China Just Launched Two Astronauts Into Orbit (bbc.com) 265
An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes the BBC: China has launched two men into orbit in a project designed to develop its ability to explore space. The astronauts took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northern China at 23:30 GMT on Sunday [7:30 p.m. EST].
The plan is for them to dock with and then spend 30 days on board the Tiangong 2 space station testing its ability to support life. This and previous launches are seen as pointers to possible crewed missions to the Moon or Mars.
NBC calls this evidence of "the intensifying U.S.-China space rivalry... With the current U.S.-led International Space Station expected to retire in 2024, China could be the only nation left with a permanent presence in space."
The plan is for them to dock with and then spend 30 days on board the Tiangong 2 space station testing its ability to support life. This and previous launches are seen as pointers to possible crewed missions to the Moon or Mars.
NBC calls this evidence of "the intensifying U.S.-China space rivalry... With the current U.S.-led International Space Station expected to retire in 2024, China could be the only nation left with a permanent presence in space."
China should have been allowed to join the ISS (Score:5, Insightful)
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Russia's situation had materially changed at the time. Little in China has changed.
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Best thing for them. Did you even read your own cite?
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When have you been last time in China?
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To be honest we wanted their material while we didn't want anything space related from China.
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Welcoming Russia had more to do with avoiding nuclear apocalypse than anything related to human rights or achieving some scientific goal.
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Have you read that document in its entirety?
I consider myself a fairly laid back person, liberal (in a more original sense than is perhaps used today), with a strong live and let live attitude towards life, and yet I can't bring myself to see eye to eye with some of the articles and the overall wording of that declaration.
While it is undoubtedly a 'good thing' (TM) I suspect you have to live with unicorns and smoke rainbows to fully jive with what it says...
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Score:3)
Have you read that document in its entirety?
I consider myself a fairly laid back person, liberal (in a more original sense than is perhaps used today), with a strong live and let live attitude towards life, and yet I can't bring myself to see eye to eye with some of the articles and the overall wording of that declaration.
While it is undoubtedly a 'good thing' (TM) I suspect you have to live with unicorns and smoke rainbows to fully jive with what it says...
As individuals we may disagree over whether certain things should be considered universal rights--personally, I often disagree with decisions about whether someone should have a right. But that document is a core part of the accepted definition of human rights.
The definition of human rights is an artifact of public international law. Most lawyers, scholars, and diplomats consider the primary documents to be the "International Bill of Rights," which includes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Eleanor
Re: China should have been allowed to join the ISS (Score:2)
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Fail.
Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
You're allowed to live anywhere within your own country. No segregation, no Apartheid. The black people can live among the white people (if they want to).
Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Which part of that allows "illegal aliens"?
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Famously championed by an American (Eleanor Roosevelt), ironically.
General Tso (Score:2)
That's the thing about Chinese astronauts. A half hour after you launch one, you want to launch another.
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Thanks, now I can't resist the Panda Express left overs in my fridge. Shit.
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If you had Chinese for launch, you sure don't want any to diner.
Life imitating art (Score:2)
Firefly's backstory contains an element about the US and China being the powers that drove into space:
"The show blended elements from the space opera and Western genres, depicting humanity's future in a manner different from most contemporary science fiction programs in that there are no large space battles. Firefly takes place in a multi-cultural future, primarily a fusion of Western and East Asian cultures, where there is a significant division between the rich and poor. As a result of the Sino-American A
Just shows Wheedon is paying attention (Score:2)
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5 is a very odd definition of 'many'. (5 years, as of this writing)
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"many years ago" ?
5 is a very odd definition of 'many'. (5 years, as of this writing)
It's the Troll form of counting = One, Two, Many, Lots - Men at Arms, Terry Pratchet
(Yes I know it's not the exact quote but I don't have the book in front of me)
Brain damage (Score:2)
appears to be a certainty doing this, if they go out above the Van Allen Belt.
Dunno....
https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/28427... [nasa.gov]
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To protect from radiation beyond that point, the ship needs 5-foot-thick walls full of food, water, fuel, and/or sewage. As the trip progressives, it becomes less food and more sewage.
It's a little scary flying through space surrounded by walls of shit. You have to have your shit together, both figuratively and literally.
Put a stop to rivarly (Score:2, Interesting)
Let China do what it wants to do, speaking as an american we need to rethink the space program and stop being nationalistic over it.
I'll applaud China, or Russia, or The EU landing on Mars first as heartily as I would America.
I just wish all of the space nations would stop doing it for dick measuring, and instead worked together and made sure we as the world got the best bang for the buck.
Until then, I'm all for not participating in any race to the stars.
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Well, dick measuring is probably the only motivation right now to do it, so...
Two willing astronauts (Score:3)
As usual, The Onion provides an insightful and thought-provoking retrospective on China's astronautical policies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPQH60bhFdA [youtube.com]
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Much as I love the Onion, this kind of thing seems to encourage the worst on Slashdot. The story is tagged "dimsuminspace".
Sad that once we would have had discussion about how cool it was and China's future plans for a permanent space station, but now it's military dick measuring and racism.
What annoys me (Score:2)
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I can only say that it sure ain't the Chinese that are trying to keep their space achievements a secret. Quite the opposite. It's true that they do it in a similar fashion the Russians did, i.e. only announce them when they succeed and try to hush up everything that bombs (literally or figuratively), but the have never been shy to broadcast whenever they passed a wind that made it into orbit.
Should read "the intensifying Russia-China space.. (Score:3)
The USA do not have a way to get people into orbit apart from asking for a lift.
Can we get back from here or will it be like the British rocket program that just fizzled out and was never restarted?
All we can do currently is something like the Mercury project of 1958. We don't have the launcher ready for anything bigger and may not for years.
In honour of (Score:2)
Is it true the astronauts' names are Laika and Gordo?
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LOL
To Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong (Score:2)
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Not sure if trolling....
FTFA: "China is only the third country - after Russia and the US - to carry out its own crewed space missions. "
Also being doing it since before 2006: Chinese Astronauts [wikipedia.org]
Re: Brazil beat you by 10 years (Score:2)
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It was decimated by 100 years of industrial warfare against the entire western world,
Uh, no.
Re:Brazil beat you by 10 years (Score:5, Informative)
from a paltry German invasion.
Paltry? I don't think I have ever seen that adjective applied to the Eastern Front. I'm more used to seeing it described along the lines of "The battles on the Eastern Front constituted the largest military confrontation in history."
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Re:Brazil beat you by 10 years (Score:4, Insightful)
Britain took Hong Kong 1841-1997
Yes, and Hong Kong became a titan of industry, finance, and overall standard of living.
Why didn't the rest of China? Oh, that's right, because communism destroys and ruins everything it touches. Not to mention Mao and the millions he murdered and starved to death.
If I were Chinese I would do everything in my power to get to a "colonialist" hub so that they could "abuse" me to their colonialist heart's content. Far better than the patriotic zeal from Mao and co.
You kids need to learn more history....
Spend some time reading something besides twitter.
Seems like it's you who should pick up a history book and stop gulping down regurgitated propaganda from your leftist professor's mouths.
Re:There Is No Rivalry (Score:4, Insightful)
China is no rival of the USA in space exploration.
Right, there is no rivalry: China can send people into space and the USA cannot. Also, China has its own space station, and the USA can only pay Russia for a lift to the ISS, which is international.
So, the capabilities are not the same.
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Capabilities or will? (politics, budget, priorities, debt, mumble mumble mumble...)
Temporary is not equal to 40 years (Score:2)
Temporary is saying that under the Ford administration and not under the Obama one.
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Thats why Russia, India and China put so much effort in keeping their production lines working at any cost over the decades.
Most smart nations can lift something into space. The real effort is in getting just the perfect design for every complex, sensitive payload. Humans, sensitive science without risking e
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Put the label on the pile back there.
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China's new FAST radio telescope on the ground could be nearly as important as James Webb, but I do wish they'd focus more of their space launches on that kind of science.
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50 years ago is 1966
In 1969 we had the tech to send people to the moon. Being 50 years behind isn't bad since 50 years ago they were 100 years behind us. At that rate growth, and our lack of growth I give China 25 more years to surpass us.
The n you should be scared.
Re:There Is No Rivalry (Score:5, Interesting)
Putting men into orbit and on the moon had no immediately applicable results. No, we didn't get rich off the moon rocks we got home. But what happened during this time caused the US to lead the economy for decades after. It forced us to come up with new solution to new problems, the US made progress that's been seen before only in times of war when innovation was crucial for survival. And all that without the bloodshed.
There were huge leaps ahead in metallurgy, propulsion, computers, electronics, medicine and a lot of other fields, but this also marked the beginning of key elements that we today consider cornerstones of efficiency, from process management to risk management and disaster recovery procedures.
So believe it or not, launching people into orbit has its merits. It forces you to solve problems that do have very real applications down here on our planet.
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China is no rival of the USA in space exploration. China is about 50 years behind the USA
Pretty sure that's what I heard a certain hare say about a certain tortoise right before he went to sleep and lost the race.
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"China is about 50 years behind the USA in just about any indicator of space progress or achievement...."
In my own lifetime, China was noted primarily for starving to death. Now look at their rate of progress. I wouldn't be surprised to see them reach Mars ahead of us.
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The US is almost 50 years behind the US at this point. How long would it take the US to launch a manned moon mission?
Probably less than the last time. We have some pretty good rockets again now. Now our corporations are capable of going to space, it doesn't even take our government any more. Let me know when China or Russia make it to that point.
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Yeah, I forgot that NASA manufactured all the hardware used for Apollo. No wait, it was McDonnell Aircraft, Douglass Aircraft, Boeing, Grumman, Rocketdyne, and North American Aviation that designed and built the hardware to the specs that NASA put to bid.
Most of those are now just Boeing, by the way.
Re:There Is No Rivalry (Score:4, Funny)
How long would it take the US to launch a manned moon mission?
Well, it is going to take 30 years to finish the BART extension from Fremont to San Jose, and a moon landing is more complex than that. So it could be a while.
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You owe me a cup of coffee and a new keyboard. Well played, sir, well played!
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Funny. Almost the same was said in the 1990s about their manufacturing ability.
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Who made the components in the computer that you wrote your post on?
Which country just launched a satellite in August 2016 to perform quantum entanglement experiments over 1000's of miles, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. Notice it's the Austrian Academy of Science involved here, not a US based institution.
Travel around Los Angeles, measure the air pollution, look at the state of the roads, ask people how many hours a day they spend on transportation,
Re: There Is No Rivalry (Score:2)
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Tell us about China's probes to all the planets, their sun observatories, the exoplanets they've found, their probe that's left the solar system....
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The Chinese were likely the first to observe the sun and space in a rational manner. As for current sun observatories, they're working on it [spacedaily.com].
They also landed on the moon [wikipedia.org] a couple of years ago. We haven't been able to go there for over forty years.
Largest telescope in the world? The Chinese FAST single aperture radio telescope is more than 200,000 square meters, around three times as much as the second largest (Arecibo in Puerto Rico).
I think it would be wise to not rest on our laurels and dismiss the Chi
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The USA is perfectly capable of landing a probe on the moon at any time. It's a lot easier than Mars, where we've landed numerous probes/rovers. There simply hasn't been any interest in doing so -- the USA's current interests in the moon have been better served with orbiting probes and intentional impacts.
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Tell us about China's probes to all the planets, their sun observatories, the exoplanets they've found, their probe that's left the solar system....
Just because they started late doesn't mean they can't overtake you. Just sayin'.
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Why replicate what others have already done? Did the US have to land on Venus just because the Russian did?
China has specific goals, to get their own space station up and running and then on to the moon. They have also been at it for much less time than the US or Russia, which took many decades to get all those probes out there.
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I always thought this was so silly. In China, they do not call their space travelers Taikonauts. That's an English word. Why should we have different words for an astronaut based on their nationality? If we were talking about a garbageman, no one would bother making up a new English word for that occupation that is specific to each nationality. The whole thing seems like a backwards legacy of the cold war and the original space race, where we wouldn't dare refer to the competition using the same nomenclat
Re:Taikonauts (Score:4, Insightful)
In casual speech in Hong Kong and Taiwan, astronauts are often called "taikong ren" (literally "space people") - this is probably where "taikonaut" comes from, a weird portmanteau of that with "astronaut". But no-one actually uses the word "taikonaut" besides novelists as far as I can tell. English releases from Chinese companies always use "astronaut".
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Typhoon = Hurricane, only difference is the Ocean. And those are the US English versions. In Missouri, we refer to 1,500 feet tall hills as mountains...
It's cultural bias to some degree, it's differentiation as well. It could also be respectful or derogatory (racism for example), depending on implicit meanings.
And from a US perspective, people in Russia that go into space are Cosmonauts, so there's a third English example for people that go to space.
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Can you stop posting this bullshit on every article about the Chinese space program? The Chinese for astronaut is "yuhang yuan" (literally "space-navigating personnel") and official English-language media releases from the Chinese space program use the word "astronaut". "Taikonaut" is some bastardised Chinglish abomination invented by English-speaking novelists during the cold war.
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I was taught "hangtianyuan" or "taikongren" but my wife confirms that "yuhangyuan" is also perfectly acceptable (but usually seen only newspapers and the like, according to her).
Re:Taikonauts (Score:5, Funny)
Chinese space travelers are Taikonauts, much as Russian space travelers are Cosmonauts.
So what do you call a Chinese-born American resident who travels on a Soyuz spacecraft to work in the Italian-built ESA module of the International space station?
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Dunno, but I'd be interested in learning if he can eat borscht with chopsticks in zero-G.
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Long distance?
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Re:Solve problems on Earth first (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, think we should stay in the trees. We have enough problems to solve here before we go roaming the grasslands in search of denser food sources.
Well played! (Score:2)
I, for one, think we should stay in the trees. We have enough problems to solve here before we go roaming the grasslands in search of denser food sources.
That gave me a chuckle.
Well played, sir!
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Earth? We should never have come down from the trees before we solved the problems there first!
Some say even emerging from the oceans was premature.
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The space station and manned programs are a drop in the bucket when it comes to the military-industrial-complex budget.
Solve problems here on Earth? A *single* Zumwalt class destroyer costs 4 billion dollars.
We could be building our own infrastructure instead of blowing up other countries infrastructure. Instead of Lockheed building more F35s, which will be obsoleted by drones in 10 years, they could be building comms infrastructure, smart roads, and other actually useful things.
But no, we have to build m
Re:Solve problems on Earth first (Score:4, Interesting)
To be fair (concerning your F-35 point), there is no point on the near horizon in which manned military jets will be obsoleted by drones. Namely because you can't jam a human. Until you can get to the stage where drones do not need real-time command streams in order to be fully effective - that is, drones making their own decisions on who to kill - you need humans. People always forget electronic warfare when it comes to military conflict, yet it's one of the most important aspects of a modern battlefield.
There is some interesting potential for drone-human synergy, however. Look at the F-35 and its main strengths and weaknesses. Its main strengths are that it's very hard to detect / target, and that it has a very high level of sensor integration, including multi-aircraft sensor integration, designed to distribute a wide variety of data to make decisions about what responses to make with the hardware on hand. Its weaknesses include limited internal payload capacity (it can carry external payload, but at the cost of its stealth) and limitations on how much EW it can do on its own (either due to built-in capabilities, limited capacity for extra payload, or the risks of being targeted while carrying out EW).
Pairing F-35s with drones however seems to meet the best strengths of both. F-35s could have sensor fusion with drones, allowing them to take part in EW and carry significantly more armament than the F-35 itself can carry,. The drones can afford to be more visible, since the loss of one is not as significant. Meanwhile, having it in formation with an F-35 makes it much harder to jam communications. You have a no-lag, relatively short distance mesh network (that can close distance as-needed), with a human in the local decision-making loop.
Re, Russia: A new Cold War with Russia is lining up whether the US wants one or not. It only takes one side to start one. Re, China: no, not really. There are some clear conflicts, mainly these days centered around the South China Sea. But the overall conflict level is no broader than it's been on average than in the past several decades.
Re, "bombing ISIS": Russia is not bombing Daesh. Russia is bombing JaF and to a lesser extent FSA. They were only doing about 10-20% of their bombing runs on Daesh before, and since the failed Tabqah offensive haven't focused on Daesh at all.
You are correct that space programs are cheap, on the overall scheme of things.
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To be fair (concerning your F-35 point), there is no point on the near horizon in which manned military jets will be obsoleted by drones.
this depends on how you define "near". As a fraction of the time in which we've had military aircraft? True. As a fraction of the time in which we've been making war? Minuscule.
Namely because you can't jam a human.
It's harder, but it's not impossible.
Until you can get to the stage where drones do not need real-time command streams in order to be fully effective - that is, drones making their own decisions on who to kill - you need humans.
For some missions, yes. For others, provably not. Cruise missiles are drones which are fully effective. They do make decisions on who to kill, but not in the way you probably meant it, which is to say target selection. But they are aspect-tracking weapons, and you literally provide the fancy ones
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You can jam the pilot's radar, comm and targeting systems. You can blind a pilot. You can therefore jam a human.
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"You can blind a pilot."
Since one idiot on the ground can potentially blind a pilot with a cheap laser pointer, I wonder if the military has so sort of laser pointer weapon that they can track and aim at aircraft and disable pilots.
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A sufficiently agile drone can do high-G maneuvers that can kill a pilot. Indeed, special care is taken with the flight envelope that a pilot doesn't red-or-black out. There are limits to humans that machinery can surpass and with autonomous drones actually /happening/ now, the days of the human pilot are numbered. I expect this to happen in the near future if it's not already in the skunk-works.
>Drone-f35 synergy
Can be done with AWACS and ELINT equipped aircraft. A C-130 can carry a lot more ELINT e
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It's every administration since Reagan at least and is not changing any time soon. I'm not saying it's a good thing, in fact it sucks so much that we even lost the twin towers for being in bed with Saudi Arabia.
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With respect, that was said by complete and utter fucking idiots. Unless your field is computer science there is stuff in whatever field of science you pick that is going to act differently in microgravity.
Microbiological research in space for example seems to be giving us plenty of insight into solving problems down on Earth.
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the moon is outside the magnetosphere too
Re: Stop the Mars BS (Score:2)
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Mars also has an atmosphere apparently allowing a judicious mission planner to lower the delta V required for getting to the surface of Mars below the delta V required to get to the lunar surface (in one piece!). It also allows you to refuel for your trip back quite easily and also has a gravity more suitable for humans. (Of course, then there's the issue of the one-way trip to Mars lasting six months. The difference in delta V requirements could partly compensate for it, though.)
Regarding micrometeoroids..
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The moon is 200 times closer and better suited for all visitation and logistics problems. Those have to come first. Mars is a toxic landscape requiring trips through space subjecting vehicles to millions of micro-asteroids and radiation bombardment which nothing similar has survived long term. Satellites hide in the magnetosphere, and Voyager is a light probe.
Mars doesn't have a global magnetosphere.
Why would you be talking about Voyager in the context of Mars? Voyager had fuck all to do with Mars.
Re: Stop the Mars BS (Score:2)
Re: Stop the Mars BS (Score:2)
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Problem: You can't grow potatoes using moon dist and poop.
Mars dust works fine though.
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Meanwhile in reality (as shown with a very simple google search) both have been used:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11538023
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0103138
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Re: To "explore" space? (Score:2)
Space isn't about going up. Space is about going fast and orbit is half the way to everywhere in the solar system.