How China Will Get To the Moon Before a Google Lunar XPrize Winner 173
An anonymous reader writes in with this link about the advances in China's lunar program. "A $30 million Google-backed competition to land a spacecraft on the moon may be about to be scooped. China's Chang'e 3 probe successfully put itself into lunar orbit on Friday in preparation for an attempted touchdown around Dec. 14. China won't be winning the prize money, which is reserved for privately funded, previously enrolled teams, not government agencies."
One small post for man (Score:2, Insightful)
One giant leap for mankind.
Re:One small post for man (Score:5, Insightful)
This.
I live in America. I like its culture. I like its people. I'd like to see it propagate offworld. But if my tribe is no longer interested in taking the high ground, I'd rather see my species - be it 50, 500, or 5000 years from now - speaking some variation of Mandarin than not living offworld at all.
My tribe's ancestors went there in peace for all mankind. Good luck, Chinese dudes.
Re: One small post for man (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: One small post for man (Score:5, Funny)
So what you're saying is that Firefly got it right?
Re: One small post for man (Score:2)
Re: One small post for man (Score:2)
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I'm amused at the constant slashdot meme that the Chinese or Indians are somehow overtaking the US space program.
the chinese space program is about four decades behind the US one. and the Indian one even further, about five decades. we're talking about ballistic capabilities, systems complexity but not computer control. when will they have a launch system that can put solar observing satellite inside the orbit of mercury (which takes more delta v than going to another star!), or a launch system that cou
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the chinese space program is about four decades behind the US one.
4 decades ago the US landed a man on the moon. They couldn't do that today - heck we couldn't even get a man into low earth orbit today. So being 4 decades behind the US space program doesn't sound like a bad thing.
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The US could put a man on the moon fairly easily, and soon.
We just choose not to, because it's expensive, and as a nation we've judged that there's no point in going there for an afternoon of tourism. Especially considering our reduced tolerance for the risk of a blow'd up spacecraft and me
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the new heavy launch system that NASA is designing exceeds the Saturn V
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Nixon's policies ended a war that started in 1940 when Vietnam pussed out and went the side of the Vichy French on an official capacity, but internally, amongst the people, couldn't decide if they want to be vichy(anti-allies), commie(anti-japan), or free(anti-commie/japan); hence, 35 years of war with minor and major powers in play. It could be put even more succinctly by saying it was a multi-decade multi-war over control of a majority of the world's rubber supply. Basically over 5,000,000 people died from 1940-1975 so you can wear rubbers.
Actually, Nixon prolonged that war when it could have ended in 1968. Deciding that a successful peace treaty would have been too big an electoral advantage for the Democrats, he sabotaged the peace conference by targeted messages to both sides of the table, effectively killing the peace process.
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nonsense, you do realize that the science fiction author who proposed that system was off in his calculations by a factor of a hundred? rods from space are a threat to a vehicle, not your city or country.
Well really.. (Score:2, Insightful)
"which is reserved for privately funded, previously enrolled teams, not government agencies"
doesn't that make this article completely irrelevant?
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It does actually not. The summary does not mention this, but AFAIK the X-Prize has the clause "before any national space agency" (except NASA and the Russian obviously). If China succeeds they need to either renegotiate the prize or void it, since the original terms will make it obsolete.
Re:Well really.. (Score:5, Informative)
I stand corrected, the clause was already dropped:
A recent update in the teams’ legal agreement with the X Prize Foundation removed a $5 million penalty if a government entity got to the surface of the moon first.
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That was a pretty dumb clause... since pretty much any country on earth with a few billion on hand could build a rudimentary rover, pay Lockheed Martin a butt-load of money and have one there in a few months. Hell, give me a couple of billion and I'll get the pirate bays servers up there... that'd be hilarious.
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in regards to a moon landing it's a stupid combo then.
why did they pen the original rules as such in the first place?
Re:Well really.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because everyone of the "new space" followers was high at the SpaceShipOne X-Prize victory at the time and they all believed space is much easier than government has made it out to be. So they thought putting a lunar lander together takes a blog, two guys in a garage, github and attending a summit - they will all have Chinese beat by years.
Apparently, it doesnt quite work that way - and Branson is still waiting for his rocket to take him on his worlds highest rollercoaster.
Re:Well really.. (Score:5, Funny)
. So they thought putting a lunar lander together takes a blog, two guys in a garage, github and attending a summit - they will all have Chinese beat by years.
No wonder they failed, they forgot to make a kickstarter page :)
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Some of them did
http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/teams/omega-envoy/blog/earthrise-space-inc-launches-kickstarter-project [googlelunarxprize.org]
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Their parents' basements.
That's the problem right there. They'd find launches much easier if they started from their parents' attics.
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That's good news, because the US landed there back in the 60's. And successfully returned.
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That's good news, because the US landed there back in the 60's. And successfully returned.
Well that's what they'll have you believe, sure :-)
I am not a conspiracy nut myself, at least not regarding the moonlanding. Still, I immensely enjoyed this mockumentary, which had the generous support of the Kubrick estate and various high profile politicos (Kissinger, Rumsfeld, among others):
Dark side of the moon [wikipedia.org].
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Re:Well really.. (Score:4, Informative)
The Russians sent a sample return mission in 1970. Luna 16.
More importantly, the Russians who had ample reason to do so... have never challenged the Apollo accomplishment.
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More importantly, the Russians who had ample reason to do so... have never challenged the Apollo accomplishment.
What are you talking about? A Russian demolished Apollo and we had to go there and get revenge [wikipedia.org].
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We proved getting a spaceship to the moon was possible in the 1960's. The prize is for doing so in a cost effective manner.
China scooped by the Soviet Union (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are going to include government probes than China was itself scooped by the Soviet Union's Lunokhod_1 [wikipedia.org] rover more than 40 years ago.
Finally First Landing on the Moon (Score:1)
I guess everybody is tired of these fake Hollywood landings.
Google is eyeing The Moon!! (Score:1)
How will China get there? (Score:2)
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missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of the X-Prize is to show that private space exploration is possible, i.e., that the costs have come down enough so that it makes sense for businesses to start engaging in space exploration, or that it has become cheap enough so that people can do it for fun.
The ability of space exploration by tax-payer funded government entities doesn't need to be established, it was established half a century ago. Communist nations tend to be even better at doing such things in the short run because they can redirect money more easily to such projects even if they don't make sense.
Re:missing the point (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm. Apparently capitalist governments are even more effective at sinking funds into projects like that, because its widely recognized that US beat the Soviets in the early space race.
Of course, for some inexplicable reason US didnt respond to Soviet challenge by leveraging the power of free markets, private industry and entrepreneurial spirit. They decided to beat massive Soviet state run design bureaus backed by their military industry complex by establishing their own massive state run design bureau backed by their military industrial complex. They even bagged members of the same team of germans as their design leads !
Funnily enough, Russians are now launching the lions share of commercial space payloads, whereas the recent SpaceX Falcon 9 first comsat launch was the first in years for US.
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Yes, because they end up having more money to spend.
The US leveraged the power of "free markets, private industry and entrepreneurial spirit" by taxing it.
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The Soviet union is, of course, still just living off resources created on the back of peasants and workers during the Soviet era.
USSR doesnt exist anymore - but if you meant Russian space industry, then yes absolutely. And it has been crumbling for years.
The moon landing may have been a good political stunt, but scientifically and economically, it was a huge waste of money.
You'll get no argument on this one. Most of the manned spaceflight to date is still a huge waste of money.
Re:missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Bloody bean counters. It was not a waste of money. Any more than climbing Everest, or the race to the South Pole, or finding the Higgs Boson.
The space race inspired the current generation of rich people prepared to put funds into private space initiatives.
We don't want a robot to land on mars. We want a human to tell us how it feels to stand on an alien planet and try to spot the Earth in the nights sky.
You want to look at a waste of money? Look at how much Coca Cola spend to try to make you buy their flavour rather than the oppositions. Now that is a REAL waste.
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Any everest climber pays for it with his own money, or by his direct sponsors that support his cause. South Pole the same. Higgs Boson and LHC are scientific endeavours, greatly contributing to science and our understanding of the word.
Apollo was "our germans are better than your germans" and "we can build a bigger ICBM than you" pissing contest - and effectively bankrupted further space development on both sides. As has been said elsewhere in this thread - Lunokhods and Luna landers, and Surveyors were muc
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"We don't want a robot to land on mars. We want a human to tell us how it feels to stand on an alien planet and try to spot the Earth in the nights sky."
Of course as space is permanently hostile to unarmored humans we'll need robots to do nearly everything for us once we get there, so I'll not quibble about sending robots (which can be developed far more rapidly than meat passenger systems) in advance.
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There is no evidence that that was a good deal; private space exploration might well have started far earlier if the US government had gotten out earlier. I think the space shuttle was an utter disaster.
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All money spent in manned space exploration will pay dividends ultimately, at least a trillion fold.
I have no idea whether you're serious or not. But I'll point out that there are substantial opportunity costs when one burns a few billion on a white elephant rather than something productive.
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No, the money is wasted; future manned space exploration will use none of those technologies. And if we had spent that money for unmanned, commercially viable space exploration, robotics, etc., manned space travel would be much further ahead by now.
Manned space travel by NASA was a huge misallocation of resources that has held back both unmanned and manned space exploration.
Re:missing the point (Score:5, Informative)
its widely recognized that US beat the Soviets in the early space race
By whom?
First artificial satellite: Sputnik
First human in space: Yuri Gagarin
First human in orbit: Yuri Gagarin (He gets mentioned twice because he achieved this before the US managed even a suborbital flight)
First lunar flyby: Luna 1
First impact on the moon: Luna 2
First spacewalk: Aleksei Leonov
First soft landing on the moon: Luna 9
The commitment to boots on the moon led to Gemini turning things around in the mid '60s, but before that the Soviets did quite well, especially with Earth-orbit tech.
Re:missing the point (Score:4, Informative)
Also first woman in space: Valentina Tereshkova
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Also:
Venera 3, first manmade object to impact another planet's surface.
Venera 4, first spacecraft to measure the atmosphere of another planet.
Venera 7, first spacecraft to successfully land on another planet.
Re:missing the point (Score:4, Interesting)
The impressiveness of this feat is only slightly tainted by the fact that it wasn't supposed to be a flyby. They missed.
All us KSP fans can relate to that, I'm sure...
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Out of all the manned spaceflight milestones of the 60's, only three really stand out in history -- Gagarin's orbital mission (Vostok 1), the lunar orbit mission of Apollo 8 and the lunar landing mission of Apollo 11. Lesser milestones as far as future space development is concerned were the first orbital rendezvous of Gemini 6/7 and the first orbital docking of Gemini 8. Your caveat that things turned around in the mid-60's is a rarely acknowledged point in these sort of discussions.
You're missing a few (Score:3)
First Woman in Space : Vanetina Terechkova
First Manned Space Station : Salyut
First Lunar Orbit : Luna 10
First Venus Landing ; Venera 7
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Yeah. Everyone knows (I thought) that the USSR had a good early lead.
Image that sums it up nicely: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/43907-Here-s-an-infographic-that-shows-the-space-race-in-it-s-historical-context [kerbalspaceprogram.com]
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Hmm. Apparently capitalist governments are even more effective at sinking funds into projects like that, because its widely recognized that US beat the Soviets in the early space race.
Dunno about that. IMHO the Soviets did every bit as much good pioneering work with the Lunokhod program and Mir as the US did with the entire Apollo program and the space shuttle program. Apollo was a spectacular propaganda Lunokhod represented a way of doing the same amount of scientific work the Apollo missions did with less risk and at a fraction of the price. Lunokhod set the pattern for the way space exploration is done today and Mir yielded a mountain of data on the problems of really long term missio
Re:missing the point (Score:4, Interesting)
Lunokhod represented a way of doing the same amount of scientific work the Apollo missions did with less risk and at a fraction of the price.
It didn't. The scientific output of Apollo was quite remarkable. And there's two simple reasons why. First, they had the best machines of the day, people (which incidentally are still the best machines of the day) gathering samples and running experiments on the surface.
And second, they returned 380 kg of lunar material to be studied for the past few decades. Do you really think a 60s vintage lunar rover is going to get better data on lunar material on location than generations of Earth-based scientists do with a sample return?
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Lunokhod represented a way of doing the same amount of scientific work the Apollo missions did with less risk and at a fraction of the price.
It didn't. The scientific output of Apollo was quite remarkable. And there's two simple reasons why. First, they had the best machines of the day, people (which incidentally are still the best machines of the day) gathering samples and running experiments on the surface.
And second, they returned 380 kg of lunar material to be studied for the past few decades. Do you really think a 60s vintage lunar rover is going to get better data on lunar material on location than generations of Earth-based scientists do with a sample return?
No I don't but then that's not what I was trying to point out. I said the Soviets did a whole lot of invaluable pioneer work in the field of unmanned space probes and that Lunokhod pointed the way to the future. Or do you really think thtat the future of deep space exporation is in grandiose Apollo program like manned missions to remote corners of the solar system? What has been the focus of space exploration since Apollo? Wait... let me think... Oh yes it's been unmanned probes, even NASA acknowledges tha
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It will _always_ be more cost effective to send robot probes and that includes sample return missions.
Citation required, i.e., show me the numbers.
Granted, a single Lunokhod mission was cheaper (most likely) than a single Apollo mission, but compare a few grams of returned dust samples against hundreds of kilos of samples hand-picked by astronauts with geology training (and in one case, a professional geologist), plus the seismometers, magnetometers, solar wind samples, heat flow instruments, etc, etc emplaced or recovered by the Apollo crews.
How many Lunokhod missions would it take to equal that, and what would they have cost?
It would have taken a lot of Lunokhod missions true, but most likely it would have been at a much lower cost. Not to mention safety. The last three Apollo missions weren't canceled out of cost issues, but the realization that the NASA had been playing a dangerous game of Russian Roulette when they could have easily lost an Apollo crew to solar flares as depicted in the fate of Apollo 18 in Jame's Michner's "Space". The loss of an Apollo crew would have been considered a propaganda disaster in the Col
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It would have taken a lot of Lunokhod missions true, but most likely it would have been at a much lower cost.
Than a national prestige mission that happened to have some scientific output as part of the package? A manned exploration program that put some effort into reducing costs would also have been much lower cost than Apollo.
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It would have taken a lot of Lunokhod missions true, but most likely it would have been at a much lower cost.
Than a national prestige mission that happened to have some scientific output as part of the package? A manned exploration program that put some effort into reducing costs would also have been much lower cost than Apollo.
How much cost reduction is debatable. A significant part of the payload for a manned mission has to be devoted towards keeping the living cargo....well... living. Apollo wasn't a mision about national prestige... it was simply stark fear. That did get kind of muted after the crash of Luna 15, and space eventually became a cooperative venture between the two powers. The Soviet Union even supplied the flight path of Luna 15 to ensure Apollo would not collide with it. That itself is places the Soviet Unio
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Do you need human beings in order to bring back material for Earth-based scientists to analyze?
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Of course, for some inexplicable reason US didnt respond to Soviet challenge by leveraging the power of free markets, private industry and entrepreneurial spirit. They decided to beat massive Soviet state run design bureaus backed by their military industry complex by establishing their own massive state run design bureau backed by their military industrial complex. They even bagged members of the same team of germans as their design leads !
The US led private industry design and build the Apollo project. I don't know how detailed the specs were that private companies like Lockheed and Boeing were given for their parts of the program, for example. I did have a chance some years ago to talk to a guy who worked on the Apollo project for NASA and he was working there during the first moon landing. He told me an interesting story about the onboard computer that the LEM (lunar lander) used and mentioned that MIT was responsible for the programmin
Hey Cool (Score:1)
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It's all very impressive that they could land something on the moon 50 years later, but let's see them do it without microprocessors, as the US did. Whenever I think about the 1960s' moon efforts, I'm amazed that it could be done at all with the computer technology that was available at the time.
Is it wrong (Score:1)
That deep inside, I hope that the Chinese have a critical failure which either prevents them from completing the mission, or their lander is somehow destroyed on impact? It doesn't count if all you do is deposit litter does it?
Re:Is it wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes its wrong. China has lots of scientist and engineers that have put their hard work into this - and they are doing something that nobody has done for decades, and they are doing it better, with more modern and even completely new instruments.
Why would you want this to fail?
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I largely agree, but the original objective was binary -- "round-trip completed intact" | "round-trip not completed intact" -- and since the US & USSR didn't fail partway through the trip, there isn't a whole lot of room for doing it "better." They might do it more cheaply, complete the round-trip faster, or succeed against the most overwhelming odds, but those are all different issues, IMHO.
Re:Is it wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Rooting for a weak home team hoping that the stronger team fails is pathetic.
The correct attitude is to make the home team better.
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I have a hard time understanding the concept of nationalism in a country made up almost exclusively of immigrants.
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As someone born in 1988 (Score:1)
I'm glad that someone is going to the moon. I never got to ride the Concorde either.
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I presume he is referring to the Air France Concorde that crashed.
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at least you had metal forks.
besides, you wan to try cramped, try an asian budget airline(still better service than norwegian or ryanair though..).
... We got there first... like in the 70s... (Score:2)
So... China's trip isn't comparable to what the private companies are doing. When a private chinese company sends something to the moon... then they're in the running. Till then... welcome to the party china... the punch bowl is over there.
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I am looking forward to watching that runner sitting by the track with the stars and stripes watching the running in the red go running by. Closely followed by the one in the green orange and white.
Space race Mk2. Bring it on.
Too easy to fake + China = FAKE (Score:1)
Really?
The US moon landing has been doubted for year despite: relatively open process, poor CG at the time, less knowledge of the moon's environment.
China has: very closed access to any of its government activities, access to the best in CG and amongst the most powerful computers, modern knowledge of the moon's environment.
In short: this self-aggrandizing goal is just TOO EASY TO FAKE. So they will.
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Uhm. Easy to fake? So, how will they fake out the huge amount of telescopes that will be pointed at the moon when they approach? How do they fake the large amount of listening posts that will listen for the chinese signals from the moon?
Not to mention, flybys by other nations, later, will look for the equipment. It would be kind of embarrassing when nobody can find it. ;)
Congratulations! (Score:2)
A nation of 1.4 billion people, with a gdp of $8 trillion, the largest nation in the world, will manage to reach the moon before a couple of handfuls of mostly-private teams with budgets perhaps 1 MILLIONTH of theirs.
Go China!
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I assume you're labeling them "largest in the world" because of their population, since the US GDP is almost twice that high, and even Canada is physically larger...
which organization can go forward? (Score:2)
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Who said that, Wernher von Braun?
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No, Wernher von Braun said "Ja, vee could fly to ze moon and back with zis rocket, but a one-vay flight to London vill do for now mein Fuhrer."
Or were you talking about something he said in his post-paperclip [wikipedia.org] period?
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Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down
that's not my department says Wernher von Braun.
--Tom Lehrer
But seriously. Of course, unlimited funds can move mountains. Or people onto the moon. And maybe even back, too. Von Braun sure had unlimited funds in the 60s.
Too bad the US leaned back on the "we're #1, why try harder" position. Just think where we could be by now.
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Too bad the US leaned back on the "we're #1, why try harder" position. Just think where we could be by now.
At some point, they needed to have something in space which generated a return on investment. Apollo didn't do that. And the Shuttle ended up being even worse (for about ten years till 1984, no one in the US could actually launch a payload on a private launch vehicle).
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The return, better science, better world view, better communications, just think of what happened since that initial investment?
My point exactly. NASA has burned something like a trillion dollars and all we have to show for it is vague happy-speak like the above.
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You the necessary authorisation for the verb budget, though.
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You the necessary authorisation for the verb budget, though.
The verb "need" needs authorization too it would seem.
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Re:I when wonder... (Score:4, Interesting)
It will explode from using low quality components.
Many of the quality product you associate with "american-made" or "european-made" are in fact made in China, part or whole.
If you still think China churns out shite copies of good products like in the 70s and 80s, you need a reality check. Many, MANY China products are brilliant, quality made and innovative. Granted, many are still shite and copies too, but that's changing fast.
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Re: I when wonder... (Score:2, Interesting)
I work in China. Even the Chinese don't believe that their products are any good. Their manufacturing skills are sketchy. Their design skills are weak. Raw materials are sub par. Their key asset is low cost. Not quality.
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It's just like Japan in the 50s and 60s.
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Wait, you seriously think that Japanese wouldn't do the same back in the 50s and 60s? Country with millenia worth of sacrificial culture, country that has existed in one of the least certain environments in the world leading many japanese to still adopt a very nihilistic view on life?
They'd have done it in a heartbeat. And their public would have supported it. Wholeheartedly. They'd just shout "for the empire" and bury the kids, like they've done countless times before.McArthur had to do some very nasty cul
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Err, they didn't because McArthur was in charge. Their first uplifting on the other hand back in late 1800 and early 1900 pretty much followed that particular form.
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Part of it is that China produces what is specced and paid for. Spec out a piece of crap, and the Chinese factory will happily make sub-par components for you.
Spec out top tier materials, high tolerances, good QC, and the shipping containers will have stuff that is on par with what Europe makes. The problem is that if you pay for the top tier stuff, China's competitive edge is less than doing it domestically or having it done in Japan or Europe.
It isn't really China's fault they are the go to guys for the
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Catcha a falling neutrino why don't you.
Being done as we speak [wisc.edu], by one of the coolest (both figuratively and literally) experiments ever designed.
(Technically, they weren't falling but rising- Ice Cube uses the Earth as a shield to screen non-neutrino events)
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Why would it be guaranteed to fail? The knowledge to do this is getting to the half a century mark. We have better knowledge, better computers for simulating potential mishaps, better engineering, better metals, superb polymer tech, and both the knowledge of the USSR and the US, with their mistakes.
This is not as much breaking new ground as it is a task of getting a specialized factory up to speed, which is something China does damn well.
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actually, they only need to jump together repeatedly and in sync to slowly knock the earth's orbit through the Sol-Jupitar L1 or L2; from there they can go anywhere in the solar system with very little perturbation. Indians could do it too except they would have to eat more meat first.
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yeah, that's totally different from the USA where over half our wealth is taken in taxes, we're only governmet slaves until mid July