China Plans To Land Probes On Far Side of Moon, Mars By 2020 (phys.org) 115
China has revealed some ambitious plans for space domination in the 2020s. On Tuesday, China set out its plans to become the first country to land a probe on the far side of the moon, in around 2018, and launch its first Mars probe by 2020. Phys.Org reports: "To explore the vast cosmos, develop the space industry and build China into a space power is a dream we pursue unremittingly," read a white paper setting out the country's space strategy for the next five years. It says China aims to use space for peaceful purposes and to guarantee national security, and to carry out cutting edge scientific research. The white paper released by the information office of China's Cabinet points to the growing ambitions of China's already rapidly advancing space program. Although the white paper doesn't mention it, China's eventual goal is the symbolic feat of landing an astronaut on the moon. The white paper reiterated China's plans to launch its first Mars probe by 2020, saying this would explore and bring back samples from the red planet, explore the Jupiter system and "conduct research into major scientific questions such as the origin and evolution of the solar system, and search for extraterrestrial life." The paper says the Chang'e-4 lunar probe will help shed light on the formation and evolution of the moon.
Impressive and ambitious, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
The one thing that is a bit a pity, and I realise it sounds naieve and wishful, I expect for humanity to be truly succesful in space exploration and possibly having otherworld bases, we would really need a maximum of international cooperation, which would include the Chinese.
Re:Impressive and ambitious, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember the ESA lander that crashed on Mars this year? Initially they were partnered with NASA for their landing system, but NASA's budget was cut so they backed out and the intellectual property that had been shared up to that point was not usable. Hence an untried landing system when others have worked on Mars in the past.
It would be nice to have international cooperation but congresscritters have other ideas.
Re: Impressive and ambitious, but... (Score:3)
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Oh, like the agreed upon 2% of GDP to defense spending for nato members?
Top kek.
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NASA didn't know. They had unexpected budget cuts partway through the project.
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No, I just gave an example of what happened when NASA pulled out of a collaborative effort. The extra baggage is yours. Don't blame me for it.
I do not know. I do know that a lot of the IP (remember, spacecraft are full of stuff patented by Lockheed etc) was licenced to NASA and that the ESA couldn't use it without NASA's involvement.
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Remember the ESA lander that crashed on Mars this year? Initially they were partnered with NASA for their landing system, but NASA's budget was cut so they backed out and the intellectual property that had been shared up to that point was not usable. Hence an untried landing system when others have worked on Mars in the past.
It would be nice to have international cooperation but congresscritters have other ideas.
One of the most impressive space missions I feel is the ESA's Rosetta spacecraft, and it's rendezvous and orbiting of the comet 46P/Wirtanen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. The Voyagers are in a class of their own.
Landing seems their weakness, surmounting all obstacles and a redundant landing system (to prevent rebound) placed Rosetta's Philae lander in the shade where the batteries shortly died.
So close.
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Nice in theory.
In practice, they'll build an island on it and claim they own it.
But what if China says Thanks, but no thanks (Score:2)
What if we had international cooperation, yet China decided to turn down these gestures of cooperation
And demonstrate what leading the space race means
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If all of China were Hong Kong, yes. But Beijing will have to become a better global citizen before it can lead humanity.
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These unlimited press conference facades make headlines so easily.
No one is talking themselves to the moon. You have to more than blow smoke.
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The one thing that is a bit a pity, and I realise it sounds naieve and wishful, I expect for humanity to be truly succesful in space exploration and possibly having otherworld bases, we would really need a maximum of international cooperation, which would include the Chinese.
In that respect shouldn't we share what we know with them,
The paper says the Chang'e-4 lunar probe will help shed light on the formation and evolution of the moon.
That the Moon is the result of a Mars size planet colliding with the early Earth?
Bringing back in the T (Score:1)
Trump should team up with China to open Asian markets to both American and Chinese products.
More pertinent, perhaps Trump should partner with China to open Dark Side of the Moon markets to both American and Chinese products.
Since it turns out the moon is not actually made of cheese, a good start would be a load of Wisconsin's finest - and I don't mean a load of Tony Shalhoub movies!
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...the moon is not actually made of cheese...
[citation needed]
The moon has been done and we've dropped things on Mars. The Chinese should focus on a Jupiter landing. That would be impressive.
Re: Slightly OT (Score:4, Interesting)
Likewise, per WTO/IMF, they were supposed to free their money, as well as remove many of their tariffs, no dumping, etc. China is now the exact opposite.
In addition, when we were allowing them to launch for American businesses, when an American company spotted an issue and told them, they fixed up their ICBMs FIRST, before fixing up the rocket.
As long as their space program continues to be under their military, it will remain that way as well.
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Re:"The" markets? (Score:1)
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Libs and dems should team up with their brain and stop whining and crying like stupid little pussies.
STFU, Simon. And quit playing with yourself in front of the computer. Mommy might see you!
Fixed that for you... (Score:3)
China set out its plans to become the first country to admit to landing a probe on the far side of the moon
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There is no dark side in the moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark.
Re:Fixed that for you... (Score:4, Insightful)
What advantage would you have in landing a probe on the far side and concealing it ?
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B-roll footage for the fake moon landing production? [youtube.com]
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How would you land a probe on the far side of the moon without anyone noticing?
To be useful the probe has to send back some telemetry via radio. Otherwise how do you know it landed? And anyone can receive that telemetry, so you can't really do a sneaky moon landing, or for that matter fake landing there in a TV studio.
Say you do somehow land a robotic probe there for no reason at all, how would you conceal it from orbiting satellites that are photographing the surface? We can see the Apollo and Surveyor and
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The problem with receiving this telemetry data is that you have the moon blocking your line of sight for transfer. So only those who have a satellite that can relay data will be able to observe the communications. That's a lot less likely to happen...
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We've been bouncing signals off the moon [wikipedia.org] for quite a while now. Now we just have to bounce them off the sun.
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Not to feed the conspiracy theorists, but the Lagrange L1 and L2 points [nasa.gov] lie outside the Earth-Moon system and see the back side of the moon half the time. They are/were occupied by SOHO [nasa.gov], WMAP (first link), and Planck [esa.int]. The James Webb Space Telescope [nasa.gov] is going to be parked at L2 as well.
Theoretically, any of them could be
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The Nazis have had a colony there since the forties.
More evidence (Score:3, Interesting)
If you haven't realized, the US is losing its place in leading the world, and China is about to take over as the primary political superpower. And while the EU may rise as the primary economic hub if they can get their fractured budgets and banking in order, their political influence is dubious when it comes to contentious issues as the EU is unable to speak as a single voice.
Two reasons for this:
* A historic one - The UN permitting China to retain veto power after the Chinese Civil War. even when they don't use their veto power, it is a major factor in UN agendas.
* A pathological one - The US, both its government and its people, not recognizing their dominate position in the world is not guaranteed and they must continue to work to maintain it.
The results are:
* An increasingly belligerent China that is a palatable threat to the sovereign nations in the South China Sea.
* The American people elect a President that who is unwilling to represent the US's international obligations.
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This is somewhat astounding to me, that Trump doesn't understand this. It makes a lot of sense to look at this from a business perspective, but Trump doesn't seem to be doing so.
China and the EU, to some extent, are the competition to the US. We're competing for business, skilled labor, economic power, political influence, and military might. The rest of the world can be thought of as customers, potentially even the EU and China, if the US is dominant enough. But we have to act in such a way that maximizes
Trump knows nothing about manufacturing (Score:5, Interesting)
Trump is a businessman, so I'm surprised he doesn't see this.
Trump isn't a very good businessman and is more concerned about his image than anything else so I'm not surprised at all.
In business terms, we need to be focused on keeping our customers happy right now, not on how we can raise our prices.
Sort of. The problem many US business have costs that are somewhat out of whack for certain types of products. Trump is making noise about bringing back "manufacturing jobs" but what he doesn't get is that the jobs that left CANNOT come back unless there is a big fall in wages. The jobs that left are mostly labor intensive jobs that are going to go wherever labor costs are cheapest. No amount of tariffs or political sabre rattling are going to bring these jobs back to the US. Labor costs are too high for that to be possible. Trump doesn't know this because he doesn't know anything about manufacturing. The US manufacturing sector is (depending on the measurement used) somewhere north of $3 Trillion annually and growing steadily. We don't make happy meal toys. We make jet aircraft and cars and earthmovers and drugs and medical equipment. But we don't need the masses of people we once did to make these. It's like farming - automation has freed up labor to go do other stuff in man cases. There is a need for SKILLED labor though and lots of it.
I'd give Trump some credit about understanding real estate but speaking as someone who has spent several decades in manufacturing I can tell you that he hasn't said anything about manufacturing that indicates he knows what he is talking about on that subject. His promises to "bring back manufacturing jobs" are empty lies that he cannot make happen even if he wasn't just pandering and really meant it. Manufacturing is alive and well in the US but it isn't going to be a source of unskilled jobs. Those will come elsewhere for the most part. What we need to be doing is promoting skilled trades where there is a HUGE existing need (3-5 million open jobs) but we've decimated the talent pipeline for these good and good paying jobs. Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs fame) has been talking about this and he's pretty much dead right.
Manufacturing jobs are NOT coming back (Score:2)
Anyone can, and does make cars and earthmovers.
"Anyone" can make cars and earthmovers? Then explain to me why there hasn't been a new large car company created in decades. (No Tesla isn't profitable and they've been trying for about a decade) China for all it's manufacturing prowess doesn't yet have a single home grown car company of any consequence and it's going to be at least another decade before they do if not longer. The Koreans are the most recent significant entrants and their success has been decades in the making. Aside from some mergers
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If Trump had any backbone, he would not have sourced his products from China, nor would he have used Chinese steel in his buildings.
Or maybe if he had backbone he would do the rational things for his business that any person would do (purchase where it makes the most sense for the bottom line viability of the project/product given the reality of the market in which he's doing business), and then at some point when he has the resources and a family to which he can trust his businesses, do something like, say ... run for president with an eye on changing the lopsided international agreements and other policies that chased textile and ste
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* The American people elect a President that who is unwilling to represent the US's international obligations.
1992 was a long time ago.
Re:More evidence (Score:5, Interesting)
As a European I wholeheartedly agree with this. This is also the reason Russia likes nothing more than to see the rise of age-old nationalism in the Union countries, and they're in fact funding - directy or indirectly - many nationalist media and pseudomedia (ie. propaganda) outlets. They've been trying to fund Le Pen in France [bloomberg.com] but the problems faced by Russian banks seem to be preventing that for the moment.
The fact that the nationalists are blindly going along with this, some of them even openly embracing putin as a model of leadership, without realizing that especially for bordering states favoring nation-states instead of a strong unified Union essentially means they're trying to roll back the clock to the era of the Cold war, when Finlandization [wikipedia.org] was going strong and even the countries not directly in the soviet union had to essentially make sure their actions would be agreeable to Russia/CCCP.
Now, with a lot of the former soviet satellites now in NATO the board looks slightly different than it did 50 years ago, but with Trump's stance on the role of NATO and hence the future of the entire alliance still unclear, right now the primarily right-wing nationalist uprising happening across the continent benefits Russia the most, and China as well.
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Hello, comrade anonymous, your response time is admirable. Keep it up and surely you will be rewarded. How many comments do they require you write per day these days? How's the pay?
Seriously though, what I said is in no way in dispute with what Russia is quite openly doing, so speaking of 'correcting the record' when I'm just pointing out what's currently going on is a weak-ass attempt to muddy the waters.
If you wanna troll, at least put some effort into it.
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He's an isolationist that was bankrolled by Russian banks. He's also said he'd like NATO to just go away. Normally that would make things very clear, but it's Trump, he'll do all kinds of shit to get attention.
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Just curious, does it matter that NATO member states are not paying the agreed 2% of GDP? Should the US continue to be the shield for Europe while broaching bankruptcy with a current 20 trillion debt if NATO member states are not paying their agreed upon fair share with increased threats to European security and market stability?
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Leading statements as questions? I wanted your opinion on NATO members not paying 2% of GDP to defense as agreed to be an alliance member. Nothing I said was false or leading. Saying it's leading doesn't make it so unless you show me where and what made the statement leading. Do you think that those alliance members should not have to pay their fair share as agreed to be an alliance member?
Some facts:
NATO members agree to 2% GDP spending on defense.
Only a few NATO countries are fulfilling their 2% spending
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I obviously did not have one until you told me what opinion I should have in the form of a question. Has that made things clearer? It's a very annoying trick/tactic. Just be honest and tell me what your opinion is instead of emulating weasels.
Oh do grow up.
This high school debating shit is getting old. I thought it was pathetic when I was a kid, and now decades later I must admit that
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lol, I didn't realize asking you a simple question was too difficult for you. I know high school seems like it is getting old but don't worry little buddy you will get out of it eventually. It's only 4 years!
Although, why your parents would give you their /. account is beyond me. There are strangers online! You know how to deal with strangers, right little buddy? Remember, if the van is unmarked that means the candy is free.
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It's okay, when I was your age I pretended to be older too. Good luck little buddy!
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Are you one of those little turds that does that "social media worker" trolling shit for a living?
The own goal on kids was kind of funny, but the rest is fucking annoying noise.
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I think you sounding a little upset little buddy. Did you miss your nap? I can tuck you in if you'd like. Remember, I can be whatever you want me to be. ;)
Your temper tantrum makes me moist.
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The EU's lack of popularity and impending collapse is entirely self-inflicted. It's caused by wildly impopular policies (immigration), the disregard of democratic values (Ukraine referendum, Brexit), the abandonment of cornerstone treaties at the first hiccup, and the lies of its leadership (Juncker - "when it becomes important you have to lie"). Russia did not do any of these things; the EU did all of those itself.
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but with Trump's stance on the role of NATO and hence the future of the entire alliance still unclear,
Wouldn't the member nations not fulfilling their alliance obligations make NATO's future more unclear than the politician criticizing those members? I am having a hard time believing that one politician talking about the lackluster commitment of certain members is more a danger to the alliance than those lackluster member states forfeiting their obligations.
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Well then maybe California should just take their marbles and go home. #CalExit
That will be fantastic. It will be especially fun to see how California handles the raising, training, and ongoing operations of its own military.
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Do you realize that California hosts several military academies and a world renown naval postgraduate school ?
Yes, they "host" them. And almost all of the soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen and coast guards come from other places. Observing that California has the equivalent of a military Harvard and implying that therefore they'll have no problem staffing their own navy with people who mostly make $25k a year ... hilarious. It's EXACTLY this sort of willfully distorted understanding of the bigger picture that has shrill, cranky elitist liberals still baffled as to why they lost hundreds more state house seats, ye
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It was the USA that pushed for a veto power in the first place, and it was the USA that accepted that if they were going to have a veto then China and the USSR had it as well. Don't go blaming the UN for that deliberate breakage of the UN process.
No, that is incorrect (Score:1)
Sorry, I forgot that so many people have so little background on world events. Let me start over and give you enough context so you can understand.
* The UN permitting the PRC to retain veto power after the fall of the ROC.
The US opposed the PRC joining the security council, and the ROC and PRC could not both peacefully exist on the council at that time because each considered itself to have domain over all of China. (the so-called "One China Policy"). It was the UK, France and other American allies that per
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Seriously? You think being on a commitee in the U.N. made China a major political power? You've got it backwards,
Thank you author (Score:2)
Conspiracy theories (Score:2)
Cool, now maybe we can finally put an end to the "large structures on the far side of the moon" conspiracy.