Jade Rabbit Spotted By American Eagle (LRO) 58
An anonymous reader writes "Having already imaged the Apollo landing sites on the Moon, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has now added China's recent lander and rover to its collection of snapshots."
Prey! (Score:5, Funny)
And the Jade Rabbit starts dodging wildly to escape the Eagle
Re:Prey! (Score:5, Funny)
"Houston, this is Tranquility Base. The Eagle has breakfasted."
Re:Prey! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
"Roger that, Eagle."
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I just can't help reading the name "Jade Rabbit" and wondering why the Chinese thought it would be a good name for a probe
Oh, wait...
Re:Prey! (Score:5, Insightful)
For one thing, it fits with the moon theme. Where in the West, we see a Man in the Moon, China and Japan see a Rabbit in the Moon. The Chinese sometimes call this rabbit "the jade rabbit".
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In Canada and the US it's generally called "the Man in the Moon".
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You do come across like one of those paid Chinese propagandists though, mr. anonymous coward.
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I won't believe it until Jade Rabbit takes a picture of footprints or flags!
Oh wait, wrong hoax...
(By the way, speaking of flags... am I the only one that thinks it's a terrible coincidence that they've faded to white [gizmodo.com] just as the Chinese showed up?)
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They faded to white a long time ago, so it's hardly coincidental.
Once Again (Score:2, Insightful)
America is confronted by its absence in matters of competence, courage, integrity and enterprise.
We as a nation have completely lost our ability to create. We no longer invent. We no longer explore. We are content to sit on our wider and wider asses and make rude noises from the back of the class while our beloved government spends $600 million in a failed attempt to build a web site.
Do you ever wonder where the software business went? Ever wonder why something everyone needs and everyone wants has been
It had to be said... (Score:5, Funny)
nuh uhhhh!
Re:Once Again (Score:5, Insightful)
America invented the 20th century between 1950 and 1970, during a time when the average wage doubled.
If you look closely, it almost seems like the other "big" countries were a wreck during that period... as if they were recovering from a devastating war.
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Don't worry. It won't take long for the Europeans to self destruct again and America will be there to pick up the pieces.
I wonder, do you really believe what you're saying?
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Don't worry. It won't take long for the Europeans to self destruct again and America will be there to pick up the pieces.
Are you talking about the same country it seems to spy everyone everywhere but could not find a single guy living in Pakistan (an allied country) as a neighbour to american military settlements? That America or the one that only seems to exist in your head?
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America invented the 20th century between 1950 and 1970, during a time when the average wage doubled.
If you look closely, it almost seems like the other "big" countries were a wreck during that period... as if they were recovering from a devastating war.
Well, no.
The period from 1945 to 1975 is known as "Les Trente Glorieuses" (the Glorious 30) in France - during that time there was full employment, growing wages. It can be argued that the war (or, more exactly the recovery from it) was the basis of this period of growth rather than being a drag.
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Then the Western powers signed "The Lima Declaration of 1975" and gave away 30% of our manufacturing capability in order to keep OPEC happy.
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Have you considered that you've confused cause and effect?
Government social spending rises as the population gets poorer. How amazing.
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America is confronted by its absence in matters of competence, courage, integrity and enterprise.
America can get much better pictures back from 600x further away, though.
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... We no longer invent. We no longer explore. We are content to sit on our wider and wider asses and make rude noises from the back of the class while our beloved government spends $600 million in a failed attempt to build a web site.
Well, and to also sit around comfortably while remotely exploring the next frontier [nasa.gov] into this decade thanks to the quality of our engineering [nasa.gov].
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Well, and to also sit around comfortably while remotely exploring the next frontier into this decade thanks to the quality of our engineering.
Too bad there's no ambition to go with that engineering.
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Right now, on Mars, there is a one-ton six wheeled robot with a laser strapped to it's head.
Your argument is invalid.
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Right now, on Mars, there is a one-ton six wheeled robot with a laser strapped to it's head.
How many rovers does that make again? Four right? Over forty years of Mars exploration. Low expectations strike again.
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America is confronted by its absence in matters of competence, courage, integrity and enterprise.
Well, you're right on all but the first one. We could do it. We just aren't.
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America is confronted by its absence in matters of competence, courage, integrity and enterprise.
Didn't our nuclear-powered laser robot just discover water on Mars...?
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Yes, I'm glad we had our satellite up there making a super-cool, highly-detailed 3d map of the moon so that we could take pictures of China showing us how we can't do things like that anymore.
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Stereoscopic images are even better - especially when viewed using those polarized filter or shutter glasses:
http://lcni.uoregon.edu/~dow/Marks_photos/stereo_pairs/Apollo_moon/Stereo_pairs_of_moon.html [uoregon.edu]
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Others have already addressed the many problems with your tired rant, which is basically a carbon copy of the same crap that gets posted every time there's an article remotely related to the American space program, but I'll just focus on this bit of ignorance:
America invented the 20th century between 1950 and 1970, during a time when the average wage doubled. Since then, the average wage has dropped over 20% during the greatest increase in productivity in the history of man.
The high wages between 1950 and
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A handful of nations had their military and military production destroyed. Among them Great Britain, which alone accounted for over one-quarter of worldwide exports in 1950.
The European colonial empires basically disintegrated as a result of the war. Great Britain also had food rationing well into the 1950s (possibly even into the 60s), which gives you some idea of what the economic situation was like, and it was basically a command economy at that point. People forget this now because the word "socialist
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, the old "they laughed at Columbus" defense. Well, they laughed at the Marx Brothers and Bozo the Clown too.
But that's pretty much all the reply you rate - your post is nothing but a rant that isn't insightful and says more about your bias and blinders than anything else.
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uh huh
Too late (Score:1)
the lunar nuclear base has already been constructed.
Summary... (Score:2)
Re:Summary... (Score:5, Funny)
Lunar Orbiter images a single pixel - it must be the Chineese lander.
Actually, it was two double pixels if you look at the images... and they're right where the Chinese claim to be.
I do wonder what the Chinese had to do to get access to the secret set at Universal Studios though....
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Definitely more pixels than two there. just the lander white blob is about 6 pixels high, with some blur, and rover about 4. add shadows etc, we are easily talking about 50 pixels here !
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And then they haven't even started enhancing it yet! We might even get a picture of the LRO reflected in the solar panels.
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What, you think they dont have Enhance button [tvtropes.org] in LRO control room ?
I'd be much more impressed (Score:2)
Visit Lunokhod! (Score:2)
One of the photos in the TFA shows a Lunokhod [wikipedia.org], one of the Russian landers made in the 70's, only a few hundred kilometers away. Maybe Jade Rabbit can swing by for visit.