The Interfacer writes "China and Russia are planning a joint mission to Mars that will bring back samples to earth and land on one of the red planet's tiny moons, state media quoted a Chinese scientist as saying Wednesday." From the article: "Russia will launch the spacecraft, while China will provide the survey equipment to carry out the unmanned exploration, Ye Peijian, a senior scientist at the Chinese Academy of Space Technology, told a meeting in Beijing, according to the official Xinhua news agency."
China and Russia have rarely gotten along. In decades past, they had a good chunk of their nukes pointed at each other, large armies stationed at their border, and their politics didn't always match dispite their supposed shared Communism.
These days, you'd be hard pressed to call either country Communist. I think of both as sort of Wild-West capitalist societies. Now they seem to be forming an economic alliance against the other growing political powers - mostly Europe and the US. It's been interesting watching how similar their replies are in the current Iran negotiations.
I think they're both interested in developing their high tech sectors, and see it as a natural partnership. Russia has lots of experience, while China has a very well-developed industrial base.
This has very interesting political consequences in the US, as well. What we're seeing is the first massive event of the end of the American domination of the scientific and engineering fields. We can't deny that the various religious fundamentalists are somewhat responsible. They have successfully lobbied the US government to reduce its financial support to NASA and other scientific bodies. They have even taken the "battle" to the classroom.
Unfortunately for all American citizens, this group of fundamentali
the U.S. had its biggest growth, in technology and economy, during times when the populace was much more religious. Blaming the lack of R&D and shortsightedness of our big oil/big corp oligarchy on the fundies is just silly, most of the presidents and executive brnach in the last 30 years haven't been fundies
"They attempt to make up for their own lack of education by forcing their twisted ideas about the world on others, including people and organizations who wish to improve our understanding of nature via the scientific method."
Thank you for stero typing. I'm a christian, probably not a fundamentalist, but a Bible belivin Christian. I have a college education in software engineering. Also, 3 of the Math professors, 2 engineering professors and a physics professor at my college were all christians. I would s
Lyndon B. Johnson (D): Huge increase, then a moderate decrease. Richard Nixon (R): Large decrease Jimmy Carter (D): Small decrease Ronald Reagan (R): Small decrease George Bush Sr. (R): Small increase Bill Clinton (D): tiny decrease George Bush Jr. (R): tiny decrease
Now, factor in the fact that Republicans are "all about" cutting government income and spending as a whole (whether or not they succeed), and you get that democrats are bigger supporters of NASA than Republicans. However, even with that, it's clearly not a very partisan issue.
Actually, this graph is pretty telling (NASA budget as percentage of government spending):
Unfortunately, that doesn't tell the entire story, either. Many of the technologies NASA uses have been getting cheaper in comparison (especially in the areas of computer and data recording) meaning that quite a few of their projects aren't as expensive as they once were. So looking at anything technology-related in comparison to overall spending is a bit misleading. Especially given that Congressional Pork has become
See these two [slashgeo.org] stories [slashgeo.org] on China's Compass program. In short: China is launching a GPS competitor. Yes, in addition to GLONASS, GALILEO and GPS satellites. Oh, they're also interested in environmental remote sensing now [slashgeo.org]...
The Russian Space Agency already has a hard time completing crucial supply spacecraft for the International Space Station. Now it has committed to build spacecraft for China and help train Chinese astronauts, possibly leaving the space station grasping for seconds.
China and Russia can be friends [heritage.org] or the "NATO of the East" or whatever you want to call it. But, to surpass your role in the ISS and instead strike up another work
Why can't Russia support the ISS and China's program? Unlike the US or Chinese space programs, Russia gets a lot of hard currency for its participation. They might even be making a profit here. Especially when you consider economies of scale, Russia may be *better* able to support the ISS due to its activity with China.
From the article, all the Russians are supplying is the heavy lift vehicle and probably a earth-to-mars transfer stage. Sounds like a juicy launch contract for a Soyuz or Proton booster, but not much else. It is probably good for the old cash flow situation for the Russian Space Agency. I'm suprised the Chinese didn't elect to use a Long March [wikipedia.org] rocket but it may not have quite the throw they need for the transfer stage. With a 2009 launch date, I'm assuming they are pretty far along in planning and buildin
From the article, all the Russians are supplying is the heavy lift vehicle and probably a earth-to-mars transfer stage. Sounds like a juicy launch contract for a Soyuz or Proton booster, but not much else. It is probably good for the old cash flow situation for the Russian Space Agency.
I guess I was mistaken about the size of the project. But it still sounds exactly like what Russia should be going for.
I'm suprised the Chinese didn't elect to use a Long March rocket but it may not have quite the throw they need for the transfer stage.
That's an understatement. The current generation of Long March rockets have all the lift power of a Delta II rocket (one of the smaller rockets currently in production), despite having all the fanfare of the Saturn V. While China hopes to change that situation with the Long March 5, that rocket is still a ways in the future.
Until China develops a medium to heavy lift vehicle,
TATO? Trans-Asia Treaty Organization. Though I don't think they'd directly use English for this, I don't know any Chinese or much Russian so I don't know what they'd call it if they did form such an organization.
It would be unfortunate to see ISS go by the wayside, but even with its origina schedule and current design, I'm not sure it was boing to be scientifically useful anyway.
But, to surpass your role in the ISS and instead strike up another working plan with China is kind of... well, not very supportive of the ISS.
You make a good point, but I think the space.com article from 2001 was off the mark when it suggest the Russians may take away support from ISS for other programs.
I've worked extensively with the Russians on ISS and been to Moscow many, many times. Culturally, manned spaceflight is a big deal to the Russians, much more so than Americans (how many Americans even know
OK, its time to put this theme to bed - it is a dumb plan to throw rocks at Earth from space. There are two ways to throw rocks: slow and fast. If you are throwing slowly, that means you find a suitable asteroid and subtely alter its course so that it intersects Earth - specifically hitting your target country. First, lets point out that this is hard - you must apply huge forces for a long time very precisely. Second, by the time anyone is doing that it will be easy to look for large asteroids coming at u
The V2 program wasn't a space program. The rockets weren't designed to reach space, they were designed to hit targets up to around 300 km away and deliver a warhead of up to a metric ton.
Getting on and off of a moon with a very low level of gravity is easier and cheaper than landing on something where you need to land and launch,while fighting the planets gravitational pull.
> Why would they go to all that trouble of making such a huge trip and not land on the planet??? > I know maybe it has larger risks but COME ON, it's not like you go to Mars every week. Russian scientists have been obsessed with Phobos for decades. There is a lot of science and discovery on that tiny moon, including samples of Mars (blown into space and swept onto Phobos) and other solar system bodies. Landing on Phobos is worlds easier than Mars itself, and there is an amount of preservation available
I wouldn't count on it until we get more people interested in space again. Too many people think other things are more important that science and research for it's own sake. Now if we could find gold or oil on something out there that we could get back on terra firma easily, that would be a space race!
The day has arrived when a Russian/Chinese announcement of a Mars mission is believable, while the American president's announcement [google.com] is mere political propaganda.
Perhaps, but the "budget deficit" is meerly the measure of government spending whose cost has not yet been taxed. It is an essencially irrelevant number as far as economic indicators go because it doesn't say anything at all about how much effort is siphoned off for government use rather than remaining in the economy. By definition, all government spending is an economic damper, so the most important number is total budget*. It doesn't matter whether the budget is paid for in taxes, recorded debt, or inf
I found some other interesting information on this subject, BTW. The US Government expenditures an average double every 10 years, and have since basically World War II - but they aren't doing that anymore. Since 2000, the growth rate has slowed significantly [infoplease.com].
I find this interesting because I have always assumed that the way to lower spending is to have Congress and the President in opposing parties - but the evidence does not seem to favor that.
who hopes this sparks a real space race? Although, it would be a shame it was all for the sake of going there and then doing nothing again for 40 years.
HASA has either suspended or cancelled outright nearly half of its space probe missions due to cost constraints. These compete against the Shuttle Return To Space, the new Orion manned spacecraft, ISS construction, and the presidential Return to the Moon and Mars initiatives. So its nice other countries are picking up the slack.
If it's feasable that the US alone could go to mars, and that Russia and China together can go to mars - then could not all three work together to achieve this goal better?
Or is it neccessary to have the "us" and "them" philosophy when it comes to these kinds of projects?
Sure, the US could push for a multilateral approach to space exploration. Now, stop and think about the current state of affairs in the 'states and you'll see why this isn't likely to happen. Ths US has a massive deficit, and little actual interest in spaceflight. I have no doubt that NASA could get to Mars and back again, if they had both the budget and the full support of congress and the general public. But in the absence of either, there is little room for new spaceflight programs in their agenda. An
1) Americans have lower tolerances for dangerous situations; there is much less concern about the political fashions of "soccer moms" in countries where life is already cheap.
2) American space agencies can't do anything without checking with their defense contractors and their home states first to make sure the money will flow to political contributors and reliable voters.
It would be good to compare the cost of chinese and russian unmanned exploration missions to NASA's cost. If their missions turn out to be less expensive and more successful than those from the US, I think that space exploration would gain a lot with it. Cheaper missions in larger quantities, improving quality over time: that sounds like something the chinese could do better than the rest of the world right now.
--
"I, for one, welcome our new unmanned red overlords"
Russia really benefits, if this goes through. This sort of thing has the potential to guarantee substantial launch volume for them. Always a nice thing to have. And given China's economy, I suspect that China sooner or later will be paying most of the bills.
I find it interesting that China apparently is forgoing the launch vehicles. I think this is a big shift in the focus of their space program. Maybe from a strategic angle, they think that they can build up their launch systems later or maybe buy/steal the necessary technology from Russia.
This is a link [energia.ru] to an interview with the General Designer of Russia's Korolev Space and Rocket Corporation. Interesting information about the Clipper space transportation system, and also about ion engine spaceships that they plan to send to the Moon and Mars.
My very uninformed view of China's space program so far is that it's largely been purchased Russian technology with some in-house few updates. This makes sense for everyone, since Russia has been consistently launching rockets and orbiters for decades now, and China might as well take a little help to get some experience.
This time, from the article, it looks to like China will be doing the "interesting" science portion of this joint mission and Russia "just" does the pushing. Yes, others have built planetary landers before, but not so many that task is mature or easy.
So, this might be China's coming out party with respect to space research and technology. And then they'll shoot for the moon... (literally).
But it would be tough to keep a vehicle on the surface of Venus long enough to do much good science...Mercury isn't too terribly interesting...and you can't really 'land' on any of the gas giants.
Mars is fairly hospitable to our machines (as proven by the long lives of Spirit and Opportunity) and fairly interesting from a scientific standpoint.
IANARSPD
Well, Mars anv Venus are closest. Unfortunately the atmosphere of Venus is very unfriendly to humans/machines.
Venus has an extremely thick atmosphere, which consists mainly of carbon dioxide and a small amount of nitrogen. The pressure at the planet's surface is about 90 times that at Earth's surface--a pressure equivalent to that at a depth of 1 kilometer under Earth's oceans. The enormously CO2-rich atmosphere generates a strong greenhouse effect that raises the surface temperature to over 400 C."cite [wikipedia.org].
The next closest planets are Mercury and Jupiter, you wouldn't want to visit them either. Mercury is basically a semi-molten ball of rock, Jupiter is no treat with its high gravity, high winds, and very little (if any) crust. The planets don't get any better the further you get away from the sun. Basically, Mars is the only planet close enough and similiar enough to Earth to have any hope of visiting (and staying) for any useful amount of time.
Oh dear. (Score:5, Funny)
Joking aside, this is interesting politically (Score:5, Insightful)
These days, you'd be hard pressed to call either country Communist. I think of both as sort of Wild-West capitalist societies. Now they seem to be forming an economic alliance against the other growing political powers - mostly Europe and the US. It's been interesting watching how similar their replies are in the current Iran negotiations.
I think they're both interested in developing their high tech sectors, and see it as a natural partnership. Russia has lots of experience, while China has a very well-developed industrial base.
Parent
Politically interesting in the US, too. (Score:2, Insightful)
We can't deny that the various religious fundamentalists are somewhat responsible. They have successfully lobbied the US government to reduce its financial support to NASA and other scientific bodies. They have even taken the "battle" to the classroom.
Unfortunately for all American citizens, this group of fundamentali
blame the fundies. load of crap (Score:2)
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Thank you for stero typing. I'm a christian, probably not a fundamentalist, but a Bible belivin Christian. I have a college education in software engineering. Also, 3 of the Math professors, 2 engineering professors and a physics professor at my college were all christians. I would s
Re:Politically interesting in the US, too. (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.asi.org/images/2003/NASA-budget-as-per
Lyndon B. Johnson (D): Huge increase, then a moderate decrease.
Richard Nixon (R): Large decrease
Jimmy Carter (D): Small decrease
Ronald Reagan (R): Small decrease
George Bush Sr. (R): Small increase
Bill Clinton (D): tiny decrease
George Bush Jr. (R): tiny decrease
Now, factor in the fact that Republicans are "all about" cutting government income and spending as a whole (whether or not they succeed), and you get that democrats are bigger supporters of NASA than Republicans. However, even with that, it's clearly not a very partisan issue.
Parent
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Unfortunately, that doesn't tell the entire story, either. Many of the technologies NASA uses have been getting cheaper in comparison (especially in the areas of computer and data recording) meaning that quite a few of their projects aren't as expensive as they once were. So looking at anything technology-related in comparison to overall spending is a bit misleading. Especially given that Congressional Pork has become
Like it or not.... (Score:3, Informative)
For your enjoyment:
NASA budgets since fiscal year 1992:
# 1993 $14.309 billion, existing NASA budget when Clinton took office;
# 1994 $14.568 billion, $259 million increase, first Clinton budget;
# 1995 $13.853 billion, $715 million decrease;
# 1996 $13.885 billion, $32 million increase;
# 1997 $13.709 billion, $176 million decrease;
# 1998 $13.648 billion, $61 million decrease;
# 1999 $13.654 billion, $6 million increase;
# 2000 $13.601 billion, $53 million decrease;
# 2001
Get your facts straight (Score:3, Informative)
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China's GPS competition coming soon (Score:2)
See these two [slashgeo.org] stories [slashgeo.org] on China's Compass program. In short: China is launching a GPS competitor. Yes, in addition to GLONASS, GALILEO and GPS satellites. Oh, they're also interested in environmental remote sensing now [slashgeo.org]...
or is it civ4? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any space program is good news in my mind.
Why it makes me mad. (Score:3, Interesting)
China and Russia can be friends [heritage.org] or the "NATO of the East" or whatever you want to call it. But, to surpass your role in the ISS and instead strike up another work
Why not do it all? (Score:2)
Why can't Russia support the ISS and China's program? Unlike the US or Chinese space programs, Russia gets a lot of hard currency for its participation. They might even be making a profit here. Especially when you consider economies of scale, Russia may be *better* able to support the ISS due to its activity with China.
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I'm suprised the Chinese didn't elect to use a Long March [wikipedia.org] rocket but it may not have quite the throw they need for the transfer stage. With a 2009 launch date, I'm assuming they are pretty far along in planning and buildin
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From the article, all the Russians are supplying is the heavy lift vehicle and probably a earth-to-mars transfer stage. Sounds like a juicy launch contract for a Soyuz or Proton booster, but not much else. It is probably good for the old cash flow situation for the Russian Space Agency.
I guess I was mistaken about the size of the project. But it still sounds exactly like what Russia should be going for.Re: (Score:2)
That's an understatement. The current generation of Long March rockets have all the lift power of a Delta II rocket (one of the smaller rockets currently in production), despite having all the fanfare of the Saturn V. While China hopes to change that situation with the Long March 5, that rocket is still a ways in the future.
Until China develops a medium to heavy lift vehicle,
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TATO? Trans-Asia Treaty Organization. Though I don't think they'd directly use English for this, I don't know any Chinese or much Russian so I don't know what they'd call it if they did form such an organization.
It would be unfortunate to see ISS go by the wayside, but even with its origina schedule and current design, I'm not sure it was boing to be scientifically useful anyway.
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You make a good point, but I think the space.com article from 2001 was off the mark when it suggest the Russians may take away support from ISS for other programs.
I've worked extensively with the Russians on ISS and been to Moscow many, many times. Culturally, manned spaceflight is a big deal to the Russians, much more so than Americans (how many Americans even know
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There are two ways to throw rocks: slow and fast. If you are throwing slowly, that means you find a suitable asteroid and subtely alter its course so that it intersects Earth - specifically hitting your target country. First, lets point out that this is hard - you must apply huge forces for a long time very precisely. Second, by the time anyone is doing that it will be easy to look for large asteroids coming at u
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But... but
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Why would they land on the moon?!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
I know maybe it has larger risks but COME ON, it's not like you go to Mars every week.
NEVER MIND - I RTFA (Score:2)
Re:Why would they land on the moon?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Getting on and off of a moon with a very low level of gravity is easier and cheaper than landing on something where you need to land and launch,while fighting the planets gravitational pull.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
> I know maybe it has larger risks but COME ON, it's not like you go to Mars every week.
Russian scientists have been obsessed with Phobos for decades. There is a lot of science and discovery on that tiny moon, including samples of Mars (blown into space and swept onto Phobos) and other solar system bodies. Landing on Phobos is worlds easier than Mars itself, and there is an amount of preservation available
Space Race?? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Capricorn 2 (Score:4, Insightful)
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60% Insightful
20% Flamebait
10% Troll
TrollMods think Bush will invade Mars for them, if only the antiscience liberals would get out of the way of their can-do Republican Congress.
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Re:I'm so tired of you liberals (Score:5, Informative)
Er, not exactly... http://www.factcheck.org/article148.html [factcheck.org]
/No, my scarcasm filter isn't broken, I just wanted to set the record straight on this particular issue.
Parent
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I find this interesting because I have always assumed that the way to lower spending is to have Congress and the President in opposing parties - but the evidence does not seem to favor that.
am I the only one.... (Score:4, Interesting)
US mothballed half its space missions (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:US mothballed half its space missions (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Why no intercontinental cooperation? (Score:5, Interesting)
If it's feasable that the US alone could go to mars, and that Russia and China together can go to mars - then could not all three work together to achieve this goal better?
Or is it neccessary to have the "us" and "them" philosophy when it comes to these kinds of projects?
Must there always be an adversary?
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Ths US has a massive deficit, and little actual interest in spaceflight. I have no doubt that NASA could get to Mars and back again, if they had both the budget and the full support of congress and the general public. But in the absence of either, there is little room for new spaceflight programs in their agenda. An
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Or is it neccessary to have the "us" and "them" philosophy when it comes to these kinds of projects?
I think it's necessary to have competition. Plus, the record on international cooperation on large scale space projects isn't that great.
American are weenies and... (Score:2)
1) Americans have lower tolerances for dangerous situations; there is much less concern about the political fashions of "soccer moms" in countries where life is already cheap.
2) American space agencies can't do anything without checking with their defense contractors and their home states first to make sure the money will flow to political contributors and reliable voters.
You're welcome.
Competition (Score:2, Interesting)
--
"I, for one, welcome our new unmanned red overlords"
Me too! (Score:4, Funny)
I'm planning a mission to Mars to be launched from my backyard in 2012.
*Anyone* can *plan* a mission.
real win for Russia, if it happens (Score:5, Interesting)
Russia really benefits, if this goes through. This sort of thing has the potential to guarantee substantial launch volume for them. Always a nice thing to have. And given China's economy, I suspect that China sooner or later will be paying most of the bills.
I find it interesting that China apparently is forgoing the launch vehicles. I think this is a big shift in the focus of their space program. Maybe from a strategic angle, they think that they can build up their launch systems later or maybe buy/steal the necessary technology from Russia.
Details on Russian Space Plans (Score:3, Informative)
Well, at least they'll have somewhere to stay (Score:4, Funny)
Visiting Mars? Find Deals & Read Hotel Reviews!
Nothing like competition... (Score:3, Informative)
My very uninformed view of China's space program so far is that it's largely been purchased Russian technology with some in-house few updates. This makes sense for everyone, since Russia has been consistently launching rockets and orbiters for decades now, and China might as well take a little help to get some experience.
This time, from the article, it looks to like China will be doing the "interesting" science portion of this joint mission and Russia "just" does the pushing. Yes, others have built planetary landers before, but not so many that task is mature or easy.
So, this might be China's coming out party with respect to space research and technology. And then they'll shoot for the moon... (literally).
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why Mars? (Score:5, Informative)
Venus has an extremely thick atmosphere, which consists mainly of carbon dioxide and a small amount of nitrogen. The pressure at the planet's surface is about 90 times that at Earth's surface--a pressure equivalent to that at a depth of 1 kilometer under Earth's oceans. The enormously CO2-rich atmosphere generates a strong greenhouse effect that raises the surface temperature to over 400 C." cite [wikipedia.org].
The next closest planets are Mercury and Jupiter, you wouldn't want to visit them either. Mercury is basically a semi-molten ball of rock, Jupiter is no treat with its high gravity, high winds, and very little (if any) crust. The planets don't get any better the further you get away from the sun. Basically, Mars is the only planet close enough and similiar enough to Earth to have any hope of visiting (and staying) for any useful amount of time.
Parent