China Aims To Build World's Largest Rocket 250
hackingbear writes "Back in March, China revealed it is studying the feasibility of designing the most powerful carrier rocket in history for making a manned moon landing and exploring deep space, according to Liang Xiaohong, vice head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology. The rocket is envisaged to have a payload of 130 tonnes, five times larger than that of China's current largest rocket. This rocket, if built, will eclipse the 53 tonne capacity of the planned Falcon 9 Heavy from SpaceX. It will even surpass the largest rocket ever built, the 119-tonne Saturn V. China's next generation rocket Long March 5, currently scheduled to debut in 2014, has a payload capacity of 25 tonnes to LEO."
Long Dong Rocket (Score:3, Funny)
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Forgive me if I don't trust ANYTHING Chinese anymore, but after that magical chinese hard drive and reading many [slashdot.org] many [slashdot.org] comments [slashdot.org] from other people getting burned I have a hard time trusting anything chinese.
I will believe the rocket exists when I can see it myself
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Hummm
hummm
I see..
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Re:Long Dong Rocket (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, the USA never produced a single conman or scammer. Ever.
And they certainly wouldn't try to sell billions of worthless mortgages to the Chinese. Noooo....
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Who gives as crap what that do in space, as long as they drive the 21st century space race we all win. That is what counts, getting up there and touching all those worlds within our solar system.
Better competing in peace, than to be chastised by external forces for extending our psychopathic wars beyond boundaries that would not be accepted.
China's growth into the exploration of our space, is still our, humanities expression of touching the future. Let's drop the racist, prejudiced and, primitive view
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Yeah; For the world's lack of an ambitious space program. They're succeeding.
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The Han Chinese invented propaganda! They've re-written their history over and over since the founding of the Chinese nation by Qin (Chin) in 200 BCE (the Roman republican period/Late post Hellenistic period). Now every time something shows up on the History Channel they will always (regardless of well established facts) claim that the Chinese invented "it" and they will invariably use the "5,000 years of Chinese history" phrase (despite the fact that the Chinese written language only goes back to 1,200 B
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According to this nice documentary series [wikipedia.org] the Romans also perfected propaganda. And they won, as schools through the western world repeat Roman version of historic events ... which is quite far from truth.
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It depends who you ask, but:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiahu [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiahu_script [wikipedia.org]
Cost/weight? (Score:2)
Anyone know the cost/weight? Absolute capacity is nice but dammit I'm not getting my trip to moon at these prices.
Irrelevant (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not about a paid moon trip but about a states ambitions to power itself from a backwater nation to a world power.
So money is not counted in a way that makes sense on a small individual scale. It is not like if the claim is made that it costs 1 billion dollar that Bill Gates could buy 6 rocket developments. And as to what it is worth. Well, what is GPS worth? The US launched it with tax payers money and the research leading up to it also was payed by the tax payer, but at what total cost and for what total benefit? Even foreign benefit?
The press likes to print big numbers because simple people think money at this level still is real. But government has one advantage business doesn't have. It gets to take back a lot of your salary right at the start and then often also a large portion whenever you spend. So even a simple salary isn't exactly the same as it is for normal business.
Suffice it to say, a lot, no it won't break China's bank and no, you can't fly on it. But the real cost to the US will be that China has a manned space program and the US won't. And that is something the Chinese might find very amusing.
Re:Irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Cracking down on the massive academic fraud and rampant plagiarism would probably go a long way towards earning a reputation for innovation. As would ending the practice of locking up academics for saying things that the government doesn't want heard.
Right now, we in the US are mostly coasting, but if the American exceptionalists and the conservatives could lighten up and allow things to sort themselves out we could still retain our leadership position on technology. Of course that would anger the creationists and the climate change skeptics.
Re:Irrelevant (Score:4, Insightful)
What a load of bull. Real climate change skeptics are an extremely small group. As a whole the "save the earth" crowd is far more luddite.
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I'll believe that China has a credible space program when they can accomplish a manned orbital rendezvous. I would venture to bet that SpaceX is going to beat China to that accomplishment. SpaceX going to do that unmanned some time next year.... if their public schedule is followed to some degree.
If Chinese Astronauts make it to the Moon on Chinese rockets, I would dare say they will likely be met by Americans or others who went up there first... as private citizens. I wouldn't put it past Richard Branso
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> Anyone know the cost/weight?
They don't even have a budget, timeline, or design yet, so one can't really say. At this point, according to the Chinese state-run media, they're simply "studying the feasibility of designing."
Of course, that won't stop people from going, "OMG, China's going to beat SpaceX/NASA to the Moon!" or something like that.
Re:Cost/weight? (Score:4, Insightful)
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and how many China astronauts will die in testing (Score:2)
and how many China astronauts will die in testing and how much will be covered up
NASA and SpaceX studying super heavy lift (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:SpaceX has no credibility (Score:4, Insightful)
SpaceX most clearly has credibility in terms of launching larger payloads into orbit. I guess the Dragon capsule doesn't count as something credible?
As for anything that Senator Shelby wants to fund, most especially the SLS system, I have my doubts that anything will clear the launch tower much less actually make it into space. It is going to be canceled before it gets built, much like Constellation before it, and the dozens of other NASA projects for manned spaceflight that all showed promise but never really went anywhere.
The last manned spaceflight program to actually make it to orbit was the Space Shuttle, and that was originally started under the Johnson Administration (although the heavy work on it happened during the Nixon Administration). The singular failure of NASA to put any sort of meaningful program together is a sign of what that bureaucracy is able to accomplish, and I doubt any change in the Presidency is going to make any difference on that. Neither Ronald Reagan nor Bill Clinton were able to make any significant moves in that arena... except for the ISS project if you want to give both of those Presidents at least a little bit of credit.
All the shit you buy from Wal*Mart (Score:4)
Re:All the shit you buy from Wal*Mart (Score:5, Insightful)
To which I say, "Great! I'd rather the US get into space, but I'll settle for damn near anybody!"
Wonder what it'll look like? (Score:5, Funny)
A Soviet design or a US design?
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Why choose?
How about a Chinese knockoff of a Soviet copy of an American design?
I mean, C'mon, the Chinese certainly have the engineering talent to match that of the US and Soviets in the middle of the last century, and technology that's vastly superior to last-century technology. They have 50 years of There is a world of "free trade" that means they can buy anything they can't make - even the US and Russia would be happy to supply them. (Imagine the Soviets attempting to buy oxygen turbopumps in 1959 from
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ooops.
"They have 50 years of watching and learning from aerospace efforts of other countries. "
Re:Wonder what it'll look like? (Score:5, Informative)
Why choose?
How about a Chinese knockoff of a Soviet copy of an American design?
You forgot that basically all rocket designs come from German engineers [wikipedia.org].
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Sometimes, though, copying someone else's work makes things cheaper, quicker, and with fewer dead astronauts.
Astronauts yes, people no. [ebaumsworld.com]
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But it has been cancelled!
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Designed by their Germans or our Germans? (OK, out-of-date cold war joke, but still)
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A Soviet design or a US design?
I don't know, but you could check existing designs of 100+ tons to LEO rockets, and probably guess which they'll be copying...
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How else would a rocket look like? A cube? A sphere?
...says the guy who thinks all rockets look alike just because of superficial similarities in their shape.
Is a single big rocket the best solution? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, just like the first race for the moon, much of this is about national pride, so maybe the Chinese want the biggest booster just for bragging rights. Some things never change.
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These giant boosters are for launching weapons. Including nukes with a global reach. But also space-based weapons platforms. It's not the bragging rights - it's the military superiority.
What a waste. Better to establish and protect the telecommunications superiority. And use it to explore and exploit the Solar System scientifically and industrially, rather than militarily. More bragging rights for everyone - and more money and power, too.
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"We are so proud to launch this new ( moon ) rocket 50 years after the United States using past US & Russian R&D" Go China!
The sad thing is, it'd still be more than what US & Russia are able to pull off... Russia is likely to still be too poor, US may be too poor too but will certainly not have long enough financial attention span to do something like that.
It's the B Ark! (Score:2)
This was inevitable. (Score:3)
They had to have a project to use the money they saved from the (now illegal) time machine program..
Beating the Soviets (Score:5, Informative)
The Soviet Union produced th biggest rocket ever, bigger than any the US ever produced (and bigger than SpaceX's new "biggest ever"). Financing its space race in competition with the US was the final stroke that killed the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the US is devolving launches into what will be a healthy industry serving global customers, but by US rules.
I like the way this story looks to develop. Because I'm an American who wants to beat China in a race that takes us all into space.
Re:Hello Mr. White Trash (Score:4, Interesting)
the Chinese have something to offer
That's engineering effort, or man power, or what you would call cheap labor. I think if China and American could work as one nation, humans could be on the Mars a lot sooner.
Mars is a one way / long term trip with a lot of (Score:2)
Mars is a one way / long term trip with a lot of stuff that needs to be worked on. Even for 1 way you need to have a lot stuff worked out so people are just not stuck there to die if things go wrong.
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Other news: China confounded by SpaceX prices (Score:3, Informative)
China's space program makes pronouncements like this all the time, but they don't yet have the ability to make things like this happen. Heck, just the other day personnel from China's aerospace organization said that they were confounded by SpaceX's price/kg and unable to compete with it:
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=space&id=news/asd/2011/04/15/11.xml&headline=China%20Great%20Wall%20Confounded%20By%20SpaceX%20Prices [aviationweek.com]
Heck, SpaceX has designs for both 125 and 140 tonne vehicles [wikipedia.org], but it doesn't mean it plans on building them before it makes economic sense.
I'm sure what they will use it for ... (Score:2)
... to travel back in time! :D :D
Biggest does not mean best (Score:4, Interesting)
In manufacturing, there is something called the "learning curve". As you run a production line and optimize how you do things, you learn to do it faster and cheaper. But one thing Boeing learned is production below 2 units a month did not produce a learning curve. People were not doing the tasks often enough, and *forgot* between repetitions when they were more than two weeks apart.
For a conventional rocket that climbs from the ground, they all have the same amount of atmosphere to push through. The drag is produced per square meter of frontal area, so you want a certain amount of mass of rocket per unit area to keep the drag losses within reason. That's why most rockets are around 50-100m tall. Once drag is taken care of, you get more efficient by going closer to spherical tanks. So rockets tend to get fatter once they are tall enough.
So at the lower payload limit you are bound by efficient shape for the rocket, and at the upper limit you want to launch often enough to learn from experience. In between will be the optimal size for lowest launch cost.
Re:"manned moon landing" (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:"manned moon landing" (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. There's no point in sending people to Mars either.
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<1492>
What's the point of going to America? All you can do is walk around and then, if you're lucky, leave again.
</1492>
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Going to America was a billion times cheaper, and you didn't have to leave. Instead, you could claim a piece of land, and live there more comfortably than the place you came from.
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Re:"manned moon landing" (Score:4)
In 1492 sailing to America from Europe was about like going to the moon, today...
Except America had abundant resources, shared the same atmosphere, gravity, and temperature?
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Yeah, exactly like goin to the moon. There was no food or water there when you got there and you would be killed by radiation.
I see you've read my novel "Christopher Columbus and the Hordes of Radioactive Zombie Indians", then?
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In the event you're lucky enough to be on Mars when an extinction level event happens on Earth, you have the benefit of getting to continue to live (if self-sufficiency has occurred by then).
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It would be simpler and cheaper to protect yourself from such an extinction event right here on earth, than to build a self-sufficient society on Mars.
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Sir, I think you're overly optimistic to think we can defend ourselves from everything. We can't even fix our own damn problems (i.e. climate change).
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Sir, I think you're overly optimistic to think we can defend ourselves from everything. We can't even fix our own damn problems (i.e. climate change).
Sir, worry not! I have a diamondonium sphere which will defend you from any attack. Also a gun of some sort.
yrs, etc
gilleain
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I read that in Farnsworth's voice ;)
"Good news everyone!"
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Sir, I think you're overly optimistic to think we can defend ourselves from everything. We can't even fix our own damn problems (i.e. climate change).
plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
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Adapting to the climate change on Earth is easier than adapting to the climate of Mars.
And defending against huge extinction events (assuming we'd even care), isn't going to be easy, but I'm pretty sure it's easier than trying to escape to Mars. Don't forget we don't have to defend everybody. Put a few thousand people in a big bunker inside a mountain, for example. No doubt that's cheaper than putting the same people in a self-sufficient habitat on Mars.
Re:"manned moon landing" (Score:4, Insightful)
The Earth is already terraformed, so we might as well stay here.
Also, I don't buy your claims that we can easily reach Mars, and/or basically terraform it for free. And even if we could, there's not much to be gained in doing so.
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Earth is being slowly de-terraformed. It is also overpopulated, and it is in humanity's nature to expand.
Re:"manned moon landing" (Score:5, Insightful)
Overpopulation ? The Gobi desert is still mostly empty, last time I looked, as is the Australian outback, the Sahara, Antarctica, Greenland, and our oceans. All of those areas are much more hospitable than the surface of Mars. There's more room too. Don't forget Mars is a lot smaller than the Earth.
Besides, you can't fix overpopulation by going to Mars. How many people are born on Earth every minute, and how many could you realistically send to Mars ? Not enough to make a difference.
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Don't forget Mars is a lot smaller than the Earth.
Not disagreeing but actually Mars has about the same land area as Earth.
Re:"manned moon landing" (Score:5, Insightful)
Then read here: http://www.marssociety.org/ [marssociety.org] Or read the red mars, blue mars green mars novels. Or: just think about how you would do it, lol. It is *that simple* angel'o'sphere
That simple? If you actually looked at "Red Mars" carefully, he lives in a "Star Trek" world of virtually infinite resources. Need a nuclear reactor? Just drop ship a Rickover. Need compressed gasses? Just drop ship a 737 with a bunch of compressors. It's great science fiction - it broad brushes little details like money, and especially later, the ability to create extremely complex high technology items from robotic factories. It would probably work out better if we figured out those little issues here as opposed to there. Hell, we aren't really at the level of technology that we would need to be to bolt the Ares together. Construction in outer space is slow, tricky and dangerous.
Yes we can get better. If the Chinese are trying to do it then great, we can come from behind like usual (insert tasteless joke here). But the Mars Trilogy is not yet an instructional video.
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So what do we lack?
Ofc we are on that level of technology. We where on the moon. 40 years ago, or?
It is not a matter of "technology" it is a matter of resources, organization, will, money, etc.
In an synchronous earth orbit it does not matter how long the actual construction needs, it does not matter how many lifters need to start to bring the parts u
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That machine must be missing in my book.
Sorry, or I dont remember it correctly. OTOH I red a german translation (one of the last SF novels I bought as german translations ... )
Sorry for overlapping answers to different posts, ofc, the novel assumes stuff we did not do.
But keep in mind the shuttle program was originally ment to leave the extra large fuel tanks in orbit in a parking position for later use to assemble mars vessels and ISS like stations.
However that got later scratched.
E.g. look at this to see
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I much preferred Rainbow Mars [wikipedia.org], it didn't have so many damn escarpments.
But I agree, while the Robinson trilogy was great read (escarpments aside) there was a lot of reliance on super genius to fill plot gaps. Extended age developed on Mars, not Earth? You would think them a bit busy just staying feed for that to happen. It was a good discussion of the various ways Mars could be terraformed and one of the more popular series to take an extended look at what may be required for a colonisation. It's sci-f
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The point of Mars is: it is the only planet in the Solar System we can easy reach and basically terraform for free with our current technology.
Terraform Mars. Yeah, right. Mars barely has an atmosphere, less than 1% of Earth's pressure. It's mostly CO2. Enough to blow sand around, not enough to be useful.
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The point of Mars is: it is the only planet in the Solar System we can easy reach and basically terraform for free with our current technology.
Terraform Mars. Yeah, right. Mars barely has an atmosphere, less than 1% of Earth's pressure. It's mostly CO2. Enough to blow sand around, not enough to be useful.
The main problem is the lack of a magnetosphere, isn't it. Actually, now that I say this I have a distinct memory of googling this, and getting a bunch of 'internet ideas' on how to make one for Mars. In other words : nonsense.
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No, that is an internet myth or in other words an urban legend.
Yes, Mars has only a neglectible small magnetosphere, but that has nothing to do with the atmosphere, hint: see Venus.
I fail to parse this sentence, you googled and found nonsense? I'm sorry for you.
angel'o'sphere
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Yes, but the point of a magnetosphere is that it prevents earth-creature destroying radiation from...well...you know, destroying earth creatures. The size of the atmosphere is meaningless if the radiation will kill you. Maybe you are RadiationMan, able to eat radioactive isotopes others would choke on, able to leap over piles of plutonium far beyond the ability of mortal man...who, disguised as Atom Smasher, an obscure disc jockey who sometimes fronted an Indianapolis band called Pure Funk in the '70s, laug
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Hm, being such a radio man would at least be funny. Until you go with your new spouse into the cinema ofc and al complain about your glowing :-/ ;D
angel'o'sphere
P.S. you are ofc partly right but only partly
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No, that is an internet myth or in other words an urban legend. Yes, Mars has only a neglectible small magnetosphere, but that has nothing to do with the atmosphere, hint: see Venus.
Haha! "Hint", yes. Oh my : how cutting. Yes, I can see Venus - probably even through a telescope if I tried. I expect that the highly poisonous atmosphere of Venus is something to aim for when settling Mars.
I fail to parse this sentence, you googled and found nonsense? I'm sorry for you.
angel'o'sphere
Don't be patronising - it's annoying. Let me be more clear : badly written webpages describing how to restart the spin of Mars' magnetic core are not the same thing as methods that are feasible within realistic energy, cost, and resource constraints. Furthermore, sci-fi novels, no matter how entertaining they are (the Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy was very good) are not actual predictions of the future. Of course you know that; I'm just reminding you...
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Lol
parsing your posts is indeed difficult.
You know: Venus has no magnet field (magnetosphere is only a stupid complicated new word which makes no sense) just like Mars. Venus has a a high pressure very dense CO2 atmosphere, just like Mars. ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H while Mars has a very low density CO2 atmosphere. Nothing is really poisoning there.
If you found brain dead google results suggestion to "reactivate the magnetosphere of Mars" than I feel with you. That indeed is an insult to a humans brain.
I'm glad you
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While this is correct, the main problem is only temperature. Raise it by a few degrees and all the CO2 frozen at the poles is released.
Melt the water and you have even more pressure. Start producing hydro carbons and you easy get the pressure to 10% earth level. THEN: you automatically have effects releasing the bound O2 from the "soil" and at that pressure levels you dont need an 28% oxygen atmosphere to breath but only like 12% - 15%.
See: http://www.marssociety.org/ [marssociety.org]
Dr. Robert Zubrin is working on ways how
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Re:"manned moon landing" (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no point in people being on earth either. We just are.
Have fun readin... (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.moonsociety.org/whitepapers/moonreturn_positionpaper.html [moonsociety.org]
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None of the reasons make any sense. You can do the same things on Earth, for a fraction of the cost.
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That term is always irritating me.
What you mean with a fraction of the cost? The one who is "buying the rocket" or "doing the stuff" or the society / government funding it?
If you mean the first it is likely true.
However if you talk about a hugh program it usually has side effects that can not be predicted and it might be beneficial to spend the big money instead of spending nothing.
angel'o'sphere
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If you're aiming for 'side effects that can not be predicted' then why not aim for a reasonable main target at the same time ?
You could invest in nuclear fusion research, for example, which would probably also lead to all kinds of useful spin-off knowledge, while at the same time doing something useful in solving our future energy crisis.
Spending trillions of dollars doing something silly, in the hope that you may accidentally stumble on something useful isn't very productive.
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Sorry for reversing the order of the two quotes ... but WTF in what world do you live?
We are spending trillions of money in fusion research since decades.
How
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In order to get closer to the stars, you'll need a better energy source first. It makes sense to start there. And fusion was only an example. Feel free to substitute any range of research projects that involve energy, medicine, or something equally useful.
We can make cheap low gravity here on Earth? (Score:2)
Cheaper than on the Moon? Using Phlebotinum I presume? [tvtropes.org]
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Not on earth, but there's plenty of low gravity in low earth orbit, which is much more accessible than the moon.
Besides, you have to ask yourself what kind of product you would be able to manufacture on the moon, that would benefit from low gravity, and high vacuum, and where the profit would pay for the huge setup and shipping costs.
Most likely, this product can be replaced by something that's a little easier to make.
Indeed... (Score:2)
Viva el Consumismo!
Besides, you have to ask yourself what kind of product you would be able to manufacture locally, that would benefit from electricity, and clean energy, and where the profit would pay for the huge setup and shipping costs.
Most likely, this product can be replaced by something that's a little easier to make - in China.
I am very glad that you are so supportive of the space conquering efforts of our new/old Chinese overlords.
There will a special place in the "consuming lines" for you and your
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The Earth nutters just bitch and complain about nothing.
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"What's the point ? All you can do on the moon is walk around, and then leave again."
I was not your moderator, so I can only offer a guess as to how you received a "Troll" moderation, but I think the main reason was that the brevity of your statement makes it appear flippant or curt, whether or not that was your intent.
To quote wikipedia's definition of a "troll" on the internet (emphasis mine):
"In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online comm