China Completes Its First Lunar Return Mission 109
China's Chang'e 5-T1 mission to the moon has not only taken some beautiful pictures of the Earth from the craft's perspective (hat tip to reader Taco Cowboy) but as of Friday evening (continental U.S. time) returned a capsule to Earth. (The capsule landed in Inner Mongolia.) From the linked article: Prior to re-entering the Earths atmosphere, the unnamed probe was travelling at 11.2 kilometres per second (25,000 miles per hour), a speed that can generate temperatures of more than 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,700 degrees Fahrenheit), the news agency reported. To slow it down, scientists let the craft "bounce" off Earths atmosphere before re-entering again and landing. ... The module would have been 413,000 kilometres from Earth at its furthest point on the mission, SASTIND said at the time. The mission was launched to test technology to be used in the Change-5, Chinas fourth lunar probe, which aims to gather samples from the moons surface and will be launched around 2017, SASTIND previously said.
same week... (Score:3, Interesting)
How curious that this comes in the same week the Americans lost two space vehicles in one week.
The future of space belongs to China. They are the ones with the cajones to do it. They'll be the first manned mission to Mars too because they'll just fucking do it. They won't be crippled with fear and pork.
China 2014 = USA 1960.
Back to the future (Score:5, Insightful)
How curious that this comes in the same week the Americans lost two space vehicles in one week.
The future of space belongs to China. They are the ones with the cajones to do it. They'll be the first manned mission to Mars too because they'll just fucking do it. They won't be crippled with fear and pork.
China 2014 = USA 1960.
Oh shut up. They've managed to do something we did in the 1970's. Good for them, it's not a trivial accomplishment by any means, but it doesn't mean that Taikonauts will be owning near space for the next millennium. I do wish them luck and persistence - somebody needs to kick the US in the kiester and get us 'competing' against something.
Besides, the Chinese love pork.
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China can get humans in to space today... and the USA cannot.
I think that points to the direction... not what happened 50 years ago.
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If China was building 1969 cars, would you be all upset and emotional that China is building 1969 cars and the USA cannot?
Of course not. Same thing with the space stuff, it's equally as obsolete.
Get over it! The emotional attachment to these space delusions is baffling to me.
It's over, finished, done. The Space Age fantasies never made any sense, they won't suddenly make sense because some other country is sending a 50 pound RC car to get dust back from the Moon.
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The question is, if the US really wanted to go back to the moon would they use a Saturn V anyway? If you take the Falcon Heavy launching early next year with two booster rockets and add four more so it's a hex ring around a center rocket you'd have a Falcon Superheavy that would roughly match the Saturn V. The Falcon Heavy does 53000 kg to LEO / 3 (center + 2 side) * 7 (center plus hex) = 123000kg ~= 118000kg for the Saturn V. I'm guessing if you gave SpaceX a billion dollar check they'd have a working prot
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except china isn't building rockets with 1960's tech. they are using modern tech. modern flight systems.
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So what? The delusions about space don't suddenly make sense because we have better computers!
As a matter of fact, all it shows is that we managed to make better technology right here on the Earth without your mythical cheap access to space we apparently "need"!
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If China was building 1969 cars, would you be all upset and emotional that China is building 1969 cars and the USA cannot build any cars at all
FTFY.
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Uh, the Chinese moon missions are unmanned.
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somebody needs to kick the US in the kiester and get us 'competing' against something.
The only competition in America these days is during elections. For every right that The People lose, the political scene gets an additional right. It's quite a competition, and The People are getting their asses kicked.
Re:Back to the future (Score:4, Insightful)
Taikonauts will be
Please stop. We don't need to invent a new word every time a different country sends a man into space. What you gonna do in a few decades, memorize 100 different words for "astronaut"?
Do you say "Angela Merkel is on her way to the summit in a Flugzeug"? "Kim Jung Eun is returning to North Korea in his private Bihenggi? You're talking in English, just use the motherfucking English word for airplane.
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"What you gonna do in a few decades, memorize 100 different words for "astronaut"?"
There's going to be only one : unemployed. There's no future in space for people. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever.
"'I think there is a world market for about five computers' —Remark attributed to Thomas J. Watson (Chairman of the Board of International Business Machines), 1943". At a computer trade show in 1981, Bill Gates uttered this statement, in defense of the just-introduced IBM PC's 640KB usable RAM limit: "640K ought to be enough for anybody." Thought I would post a few people who said things as incredibly shortsighted things as well. I am amused at how little you know about how much stuf have been gained
Re: Back to the future (Score:2)
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Re:Back to the future (Score:5, Interesting)
> China 2014 = USA 1960.
Oh shut up. They've managed to do something we did in the 1970's.
Well, he/she does have a point, as you actually manage to say yourself. When the US did this, they were in a massive, economic upturn, as is China now; and we in the West were in the grip of a massive, if somewhat naive, optimism - remember the Hippies? It was in the 60es and 70es that we shook of the post-WWII gloom and started believing that we could achieve anything and everything. Unfortunately we also managed to squander much of it - my personal opinion is that it is consumerism more than anything that's to blame, and unless China reins in a bit, they will too. So it goes in the world, but when that time comes, perhaps we will be ready again.
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my personal opinion is that it is consumerism more than anything that's to blame
Plus all the cheap oil is gone.
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If China 2014 - USA 1960 then China from 2026 and on until who knows when will be grounded, pathetic and useless.
Good for them that they will get to shine for the early 2020s though!
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I'll give you fat and dumb.
But do you seriously think that paranoid frothing at the mouth America is "happy"?
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You won't be seeing any non-pork eating nations on Mars anytime soon.
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So much envy from America (Score:4, Insightful)
Just accept that the Chinese will own the 21st century of space exploration, ok. There's no need for your envy, be proud of our achievements as a race and commend China for taking the lead, for all of us.
And don't bring up the "we did it before you"-bullshit, because the Russians beat ALL OF US going into space. The Russians had crafts in orbit, people in orbit, and landers on the Moon, Venus and Mars, before anyone else. The Russians were the definitive pioneers of space exploration, period.
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I think that the failure with space exploration in our lifetimes will be because it's one nation or another trying to one up each other for some stupid reason.
It's pathetically sad that the space challenging nations don't pool resources in a genuine push to grow beyond earth.
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Yes, maybe we could do something cool like all build a space station together.
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And how much has America let China contribute to the space station?
I'm hoping you're down modded really soon - I wish there was a -1 uninformed mod.
And Yes, I live in America, and Yes, I think it's stupid to not have all countries that want to share in space exploration actually share.
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I'll trade you for a "-1 no sense of humor" mod. Sheesh.
You're point is well taken that the US has blocked China's inclusion into the ISS program. Politics is everywhere, of course, and probably to be expected when states are funding things. Russia is now threatening to no longer take US astronauts to the ISS in retaliation for our sanctions against them. Unfortunately, it appears that with the reality of politics being what it is, depending too much on anyone else for technology simply leaves you vulne
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I would of thought the context to be bloody obvious since the op is about China and taking pictures around the moon.
Hence the non recognition of any humor in your first reply.
Somebody needs a hug (Score:2)
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The Russians had crafts in orbit, people in orbit, and landers on the Moon, Venus and Mars, before anyone else. The Russians were the definitive pioneers of space exploration, period.
First Soviet satellite in orbit: Sputnik 1. October 4 1957. Transmitted radio signals for 22 days and burned up on reentry in 92 days.
First US satellite in orbit: Explorer 1. January 31, 1958. Transmitted data for 111 days and was the first spacecraft to detect the Van Allen belt. remained in orbit until 1970.
So the Soviet Union sent up a radio transmitter that beeped at 20 and 40 MHz four months sooner than the US. Explorer 1 which had; a Geiger counter, multiple temperature sensors, a transducer and sol
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Thank-you for posting this. Usually I feel the responsibility to point out details like this about the early missions, but you saved me the trouble. There are many other examples such as the thousands of pictures returned by the Lunar Orbiters and Surveyor missions to the moon in the mid-60s. By the early 70's the US had missions on the way to Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury, places no one else has even attempted yet (the Europeans are planning to go to Jupiter and Mercury soon but haven't launched the space
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I'm certainly not trying to marginalize the Soviet space missions. Their early moon rovers were fantastic feats. Hell, I don't think there's been a more successful rover program until Spirit and Opportunity.
But then look at the Voyager probes launched by the US. They've traveled farther than any man made object to date. And depending on your definition, are/will be the first to leave the solar system. Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause a little over 2 years ago. I'm pretty sure that's a first. ;-)
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The first mars rover that crashed as an international undertaking. In fact, that's one of the reasons it went wrong: us Canadians were responsible for the final calculations. We assumed, Americans being Americans, that the measurements given were in feet. (Yes, our stereotype has Americans pegged as being so backwards that the entire nation doesn't know System International, or are too prideful to use the standardized system.) However, the Americans had been kind and already converted to meters.
China Completes Its First Lunar Return Mission (Score:1)
Congrats China!
China, mankind's last hope? (Score:2)
The rest of the world seems to have become so risk adverse and cost focused that it is very doubtful any significant space exploration will be forthcomming in the near future. Perhaps what little communal pride is left in China will help spur exploration for explorations sake, and not just the pursuit of profit?
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China and India. India got to mars recently and plans an unmanned landing soon.
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Well, let's consider actual space missions in flight right now. Just next year, in 2015, the American Dawn spacecraft will enter orbit around the asteroid Ceres, after leaving orbit around asteroid Vesta in 2012. And in July 2015, the American New Horizons spacecraft will fly by Pluto. And there is the American Juno mission to Jupiter, launched in 2011 due for arrival in orbit around Jupiter in 2016. Plus the ongoing flotilla of orbiters around Mars, including Maven which just entered Martian orbit less
Good job (Score:3)
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Rocket science is easy.
Rocket engineering is extremely, mind-curdlingly HARD
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The government - if that is the word - of the middle Northern American country, colloquially known as the Americas [sic?],
In American English, "America" unambiguously identifies he United States of America. The Americas unambiguously refers to North, South, and Latin America collectively. The people I've found with the most confusion on this point is those who learn English as a second language, and the wording is different, and they tend to insist that their English is better than millions of natives, because it sounds like their native language.
Old news (Score:1)
Oh my god (Score:2)
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Surface reflection really is that bright. If you set the camera exposure to see stars, Earth and the Moon would be white blobs.
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Inner Mongolia? (Score:2)
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The door to the universe is ajar (Score:1)
Brilliant news, find water on the moon and we have found the moon's rocket fuel. Get that rocket fuel back to earth and use it to accelerate a craft to escape velocity, in the safety of the vacuum of space and we are on our way.
Please read my thesis http://dollyknot.com/nonlinear... [dollyknot.com]
Re:To put into TIME perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
1972 Last US Moon Landing
1972 - No one does a damn thing
Nope, I don't really see any reason to pick on China specifically there.
At this rate they will be inventing the wheel in about 200 years but good for them because the rest of us will have forgotten how to do even that!
But don't worry, we still have junk food and reality TV.
Re:To put into TIME perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
I think we can actually pin the blame on Korolev here. He died in 1966, and without him Soviet space program lost their main driver.
And without stiff and successful competition he provided, US didn't use the same resources as before on space exploration after clawing their one victory after series of losses. A very smart thing to do considering the costs of the program and the fact that people only remember your last victory, not the string of losses that came before it.
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As one commentator put it "Even if there were gold bars stacked at the landing site ready for collection, it still wouldn't be worthwhile making the flight to collect them"
The issue was that the space race was about militaristic chest-thumping and was promoted as such. Because of that, interest was lost as soon as Apollo 11 landed. The USA had won, why bother with anything more?
There were plenty of opportunities to keep interest up but the media had other priorities and exo-geology still doesn't feature hig
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Clearly after going to the Moon, someone discovered there is no point anymore to go there. USA proved its superiority as intended when JFK launched the program. The only incentive was national superiority during the Cold War. The rest was pure waste of money and resources.
Comparison with aviation does not hold water. The aviation industry has proven to be profitable and fast transportation valuable to human activity and economy. No such thing exists for manned missions to the Moon or even Mars. In short, th
Re:Welcome to 1970, China! (Score:5, Interesting)
US has never had an unmanned sample return mission from the moon. Soviets did, though, in the early 70's.
They can spin it, "US sucks, they have to send up humans because their robots are too dumb."
Re:Welcome to 1970, China! (Score:5, Interesting)
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"It would seem the US were finally able to re-manufacture FOGBANK"
As with the manufacture of seamless tubing for SSMEs there was heavily reliance on the memory of retired staff.
Not the first technique that was lost and certainly won't be the last.
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Wrong: the specs are still present, and much of the institutional knowledge is still present.
What the US lacks is the financial will however, rest-assured that both the US and Russia could hop back into the space race whenever they chose. It would hurt financially, but they could do it.
These countries are choosing not to spend as much on space programmes as they once did. Back against the wall, they could switch priorities.
I wish people would stop playing-out their fantasy that former world leaders (US, UK,
Re:Welcome to 1970, China! (Score:5, Insightful)
cf. http://amyshirateitel.com/2011... [amyshirateitel.com]
If the problem was only economical, there wouldn't be a problem nowadays for a new launch vehicle to go to Mars. The $6 billions NASA budget in 1966 would be equivalent to $43 billions today. Even at FY 2013 budget, $17 billions, assuming the R&D had already been done, documented, and tooling still exist, the saturn launch vehicle could easily be re-made. But strangely, it could not. you are also disproved by the fact the NASA engineer have only been testing the Rocketdyne F-1 engine quite... recently... http://www.nasa.gov/exploratio... [nasa.gov]
Let's face it, the US space program is not what it used to be, but hey, if you like to live in the past, good for you :-/
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"NASA engineer have only been testing the Rocketdyne F-1 engine"
No, they've only been testing the gas generator from the engine. Firing the entire engine will take a LOT more work.
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Just to clarify: The "gas generator" is the part of the engine which drives the turbopumps which supply fuel+oxidiser to the main combustion chamber. It's analogous in some ways to the high pressure injector pump in a diesel engine.
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"What the US lacks is the financial will"
Not just the financial will. Even with an unlimited budget the USA could not resume manufacturing SaturnV-class launchers without at least a decade lead-time.
For what it's worth, before the "space race", the USA was planning the Dyna-soar project, using a truly massive booster (Sea Dragon), which would be fabricated in a shipyard. Long-term that kind of booster is going to be needed, unless the political will to build Orion-class launchers is somehow found (and short
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AFAIK, today, even the US is back to the pre-1970 era. IIRC, NASA has lost knowledge about the Saturn's engine.
You mean the F-1? The funny thing is, NASA never had a lot of knowledge about the engine in the first place: the computers of the time were not powerful enough to allow them to simulate a lot of stuff, so a lot of the design decisions were simple guesswork. (The same actually goes for the Russians, too.) Here's a great article on a recent piece of "industrial archeology". [arstechnica.com]
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You're just some small envious person who have no idea what you're talking about. The U.S has been doing monumental spying for 50 years via the NSA, and most of your achievements are the fruits of European and Asian immigrants. Your suggestion that the Chinese can't achieve anything on their own is something only a clown and a loser would come up with.