space and the sun take to erode away the flag, but I'm guessing quite some time.
        • Yes, it has a VERY thin atmosphere. More importantly, it does blow around there. Even more so, when a meteor hits it (frequently), or a space craft (not so frequently, but about to change).
          • The earth would get hit by meteors quite often too, if it wasn't for our atmosphere. Most stuff travelling towards the earth burns up in our atmosphere. Every time you see a shooting star, that's a meteor.
            • Yes, I know. But the vast majority of our meteors burn up in the atmosphere. In Contrast, when a meteor hits the moon, it can throw the material literally around the moon. It is part of what creates the "wind" on the moon.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Facetious (710885)
          Dude, get your joke-meter fixed. One of the we-didn't-go-to-the-moon conspiracy theory pieces of evidence was the flag "blowing" in the "wind" on film.
    • Although the unfiltered sunlight has probably bleached them all white by now.
    • If it was so easy to do on the first try, and in multiple subsequent trips by the U.S., then the U.S. should have been able to do the same thing by now, using technology that's better and cheaper than it was then

      In other news, people reached the deepest point in the ocean [wikipedia.org] in 1960, never to return again. The craft they used [wikipedia.org] could be replicated today, but why? The moon and the Mariana trench are places, like the top of the Everest, where people go because it's there. People revisit the Everest because it's c

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