Taiwan Building Lunar Lander For NASA Moon-Mining Mission (blastingnews.com) 84
MarkWhittington quotes a report from Blasting News: According to AFP, the Chung-shan Institute of Science and Technology in Taiwan is building a $47 million, 3.7 metric ton lunar lander on behalf of NASA. The vehicle is designed to carry a rover called Resource Prospector, which would roll about the lunar surface searching out deposits of oxygen, hydrogen, and water. The Resource Prospector mission is still being formulated but is envisioned to be a joint project with several national space agencies and commercial companies. The lunar lander is the first vehicle of its type to be built in Taiwan. "The Resource Prospector would take samples from about a meter beneath the lunar surface and then heat them in an oven to ascertain what the materials are that comprise it," reports Blasting News. The mission is part of the second stage to NASA's Journey to Mars program called "Proving Ground." "Should the Resource Prospector prove to be successful, the moon could be used as a base for space journeys into Mars," says Han Kuo-change, the head of CSIST's international cooperation program.
Re:if there is real competition is space .... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not so simple: the initial investment is huge, and the returns are slow. It takes a visionary (like Musk), with a bottomless well of cash (like Tesla Motors) to enter the playfield. There are safer investments with higher and faster returns if one has that kind of money, and wants to multiply it. Without the "vision" it's simply not going to happen - corporations prefer easy, immediate profits over multi-decade investments, and the asian ones are more conservative that way than the western ones.
For this to happen, it takes a special kind of person in a leadership position. This *might* happen, but I don't see any candidate currently.
Four (Score:2)
(and russians) will blast
insightful words in your sentence
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It's not so simple: the initial investment is huge, and the returns are slow. ... There are safer investments with higher and faster returns if one has that kind of money, and wants to multiply it.
As with boats and swimming pools, one doesn't buy a spaceship to save money. :-)
Re: if there is real competition is space .... (Score:1)
I don't think that's realistic. These countries don't have the high level of engineering scrutiny to reliably complete such missions.
Not to say they couldn't ever, given enough time they likely would gain competency, but it's probably more likely that well before they get to that stage they'll collapse into endless civil wars due to the sheer masses of the plebeian members of their states.
China hasn't even managed to make a decent aircraft yet, even with what technology they've managed to steal they can't m
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because there is no money in it. its not a real market, there is only artificial demand. hence no free market and lots of crony capitalism and subsidies; eg spacex and nasa.
when there is money and its half way free, russians usually get it. even the usa airforce uses russian rockets now.
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asian companies (and russians) will blast american ones like spacex to bankruptcy.
That must be why the Korean launch vehicle uses a downgraded Russian engine? :D Not much competition there, apparently.
Competition is already here (Score:3)
if there is real competition(instead of crony capitalist control) and real money (instead of subsidies) is space transport and infrastructure business
Already there. I can think of a half dozen organizations capable of launching a satellite into orbit and I'm no expert at all. (SpaceX, ULA, Orbital Sciences, NASA, ESA, ROSCOSMOS, CNSA off the top of my head) Several of these are private companies and more are coming online in the near future (Blue Origin, Orbital ATK) Government money is still a thing but becoming less so by the day.
opened to private enterprises, asian companies (and russians) will blast american ones like spacex to bankruptcy.
Based on what exactly? There is nothing preventing asian companies from getting into space now. It's not like the US ca
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It's not like the US can tell a company in India that they aren't allowed to launch anything into space.
Well, they can put pressure on certain parties - for example, the incident with the US pressuring Russians into not giving Indians the RD-56/KVD-1 engine design for domestic Indian manufacturing is fairly well known.
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nonsense, space travel can not be profitable for the next 100 years but must be subsidized by government. someone will get the contracts. Musk is pissing away money, Tesla doesn't make a profit
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There is no reason to open government funded R&D missions period. To fund a foreign company is just giving research dollars to other countries. The space program absolutely enhanced our technological capabilities in the 60's. An example of utter stupidity was the state of california giving the contract for the bay bridge to china. In the end, it was over budget, held hostage to pay for the overage and in the end all that expensive tooling to build it stayed in china. Giving that contract to a US company
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NASA is 100% civilian. The do fly missions for the dod (one of the spade shuttles belonged to the air force), but then so do a lot of civilian companies.
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Wrong, it is an agency of the executive branch of the government of the United States
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None at all. The military runs its own space program. The last time the military was interested in cooperation with NASA was when the shuttles were build. However, the military bras saw how expensive, unreliable, and pointless were the shuttles and lost all interest even before the first shuttle flew. (Those things had basically no military, civilian, or scientific application that could possibly justify their cost. The NASA built them anyways)
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Yes it does have military implications. If anyone doubts that they just need to look at the X37b
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
Must military products be made in the U.S. ? Sure doesn't seem that way
Just ask Magnaquench
http://www.counterpunch.org/20... [counterpunch.org]
Should this be illegal, Yeah.
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::: Pinches K. S. Kyosuke's cheeks ::::
What a cute child how unfortunate it was dropped on its head too many times.
Feel free to protest how you are being misinterpreted.
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"capiltalism is not good anymore and the people are more important (dare I say socialism?) "
Socialism never works. Take a look at Venezula.
Crony capitalism is not capitalism. In the 18th C crony capitalism was called mercantilism. Laissez faire (which is not equal to caveat emptor) rose in opposition to mercantilism. Every proponent of the free-market has been against the merging of govt and business (you know all the "good" things that government does) because government involvement inevitably leads to crony capitalism / mercantilism. Everyone from Menger to von Mises to Hayek to Ayn Rand argu
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What would you call Denmark, Sweden and Norway then? I often seem them blamed as socialist, but it does seem to go pretty well.
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Yes. In the single culture nordic states things have worked out well for 60+ years. Let's see how it does now that they've become multicultural and lose their social cohesion.
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Who said the US was paying for any of it? I read that this is part of an international effort, meaning each contributing country puts in a piece of the project. It's Taiwan's lander through and through. It makes perfect sense, putting things in space is expensive and if I were Taiwan, I wouldn't want to pay for the whole project either. But this late in the game you get just as much credit for contributing to a larger project as you would from doing an entire smaller thing all by your lonesome; see India as
Re: wth how is this legal? (Score:1)
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Why? (Score:2)
the moon could be used as a base for space journeys into Mars
It would be nice to use the moon as a fuelling station on the way to Mars, but that only makes economic sense if there are lots of high-payload missions.
And why would anyone do that? Science is getting smaller. The Chinese might want to do a few manned missions to show the world they are no longer stagnating in the 16th century. But once they've proved it, they'll be going back as often as the US goes to the moon.
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outsourced (Score:2)
I hope none of the parts have been outsourced from China.
"Designed in USA, Assembled in Taiwan from parts Made in China"
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Wonderful (Score:2)
Save China the trouble of planting spies and hacking computers just give it to them directly.
You have to wonder if this was a parting deal for Obama or ongoing relations with the Clinton Crime Family(TM)(C)
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Save China the trouble of planting spies and hacking computers just give it to them directly.
They have already stolen that . they just don't have the money or need to build it. They 'd be happy if you give them a contract though ..
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You're likely right about the theft. Sooner or later Mainland China will gobble up Taiwan so they will have the contract as well.
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China will not "gobble up Taiwan". You can't take over Countries anymore, that's grounds for War; in this case WWIII. I seriously doubt anyone wants that due to the fact that Nuclear Weapons would surely be used and the Human race would need to start all over again; not a bad thing however. I can Guarantee that WWIII would involve Russia and China verses everyone else no doubt. There would be no winner.
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And Putin is paying a steep economic price for it's actions in the Ukraine. Not only have they had sanctions applied but the price of oil tanked at the same time. Their actions have also caused it's natural gas customers in eastern and western Europe to look else where for their gas imports which would remove the last remaining lever Russia has tried to use to further it's own interests. China cannot afford to risk disrupting their access to US markets. They are walking a fine line in it's actions in the So
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What the hell are you talking about? What spies? What computer hacking?
Been taking a vacation under a rock ?
Re: Wonderful (Score:2)
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Learn some history, your ignorance of international espionage (both corporate and government--which are often one and the same) and the resulting consequences is telling.
It's very likely that Crashmarik was referring to the Clinton era missile technology transfer to China that resulting in a generational improvement in their missile and rocket technology overnight. Google gave me this as the first result:
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/11/world/clinton-approves-technology-transfer-to-china.html
Many countrie
Re: Wonderful (Score:2)
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BTW, I've read that article now
And now you understand everything, what a precocious little one you are. And what do you know it confirms what you thought when you knew nothing. Amazing.
Mineral Rights (Score:3)
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No country can lay claim to the moon, so it's pretty much "whoever can get their mining equipment up there".
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any country can lay claim to the moon, if they have the military might to keep it
words on paper won't stop a government that decides to pursue that path
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Might kinda screw them back on earth though. Sanctions, inability to sell those minerals to most nations, starting an expensive space race... And realistically, who can defend the entire moon from other countries, especially when kinetic kill weapons are cheap and effective.
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wrong, "kinetic kill weapons" of the types human could use have very low yield, heinlein for example miscalculated horribly.
a government with global projection of power and on the path of empire building factors in sanctions since they'll be making wars of choice for resources and power. hmmmm, sound like the current path of any superpower you know?
Why not *here*? (Score:2)
Why did NASA offshore it? Why not build it *here*... or are they saying that "we're not good enough any more", or was it, "they're cheaper, so we'll give them our tax dollars and technology".
Many of you miss the point (Score:3)
IOW, this does NOT take away from American jobs.
Ton? (Score:1)