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Space Science

China Aims At Moon 23

Posted by Hemos from the not-bloody-likely dept.
SEWilco writes: "ABC News reports the head of the State Aerospace Bureau says China will explore the Moon. They've conducted an unmanned test of their first capsule, but not much else is known about their project. The comments were made at U.N. World Space Week, on the Sputnik 1 43rd anniversary."
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China Aims At Moon More

China Aims At Moon

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  • The only problem I have with this is that I think less competition among the nations would lead to far less space exploration.

    granted.. the chances of this working and succeeding do depends alot on how willing they will still be to show what they can, but would you not agree that if they could just get over the hump of "Well I don't have to show off now anymore" they could do alot better.
    Is it not so that it should actually be, that they show off for the citizens of the respective countries

    When they get sufficiently powerful, & we in the west realise we have a fight on our hands, we may find ourselves in another sort of Cold War.I suspect propoganda will be even more important this time. Problem is, it'll probably be much scarier next time.

    We as the people are actually the only ones that can do something aboutit once it starts and that is why I agree with the propaganda being more important, but this time it might be alot different since there is internet and people are in contact daily, hourly even with pplfrom all over the world so that might be a soothing factor, since if the people know that there is no such thing as a big mean bad guy on the other side of the world, I think Cold War will not be.
    -= Free your mind and your Ass will follow,
  • I personally think that this is kinda cool. I think that if the US & China (and whomever else...I'm just mentioning those countries because they're regarded as "enemies"), are able to find common ground exploring space, then hopefully we could live in a safer world. (Granted, I'm aware that they could be using this as cover to explore missile propultion technology, but I'll be an optimist...)
  • Excuse me?

    I think that they got a good chance.

    China has to have learned from the US and the Russians. When we were trying this kind of stuff in the fifties and sixties, it was all theoretical. It had never been done before. It's all well-documented now.

    China already has been making quite a bit of progress in the area of spaceflight, recently- See the articles about how they are preparing for
    manned spaceflight. They are not as backwards as some people believe, technologically.

    They already have a good variety of launchers, as shown here [geocities.com]. They have more powerful and more accurate rockets than we did when we first started sending boosters to the moon. So why is this so unreasonable? Plus, its not like they're saying they are going to go next week. It's going to be a space program. They're going to go through all the research and design, the work, and then do it.

    If they can keep up the pace that a lunar program would take, then why not? Plus, you have to admit, the propaganda value for the Chinese would be incredibly valuable... just as it was for America in the sixties.


    What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?

  • the propaganda value for the Chinese would be incredibly valuable... just as it was for America in the sixties.

    Sure. They could say that only Chinese have walked on the moon in the current millenium.

    I know there were some treaties at some point with countries agreeing not to war in space. Anyone know what these agreements really specified, and whether China signed them?

    Life,
    Rad

  • Hey, this is great! We wouldn't have gotten to the moon in the FIRST place if the Russians weren't shooting for it. Now that the Chinese are at it, it will definitely put the pressure on the US Gov to return to the moon, if only to make sure the Chinese are not playing with nukes or moon-based lasers or anything.
  • While ive no doubt that their doing this for political/propaganda/militiary reasons, its wonderful to see some seemingly just-for-the sake-off-it space exploration/travel. Like a previous poster i've dreamt of going to space since i was a toddler, and only this sort of boundary pushing stuff is going to ever make it a common-place experience.

    Technologically speaking I believe that it's going to be relatively easy for them to get there. Of course there still going to have to use ridiculous fuel-loads, but developements in material science (alloys, ceramics, even plastics) and even things like CAD/CAE and computer-controlled factories are going to mean that the precision building and heatshileding etc are going to be relatively simple, even relatively cheap (i.e. cheap compared to basically bankrupting the USSR and giving the USA what should have been, and still should be, crippleing dept).

    On the other-hand, I might have an issue with a country that still has a peasent economy spending billions on space travel, but then again, i know economics doesnt work like that, so I'm free to support them.

    ..........I wonder if there going to use one of those 'supercomputing PS2s they've banned for the guidance system? [dont laugh, its more than powerful enough.

  • ...if the nationalist model works. Right now, China is conspicuously absent from the International Space Station. That's due to reasons mostly of politics, but suffice it to say that they're doing all their own development work. One reason the IP's (International Partners) want to work with the USA and Russia is to learn.

    China has the ability to show us if the one-country model works. I'm not totally thrilled with ISS, even though I'm helping build a payload for it for a foreign company [guigne.com]. It's a mess, and that's primarily from the bureaucracy.

    Perhaps China can shake up some of the market. The story states that Mars is their goal. It should be ours, too.


    --
  • ...and hopefully for the European space agency too. I wanted to go to space since I was 4.....
  • We've been there and determined all that we needed to know.

    Then we shouldn't have bothered sending ships to look for water on the Moon. And we know some of the minerals on the Moon...but China is interested in actually mining them. Well, we already know what minerals are there, we don't have to actually use them...

  • "What if China does decide to set up shop on the moon? What if they decide to try to mine something or go up there and basically claim something like the Sea of Tranquility as a territory of China? Who could really do anything about it? There are a lot of bad things that I can imagine could come from this. Everything from turning the moon into the largest garbage dump in the solar system to nuclear detonations"

    Hmm...go ahead and claim the Sea of Tranquility...what will that accomplish?
    "oh no, the chinese are claiming precious resources situated on the moon!"
    How the hell are they going to exploit these resources?

    And why the hell not detonate our nuclear weapons in space rather than on earth? Why not place our refuse on the moon? It's not like anybody lives there..

  • If you like this sort of information about developing issues in the world of science, research academia, and technology, then you'd probably really like Bottomquark [botomquark.com]. After all, we have been covering the China Space [bottomquark.com] program since last July.

    Come on over and check us out -- we want to hear your side of the story!

    OldSaxon


    You like science?

  • I suspect that the difference between us is simply that you are a lot more optomistic about human nature than I am :^)

    this time it might be alot different since there is internet and people are in contact daily, hourly even with pplfrom all over the world so that might be a soothing factor, since if the people know that there is no such thing as a big mean bad guy on the other side of the world, I think Cold War will not be.

    I think this is a very good point, my only quibble would be that there are plenty of examples of people living next to one another, and being in daily contact, but still developing a great animosity (N. Ireland, Yugoslavia, Israel etc) towards each other. I fully agree that we the people are the only ones that can do something about it once it starts, but possibly that is in itself a very western idea ; it seems to me that a lot of far eastern countries have very rigorous top-down societies & the people don't get much of a look in, and whats worse, they accept this as being perfectly normal. It seems that in countries such as singapore and japan, people are willing to live in an authoritarian system, as long as they are prosperous.

    but would you not agree that if they could just get over the hump of "Well I don't have to show off now anymore" they could do alot better.

    Yes ... theoretically:-) I just don't think that government/people are as altruistic as that. I think that space exploration will always be more impressive when it is motivated by fear, rather than curiosity. But then, this comes back to the optimism/pessimism thing again.

  • Yes I would agree with you on this, I would move it even up one level and would suggest these countries including European spaceagencies should work together this would have 2 effects :
    1. Worldpeace would be a step closer since the worldpowers are working together, they will understand each other alot better.
    2. With less money per country one would be able to provide a better Space program since then there would not be alot of the "same" projects costing a whole lot of money while a different country allready did it before
    -= Free your mind and your Ass will follow,
  • I don't think this will give the US any more incentive to return to the moon. We've been there and determined all that we needed to know. If the Chinese mission(s) determines that there is something of value that we didn't find, then maybe it will happen.

    NASA funding has become so tight lately that something like a manned mission to the moon is probably last on their list. With the ISS underway and the demand that it places on the space programs of all the involved countries there is no incentive (financially, the only one that ever seems to determine anything in the end) for trips.

    As for spying on what the Chinese are doing, I think there are cheaper methods of watching them than sending men there, besides the fact that it would be extremely expensive from an energy considerations point of view for them to take anything of this size to the moon.

  • "its wonderful to see some seemingly just-for-the sake-off-it space exploration/travel."

    The ABC article says they intend to actually do things on the Moon. It is not just exploration. They don't say if they're going to mine tritium, build bases, refine ores, or launch building materials from the Moon.

  • The only problem I have with this is that I think less competition among the nations would lead to far less space exploration. I mean, the whole sixties push for the moon only happened because of the idealogical rivalry between the US & USSR. If these two nations had been the best of friends, and cooperated, I'd be willing to bet that we wouldn't have been to the moon even by today.

    I sometimes think that the next big push for space will happen in about twenty or thirty years time, when there *might* be another bout of idealogical competition between the east & west.

    The next big challenge to the democratic capitalism we enjoy here in the west seems to be the authoritarian & very beurocratic systems prevalent in many Asian countries, such as Japan, China, Singapore, South Korea etc. When they get sufficiently powerful, & we in the west realise we have a fight on our hands, we may find ourselves in another sort of Cold War.I suspect propoganda will be even more important this time. Problem is, it'll probably be much scarier next time.

    (just previewed the above. I sound like Katz! the shame...:)

  • We've been there and determined all that we needed to know.

    That statement reminds me of the statement in the early fifties that the total world market for computers is seven. Or perhaps another short-sighted pronouncement in the 1800's when some believed teh US should close the Patent office, because everything useful had already been invented.


    Of course now we want to close the patent office for other reasons. . .

    -MS2K

  • They're going to build giant missile bases. Fools! We must stop them now.

    They are engaging in a "one-moon" strategy. They will all move to the moon, then blow the moon out of its orbit and nuke the earth on the way out of the solar system.

  • What if?
  • There are people who live in the Antarctic!
  • The U.S. government and the West generally, is likely to treat this the same way they did the early Russian space spectaculars:

    As a challenge.

    In the sense that the Apollo program was good, this also promises to be good.

    But the Apollo program was a very bad thing!

    The Apollo program was very bad because it created NASA -- an umbrella bureaucracy that refuses to die and sees any true independent innovation as inimical to its interests as the "leader" of space activities.

    A pan-Western NASA could easily grow out of renewed politicization of space -- especially at the level of East vs West.

  • Hey don't joke like that, Chewbacca was killed when someone de-orbited the moon!
  • Your sarcasm marks you as an irrational religous hypocrite.

    Aesthetic environmentalism is one of the stupidest ideologies in human history. It simultaneously requires humans to be considered separate from nature (scientifically irrational) and inferior to nature (a religious doctrine). And its believers are all hypocrites, since the only way to practice it is to kill as many humans as possible, including oneself, so that one ceases contaminating nature.

    Too bad you weren't bold enough to post logged in.

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