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.'"
Oh God the name... (Score:5, Funny)
AmericaSpace
That's not the WORST name for an organization I've ever heard. But really? You're THAT unimaginative?
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From TFS: 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.
For the non-geezers out there, this is what the night Armstrong and Aldrin first stepped on the moon was like. [slashdot.org]
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--What this country needs to do, is get the Hell out of Afghanistan - and have us another Space Race.
--It would 1) Be more fun, and 2) Be more PROFITABLE in the long run!!
Screw this! (Score:5, Informative)
It is time to build the Sea Dragon [wikipedia.org] rocket with 80 million pounds of thrust. And no new launch facilities would be needed since you can only launch it from the ocean.
Autodocs -- Designed and built in China (Score:3)
An empire prospers when it keeps the trade routes open. It falters when it turns to lording over its own people, and a new core of empire forms on its outskirts, little fettered from it.
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It has not become easier to move goods across the Canada/US border in the last 10 years.
Much easier to launch from China (Score:2)
Saturn V or Energiya? (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously, a US news source is going to use the largest NASA rocket ever flown as the basis for comparison, but I think their option 'A' design looks quite like the Soviet Energiya booster.
Saturn V was a single body launch vehicle - each stage was stacked on top of each other, and fired sequentially. This was simpler to assemble, but meant that two stages had to start in flight - one of which had to start twice! The first stage was LOx/RP-1 to get high thrust low in the Earth's atmosphere, and the upper stages were LOx/LH2 to get maximum delta-V.
Energiya, on the other hand, looked more like the US shuttle stack (and indeed, was used to fly the Soviet version of the space shuttle, the main difference being its ability to fly without the shuttle as its own rocket). It had a LOx/LH2 core stage, surrounded by 4 LOx/RP-1 boosters. All of the engines were started on the ground, at liftoff. Energiya was a mode 'modern' super heavy launch vehicle, as this approach is widely considered better these days.
Sensibly, the Chinese appear to have looked to the most recent super heavy (100t+ payload capacity) launch vehicle that successfully flew for design cues.
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Sensibly, the Chinese appear to have looked to the most recent super heavy (100t+ payload capacity) launch vehicle that successfully flew for design cues.
There's nothing sensible about building a super heavy launcher that will only fly every couple of years.
Launch cost is largely driven by launch rate, so you'll save a ton of cash by splitting your lunar vehicle into smaller payloads which can launch on rockets that other people will use to launch their satellites. This is the equivalent of building a hundred-ton pickup truck to use when you move house, rather than just loading everything into a container and hiring a truck to deliver it to where you're goin
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That argument has gone back and forth since the dawn of the space age. Both the US and USSR had plans to go to the Moon using smaller launchers, and rendezvousing in LEO.
I'll just say, that the big launch method has worked a couple of times. The lots of little launches method has yet to work at all.
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I'll just say, that the big launch method has worked a couple of times. The lots of little launches method has yet to work at all.
Sure, it works. If you have an infinite amount of money. America didn't, which is why NASA doesn't go to the Moon anymore.
If you actually want to be able to afford to go to the Moon and keep going there, then building your own massive, specialised rocket to launch you into orbit is absolutely, unquestionably the wrong way to do so.
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"Unquestionably"? That is a pretty bold claim - especially when no mission, manned or unmanned, that has gone beyond Earth orbit has ever involved a rendezvous of separately launched components. The closest to doing so were the Gemini-Agena missions that got boosted to higher altitudes (which as partly a test run for a flight where the Agena was replaced by a centaur upper stage, and a Gemini flown around the Moon.)
Something that has never, ever been done in history cannot be "unquestionably" cheaper/faster
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Well it's not like no one's ever successfully docked craft in orbit; that's been done many, many times with the various space stations and their resupply ships. Now, how well that experience translates to subsequently launching the assembled craft from orbit towards the moon or Mars, I don't know.
Re:Saturn V or Energiya? (Score:5, Interesting)
The big problem is that liquid Hydrogen won't keep long in space. A few hours, sure. A week? Not so much. So, if you are going to use the most efficient propellant, LEO rendezvous is very dicey. (If the second launch, the one with the crew, doesn't go on time, you spent a lot of money to orbit an empty tank.)
The Soviet plan was to land a return vehicle on the Moon, check it out, and then send a crew to land, walk over , and fly it back. The return vehicle could be hypergolic so there was no rush on the crew's timing. Everything could be sized this was to enable long stays on the Moon. They actually built this hardware, but of course it never flew. Given the close ties between the Russian and Chinese space efforts, look for the Chinese to do something broadly similar.
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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.
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The original order for Shuttle was what, 8? They cut the funding down to 4 and a pair for testing, then made a big noise about Enterprise as a test bed. It never flew. 8 shuttles could have flown about every 10 weeks with plenty of time to inspect and repair the birds between flights. Just double up on the inspection/repair cr
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There is a 400-tonne spacecraft in orbit around the Earth right now. It carries a crew of between 6 and 12 people in a shirt-sleeve environment and it was put together, is kept supplied and intermittently boosted in orbit by a range of vehicles which each have a payload capability of less than 20 tonnes.
If the Chinese are serious about building the Long March 9 superlifter as a "one-shot mission" stack they are further back down the technology history books than I thought they were, given they've already
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The the smart thing is to get a 50 tonne FH going, multiple human launchers and most importantly, multiple destinations. Even now, I view sending up a BA-sundancer or so to the ISS as being the most important thing that NASA can do. The reason is that by helping BA get moving, then they will put up multiple EO systems. That gives a reason to have large launch rates.
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If it's so widely considered "better", then why does practically no-one actually use it? Not that it's actually modern either - rather it was used during the very earliest days when starting inflight was a huge unknown, and then later dropped except for the R-7 and the earliest Atlases.
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Um, no. Ariane 5 doesn't work like that all - it has a 2nd stage that ignites in flight.
Which of course it not what you claimed - which was that "all motors are started on the ground". Something that has never been com
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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.
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And now the neo-cons will scream about SLS (Score:2)
Instead, we should kill off the SLS TODAY and focus on getting private launchers going for human launches, as WELL as the multiple companies doing inflatable space stations.
THEN create a COTS program for TWO SHLV. It should carry around 150 tonnes to LEO, cost under 5B to produce in under 4 years, and under
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Yes, we will hear all the neo-cons and RWNJ on this site screaming about O killing off Constellation as well as the SLS.
Must be easy to win arguments when the other side is in your head.
Make no mistake. China IS in a cold war with the west, and they are WINNING..
Oh? And what are they going to do with this moon base? Sell souvenirs? Rent it out to tourists?
There's a huge difference between something that's possible and something that makes sense. We shouldn't spend a bent nickel going back to the m
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It makes sense to get man off this planet. In fact, it is insane NOT to get us off here. We are the first species on this planet that has this capability to save itself by being on multiple other planets.
The other issue is that many wars have been fought over resources. Minerals are needed. Less than 6 months ago, we saw that China invaded American waters to grab fish. Now, they were caught in Russian waters doing the same thing. Then you add the fact that China cut a deal with Philippines just a c
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We are the first species on this planet that has this capability to save itself by being on multiple other planets.
Save itself from what?
The other issue is that many wars have been fought over resources. Minerals are needed. Less than 6 months ago, we saw that China invaded American waters to grab fish. Now, they were caught in Russian waters doing the same thing. Then you add the fact that China cut a deal with Philippines just a couple of months ago to withdraw their boats, and even before the ink is
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Save itself from what?
People that do not see any issues with the way we live today!
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Once they think that they have it, then they will attack (ask India about that).
Are you referring to this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_India_War [wikipedia.org]
This was 1962. Next you will be quoting the dangers of Genghis Khan.
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And what does a mongolian have to do with the today's Communist China?
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Secondly, to claim that any part of USA was part of Mexico is a joke. Mexico was fighting against the NATIVES here. Mexico had less than 7K ppl over the ENTIRE area. NONE of this land belonged to Mexico. It belonged to the Native Americans. They are the ONLY ones that have a legitimate grip.
Nuts, when texas broke off from Mexico in 1836 (almost 200 years ago), Mexico had it for only 15 years. In addition, the population of Mexicans and Americans was a TOTAL of l
Anybody want to take a bet? (Score:2)
..and yes, I know this post will get modded down to "-1, Troll" and I'll get flamed for posting this. Haters gonna hate; I'm expressing my opinion, and I don't care who likes or dislikes it. I don't trust the Chinese government; I have been given no reason to.
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Plutonium.
Other minerals.
HE3
Ability to live off-world.
Ability to put up a decent scope that allows us to view deep, real deep, into the universe.
And that is just for starters.
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Eh, there's plenty of water here on the earth. Plutonium isn't naturally occurring, so I'm not sure where you're getting that. "Other minerals" are also here on the earth. As far as HE3 is concerned, we don't know what to do with it, so I'm not sure why they would go to the moon to get it.
And the ability to live off world is useful how?
If that's your idea of "starters" I can't even imagine how useless the items further down the list are.
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There is U on the moon which can be bred into Pu. This can then be used for a number of devices in space. Not just for mankind, but rovers and sats.
Other minerals can be denied access to.
And has been pointed out by brilliant ppl the world over (hawking comes to mind), our staying on earth is simply putting all of our eggs in one basket. Life goes extinct every so often. Normally, it is about 27 million years, but we never know when
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There is U on the moon which can be bred into Pu. This can then be used for a number of devices in space. Not just for mankind, but rovers and sats.
Other minerals can be denied access to.
There isn't any reason to put water into LEO or breed plutonium on the moon. We have more plutonium than we know what to do with already, and if we run out we can make more here. You keep thinking we can use this or that resource on the moon because
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Wow, Sandusky has now invaded /. I understand sports sites, but wow, he's migrating all over.
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..via large kinetic weapons
..and the AC has it. Did everyone else forget about The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress already?
I predict the next "space race" will be to establish a permanent presence on the Moon, and the Chinese will be playing the role the Russians played back in the 1950's and 1960's.
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Let's assume the Chinese build a mass driver (assuming you could actually build one) on the moon and threatened to drop heavy rocks on us. The proper response would be "If you do that, we're going to turn your country into a vast expanse of radioactive glass." Trillions of yuan wasted because they forgot we had nukes. Stupid Chinese!
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Says the guy who wrote this:
Maybe if you don't want people to treat you like an asshole you shouldn't act like one.
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I predict the next "space race" will be to establish a permanent presence on the Moon, and the Chinese will be playing the role the Russians played back in the 1950's and 1960's.
What makes you so sure they won't be playing the role of the Americans ?
Their progress is seen as 'slow' and 'copying' by most Americans, but their 5 year and 10 year and 20 year plans are being steadily executed.
Their Shenzhou spacecraft has done spaceflights that resemble American Mercury and Gemini, but it actually has all capabilities of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Soyuz combined (and improved).
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A new space race (Score:2)
Welcome to space race 2.0. This time around USA will be the one losing economically.
Re:Cue the melodramatic space nutters.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Chinese Characters (Score:4, Funny)
You know those inscrutable aliens in sci-fi films that have indecipherable glyphs on the sides of their spaceships: They're Chinese.
Actually, someone found a stone tablet, somewhere near Siberia. They carbon dated it, and it supposed to be like more than 5 millions year old
On that stone tablet were carvings that looks very much like some ancient Chinese characters
I had the link once, but unfortunately I lost it (hard disk crashed).
I tried to search for it, to no avail.
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You know those inscrutable aliens in sci-fi films that have indecipherable glyphs on the sides of their spaceships: They're Chinese.
Actually, someone found a stone tablet, somewhere near Siberia. They carbon dated it, and it supposed to be like more than 5 millions year old
On that stone tablet were carvings that looks very much like some ancient Chinese characters
I had the link once, but unfortunately I lost it (hard disk crashed).
I tried to search for it, to no avail.
Skittery dinosaur tracks could look like Chinese characters to the sort of person that can see Jesus in a slice of toast. Although, these days believing in dinosaurs and Jesus at the same time seems to be verboten, even though we managed it quite peaceably for almost two centuries after the scientific classification of dinosaurs.
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I dunno, I could be speaking from my back orifice
I've lost the link to that article, and the last time I read that article was years ago
So I could be wrong on the method of dating - it could be something else - but that "5 million year old" thing should be correct, unless, my mind fails me again :)
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It was probably a carbon-42 test.
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.
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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.
If it ends up with India duking it out with China, It would be doubly wonderful !!
That way we get to kill two birds with only one stone
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3...2...1...
The species must go into space and colonize the Galaxy! With rockets.
Well it would be nice if we could use horizontal take-off space planes, but in the meantime rockets will have to do. Let's not forget that steam didn't exactly replace sail overnight.
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Well, that might not be impossible http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/ [reactionengines.co.uk]
The Brits have been pushing this kind of technology for decades (remember HOTOL?) but it seems to take a while for it to get any traction. Shame really, the potential is staggering. The demise of Concorde had more to do with its introduction coinciding with the oil embargo, it was conceived in the days of cheap fuel and its high consumption would have been less of an (economic) issue. I don't see any such issues with a hydrogen powered engine since producing hydrogen doesn't absolutely have to depend on hy
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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.
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You might as well argue with the wall. The overwhelming mentality on Slashdot, as seen by the poster here, is that space travel is a total waste of money and that we need to invest in wars and occupations instead. If you're looking for a haven for space geeks and sci-fi fans, this isn't it.
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nope, it's just that "space nutter" troll and a few fiscal-responsibility types. but if they watch the story tags fly by and jump on anything with "space" in it, they'll own every thread.
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huh?
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Wrong again. Steam did replace sail, diesel came later.
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that we need to invest in wars and occupations instead.
LOL right, that's what I read on here every night.....and also love letters to George Bush. Uh......are you sure you've actually read Slashdot?
The problem I see with space travel is, going to Mars doesn't actually help us get into the rest of the galaxy. It's not actually a stepping stone......to escape the Solar System, we need new fundamental research in physics and material science. Going to Mars could actually divert from that.
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LOL right, that's what I read on here every night.....and also love letters to George Bush. Uh......are you sure you've actually read Slashdot?
I don't know how you have your friends/foes list set up, but I see tons and tons of comments here parroting the Republican/tea party agenda, supporting the wars, etc. I also see a fair number of opposing comments, but those mostly seem to be from non-Americans.
Going to Mars is IMO a stepping stone in that it helps get people out into space and building experience i
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.
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I told him we shoulda patented it. It was a great idea...
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History is filled with intransigent people like yourself that do not believe we will ever grow beyond our current mold, that certain topics are not worth pursuing as they will never bear fruit, etc. A good example are those skeptical about the future of artificial intelligence moving away simple heuristics and mathematical models, despite that "full"-brain simulation, at least at the neuronal level, is now not a matter of if, but when:
H. Markram, "The Blue Brain project", Nature Rev. Neurosci. 7: 153-160,
Re:Cue the melodramatic space nutters.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure it's this attitude that is responsible for the Fermi paradox [wikipedia.org].
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You can weep all you want but this is a problem we need to solve. I wouldn't be giving up too soon. I see in you blog you saying you lost heart when the shuttle blew up. Well, this is a risky business and people die. The astronauts know it and accept it. We waste more fuel on silly pointless wars than we consume in space travel. You seem too ready to give up. Fine. Get out of the way.
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Von Neumann probes should be possible within the known laws of physics. Physical constraints cannot be the solution to the Fermi paradox.
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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.
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Want to bet that is how the Chinese see it?
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ROV mining etc (Score:3)
Given the thermal gradients, I wouldn't be surprised by a closed cycle heat engine driving them.. i'm sure it works out better than solar panels.
Re:meh (Score:5, Interesting)
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They have the same claim to "We did it!" as the majority of americans who weren't personally involved. Either you limit it to the 12 astronauts actually on the moon, the severall ten thousands involved in the apollo program or not at all.
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Indeed, that was true. I'm pretty sure almost everyone on the planet with access to a TV watched it that night, and for a short while it seemed like everyone in the world was celebrating together. Nationalism went right out the door for a while.
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Going camping with friends tomorrow, and we'll hoist a cup to the Apollo 11 team.
Re:meh (Score:4, Funny)
Awww, how cute is it that "people" living outside of the U.S. think they're human? Silly foreigners.
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capable of taking Chinese astronauts to the moon and points beyond. [foreignpolicy.com]
No, he is right: look how the shadows on the picture on that link are all wrong-
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.
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No need to join them up. Send the cargo on ahead and you know it will be there when you get there.
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No need to join them up. Send the cargo on ahead and you know it will be there when you get there.
Wouldn't work for a longer-term mission like going to Mars, as you've still got to send a lot of stuff for the astronauts to use along the way. You've also got to pack a lot more shielding due to the increased duration of exposure to solar radiation. Not impossible to deal with, but definitely a lot more mass overall and it's far easier to get that stuff to orbit in several pieces.