China Reveals Its Space Plans Up To 2016 218
PolygamousRanchKid writes "China plans to launch space labs and manned ships and prepare to build space stations over the next five years, according to a plan released Thursday that shows the country's space program is gathering momentum. China's space program has already made major breakthroughs in a relatively short time, although it lags far behind the United States and Russia in space technology and experience. The country will continue exploring the moon using probes, start gathering samples of the moon's surface, and 'push forward its exploration of planets, asteroids and the sun.' Some elements of China's program, notably the firing of a ground-based missile into one of its dead satellites four years ago, have alarmed American officials and others who say such moves could set off a race to militarize space. That the program is run by the military has made the U.S. reluctant to cooperate with China in space, even though the latter insists its program is purely for peaceful ends."
Re:The final frontier (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, except that Sulu is Japanese.
Re:Uh, yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
More than what China has done before or since? Not denigrating the Chinese efforts, but NASA hasn't exactly been sitting on their hands. How many Mars probes, Lunar orbits, or comet flybys has the Chinese space agency done?
What the hell is wrong with you? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, not even going to post this anonymously.
Whatever you think of how China's gov't works. No matter the motivations. How is this anything other than an overall good thing? Seriously? We have a space agency in the world right now with both the government funding, the will and potentially the skills to advance manned spaceflight again!
Worse case scenario, things don't work out and remain as they are(not counting deaths here since that's always a possibility with these and NASA as well as the Russians have had their fair share).
Best case scenario: They pull off something here and either succeed or encourage this awesome spirit of competition we've been sorely lacking since the Soviet Union and the US fought over the moon.
Please, keep your racist, xenophobic, nationalist or just plain ignorant bile to yourselves and enjoy what MOST people who admire the stars have been wishing for for a very long time: a renewed interest in space travel.
Re:What the hell is wrong with you? (Score:5, Insightful)
a) Repeat after me: China will NOT shoot at the US any time soon. The two nations are connected at the hip economically. They'll continue to play games with each other, for sure. there will be some sabotage, some espionage, some tensions, but China and the USA have the dollar bill version of Mutually Assured Destruction.
b) Both the Russians AND the USA have weapons in space regardless of treaties. How's that World War with Russia going?
c) How much did the USA expand their military budget last year? Or the year before that? Or before that? Heck, when's the last time it DIDN'T? How did that affect the ability of the last space race to allow a man to walk around on the moon?
d) Doesn't the tinfoil hat itch?
e) Given current sentiments(as demonstrated by your post) and the fact that the USA owes all the money, it's technically more likely the USA would act first. but again, see point a) for why this won't happen any time soon.
Re:What the hell is wrong with you? (Score:0, Insightful)
Are you kidding me??? The only expansionist and aggressive government on this planet is the USA! And so what if China is expanding their military budget by 12%? It is still nowhere near what US is spending. USA is spending more on their military budget than all others combined!
Which is more worrying? The country that spend the most on offensive military and has a history of attacking where ever they please, OR a large country concerned with building their economy and with no interest in attacking anyone, least pf all the US!
What is worrying is that the US will mount weapons (if they haven't already) on the satellites as a "preventive" measure for it surely is not acceptable that anyone else is allowed to do that... and then act all indignant when China/Russia do the same....
Re:The final frontier (Score:2, Insightful)
Studies show that Japanese speakers have great difficulty distinguishing between "r" and "l" sounds. Kind of like how English speakers can't even hear the difference between most Chinese words.
Re:The final frontier (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. 50 years ago we were landing rovers on Mars. 50 years ago we had orbiters around Saturn and Mercury. 50 years ago we were sending a probe to Pluto. 50 years ago we had two spacecraft entering interstellar space. 50 years ago we had landed on an asteroid.
The December Scientific American outlines a step by step program that makes small, incremental increases in our capability that eventually get us to Mars. Unlike the "invest tons of money and build a huge rocket" approach, this gradually increases our capability within our means to pay for it, so at no point are we going to lose ground, unlike the Apollo program where once the massive funding dried up, we were done.