Details of Chinese Moon Rocket Emerge 138
MarkWhittington writes "AmericaSpace has published the results of a study of Chinese rocket development by Charles Vick, a noted expert on the Russian and Chinese space programs who works for GlobalSecurity.org, using Chinese language sources. Of note are the developing concepts for a super heavy launch vehicle designated as the CZ9 or Long March 9, capable of taking Chinese astronauts to the moon and points beyond. 'Liang outlined several new Long March versions, virtually all of them testing elements that would eventually find their way into the Long March 9 that has 4 million lb. more of liftoff thrust than the 7.5 million lb. thrust NASA Saturn V. Forty-three years ago this week a Saturn V propelled the Apollo 11 astronauts to the first manned landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969.'"
Re:meh (Score:5, Insightful)
Let them go to 'and places beyond' in their fancy shmancy 12 million lb. thrust rocket. It's far more cost effective and easy, to send probes and rovers to other places in this solar system. The real question is, 'Who will be first to manipulate the higgs field in such a way that will allow for light speed or near light speed travel'?
Tut. Them is us. Who will be .. it's one of us. We're all humans here, when it comes to the effort to get into space. Terrans, if you like. We (outside the States) are as proud of what you folks (I assume you're in the US?) did in the 20th century as you are. We (the world) look forward to great things from all nations (including the US) in this 21st century. Let's all take pride in the Space exploits of this planet's inhabitants. That's our species, risking their lives.
Re:Cue the melodramatic space nutters.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, and space is just as big as the Atlantic Ocean too. Great comparison.
You're absolutely right. We must never ever compare one type of technological advancement with another because you can only ever compare two absolutely identical things before drawing any meaningful conclusion.
Argh, not this again (Score:5, Insightful)
The submission and at least one of the linked articles are just silly "OMG CHINA" rabble-rousing in an attempt to justify the diversion of NASA resources from commercial providers like SpaceX towards giant white elephants like the SLS heavy-lift rocket (and the legacy contractors behind it). I've yet to see any evidence that China's supposed plans for a heavy-lift rocket are anything more than sketches from dreamy engineers, without any actual funding behind them; if anything other non-existent heavy-lift rockets like SpaceX's Falcon XX have more progress behind them.
If anything, indications so far suggest that China's space exploration plans involve the more sensible approach of assembling exploration modules in space, instead of building rarely-used mega-rockets that launch everything up at once.
Re:11.5 M lbs thrust? (Score:4, Insightful)
It probably depends on your definition of "spacecraft". To launch a probe anywhere in the system, sure, the Saturn V is sufficient. But look at the size of the craft that the Saturn V sent to the Moon; it wasn't all that large. 3 men in a capsule plus a lander, plus a rover on one or two missions. If you want to launch a larger craft with 6 or 10 astronauts, and some more heavy cargo for them to set up at the destination, you'll need a bigger rocket most likely. Or if you want to launch a craft big enough for 3-4 people to live somewhat comfortably on a mission to Mars (which would take months, not days like the Moon mission, requiring much more supplies and living space), again you'll need a bigger rocket than the Saturn V.
Of course, you can also get away with smaller rockets by splitting things up and launching them on separate rockets, and then joining them together in orbit before continuing the mission.
Re:Cue the melodramatic space nutters.... (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, so our technology has peaked out.
Didn't I see you standing there when Ooog invented the wheel? And wasn't it you that said "What good is this 'wheel' thing you 'invented' that will cause the gods to hate us? Why can't you be reasonable and have your wife pack all your shit on her back like everybody else does?'
'Reasonable' people refuse to rock the boat. 'Reasonable' people embrace and defend the status quo. Status quo means 'freeze in place', nothing moves. Not even you. So, go ahead and stand in place, don't move. The unreasonable among us are moving on.
Space travel at this stage of the game is engineering. We're still developing the engineering to do it cheaper and better. Now, the next little bit is going to take some thinking, so if you wanna take a nap first, that's okay, this comment will still be here when you wake up.
You want clean air, water, land, whatever, there are exactly two and only two options to get it. Option 1 is come up with a way to destroy every piece of technology everywhere on the planet, down to and including the ability to make fire, and turn the entirety of the human species back into a hunter-gatherer tribal society. Downside of this is, the planet cannot support 7 billion people at the stage of hunter-gatherers. It'd be closer to half a million, maybe a million, spread all over the globe. High level apex predators need large areas to hunt in, they can't be supported in small areas. This means there's not a lot of them. And as the current champion apex predator, we're dangerously overextended without our technology.
Option 2 is move all havey industry like metal refining and dangerous chemical processes into orbit and beyond. Get it out of the atmosphere where its poluting byproducts can be blown away by the solar wind. Bonus is, the raw materials are readily at hand, just need a nudge to put them in orbit around Earth where they can be harvested. Again, this is an engineering problem, and like all engineering problems, you solve it by throwing engineers at it.
Go ahead, be 'reasonable'. Fight for the status quo. Fight for decreasing resources increasingly more inaccessible. Fight to keep funnelling what wealth is left into the pockets of the 1%. Just don't complain when us unreasonable blokes run you over on our way to the future.
Re:Saturn V or Energiya? (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the Shuttle's proposed mission profiles was to cart materials to orbit in order to build that construction shack/lumar excursion vehicle to return to the Moon for long term missions.
Re:A Stuxnet variant targetting China ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe someone should start writing a new stuxnet variant targetting China's space program?
Sure, but the job of writing it would probably get out-sourced to India. Ya know, the other developing country with an ambitious space programme.
There will be a lot of comments about the Chinese only managing to do what the US did half a century ago, but the point is they're doing it while the Western world has abandoned those ambitions.