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Moon Space

India, China, and Japan Are All Planning Moon Missions (upi.com) 114

Posted by EditorDavid from the international-space-stations dept.
schwit1 shares an article from UPI: India will make its second mission to the moon in 2018, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced this week. The Chandrayaan 2 spacecraft consists of an orbiter, lander and rover configuration "to perform mineralogical and elemental studies of the lunar surface," the ISRO said... Several other countries, including China and Japan, are planning lunar expeditions in the coming years -- partly to better understand the moon's environmental conditions for the potential of human settlements...

According to Popular Mechanics, the ISRO is attempting to make the lunar landing on a budget of $93 million, which is about the same cost of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket that's scheduled for launch by the end of this year. The Falcon rocket, though, is only going into orbit -- and a $93 million price tag for a lunar landing could have impact on other countries' space plans.
India landed a spacecraft on the moon in 2008, and plans to complete this second lunar landing by March.
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India, China, and Japan Are All Planning Moon Missions More

India, China, and Japan Are All Planning Moon Missions

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  • Too many trillions wasted on war and entitlements. Human spaceflight cannot be justified based on its enormous costs and risk vs paltry scientific return vs unmanned missions.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      So we spent too much on war and now we can't afford spaceflight? Or are you saying we should not spend the trillions on spaceflight, so that we can spend it on wars?

      Come on, General; you can spare a few billion!

  • Why the Moon and Mars? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Here's what I don't get about these plans to inhabit the Moon and Mars: even with temperatures and oceans rising, the conditions on the Moon and Mars will still be less hospitable than on Earth, and going there will still be more expansive than adpating for conditions here on Earth.

    Let's say temperatures rise by 10 degrees celsius and oceans by 2 meters in the next 100 years, will conditions then be worse than the current conditions on the Moon and Mars?

    I am all for space exploration, but is there really *a

    • Let's say temperatures rise by 10 degrees celsius and oceans by 2 meters in the next 100 years, will conditions then be worse than the current conditions on the Moon and Mars?

      Depends - If that warming of the earth / flooding and all the other resultant changes have led to world wars, tribalism and human societal collapse then yeah, maybe I would rather be living in a biodome on the moon.

      Of all the things that might keep me up at night, it's wondering what world my children may have to deal with when

      • Re:Why the Moon and Mars? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Brett Buck ( 811747 ) on Saturday October 28, 2017 @07:11PM (#55451113)

        Depends - If that warming of the earth / flooding and all the other resultant changes have led to world wars, tribalism and human societal collapse then yeah, maybe I would rather be living in a biodome on the moon.

        Of all the things that might keep me up at night, it's wondering what world my children may have to deal with when they're my age.

              You know what worries me? It's that we are going to have generations of children raised by people who taught them both directly and indirectly to be terrified of anything and everything. And by people who have absolutely no sense of perspective.

              You are here, a putative adult, expressing existential fear over the modern equivalent of the boogieman. Your grandfather might have been willing to storm out of a landing craft into a hail of well-planned machine gun and artillery fire, your parents had to live with the very real and immediate possibility that every airplane that passed over might just have dropped a 1 megaton bomb on your your school, and it was very close to happening on at least 3 occasions. Now, you are living in the lap of luxury and security, but are terrified by a computer simulation?

              Even if the most absurd climate predictions come true in every detail, you assume it will destroy human civilization? People have dealt with one problem after another, successfully. Human civilization survived The Plague, for Christ's sake, something that they had absolutely no defense for, and just had to sit around, hour after hour, day after day, for decades, not knowing if the next time they coughed it might mean they are dying in the next 48 hours. Now a slow, perhaps mythical, rise in sea level is going to reduce the world to chaos?

            Are you at all aware that people have worried about equivalent issues, all far more likely than this gibberish, for the entire span of human history and probably far before? Ever hear of Holland?

                Teaching your kids that everything is always on the edge of falling apart and we are helpless to do anything over trivial problems is the WORST POSSIBLE THING you could do for the future of civilizations.

              Your post is one of the most pathetic things I have seen in my 56 years. Grow the fuck up and learn to deal with REAL LIFE.

        • Human civilization survived The Plague
          Actually it did not. It collapsed and stagnated for 500 years and more.
          It raised later again, but that is not what I would call surviving.

          • Actually it did not. It collapsed and stagnated for 500 years and more.

            The plague was in the 1300s, coinciding with the start of the Renaissance, one of the greatest flowerings of society in history. I'm not sure why you think it collapsed, especially stagnating for 500 years or more (Goethe, Mozart, and Kepler all fall into that time period, for example).

            • There where several plagues.
              The first one around 500, and between roughly 500 till roughly 1400 there was not much progress.

              • Aw if you want to go on like that, plagues are basically a constant. Look at what happened in Islam and Persia during that period, humanity as a whole went forward.
          • Population and technology increased during the middle ages, if that is the time period that you are referring to.

          • It raised later again, but that is not what I would call surviving.

            This is literally what surviving means.

            • So dying and getting reborn also means surviving?

              Mankind survived, single humans did not.
              And neither did civilization, just because a new civilization rose up again.

              • I feel you don't know what the Black Death was. It did not destroy civilization. Whole parts of the world were completely unaffected. In Europe, only 30-40% of the population died, there were plenty left to repopulate afterwards. It did change the nature of their culture, for the better. Fewer workers meant better terms for them, and Europe thereby avoided a Malthusian famine catastrophe where the population outpaced the food supply.

                • I did not say, it destroyed civilization.
                  The parent said: civilization survived.

                  Which it did not. Civilization stagnated between 500 and 1500, with various drops in level, for what ever reasons.

        • Re: Why the Moon and Mars? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Namarrgon ( 105036 ) on Saturday October 28, 2017 @08:13PM (#55451247) Homepage

          It's far from mythical [noaa.gov].

          It is not, however, an existential threat. It will not cause Western society to collapse (though some more vulnerable nations may not be so lucky).

          It will be very expensive to deal with, and I expect that is what the GP is most concerned about (but not "terrified", as you seem to prefer to believe). Maybe look up how much the Netherlands has spent on its dyke system, and consider the cost of that for every coastal city on the planet. Have a look at what New York spent after Sandy's storm surge, and is now spending on new levees.

          And that's just sea level. Have a look at all the other negative impacts described in the IPCC WG2 report, maybe read some of the many studies that attempt to count the net cost - and you too may be concerned for the sheer size of the bill any kids of yours will be stuck with.

        • Listen sonny (I am two years older than you). No one needs to teach their kids anything these days when we have 24/7 advertising telling them that they will die if they do not eat the right breakfast cereal, kill their children if they do not buy the right car, fail to breed unless they spray themselves with perfumed stuff. No wonder everyone lives in a state of existential dread when they are being told all the time that they are under threat. Most of what is wrong with the world can be blamed on the psych

        • Only when people believe the sky is falling, u can exploit them. Plz dont let out the secrets in a public forum. If you don't enjoy dominating others, plenty of us still do. Keep them scared of the gloom n doom.

        • You know what worries me?

          This worries me the most too. You do realize that critical thinking is discouraged in education these days and consensus building encouraged. Read up on Morley Winograd [wikipedia.org], Senior Policy Advisor to Vice President Al Gore. and Director of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government.

      • Wouldn't a biodome on the Earth be better? Even with a 20 degree increase, it will still be hundreds less than on the moon.

      • maybe I would rather be living in a biodome on the moon.

        Of all the things that might keep me up at night, it's wondering what world my children may have to deal with when they're my age.

        If you're living in a biodome on the moon, accept that you wouldn't have any meaningful control over your reproduction. Probably "unauthorised reproduction results in death for child and both parents", for whatever authorisation standards your society comes up with.

    • Re:Why the Moon and Mars? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by techno-vampire ( 666512 ) on Saturday October 28, 2017 @06:55PM (#55451089) Homepage
      ...is there really *any* reason to settle on the Moon besides enabling us to go further into the Solar System?

      Isn't that enough of a reason? And, if we can learn how to build a self-sustaining colony on the Moon, it will be much easier to build one on Mars. Not only will we know what to do, we won't have to do all of the exterior work in hard vacuum.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Agripa ( 139780 )

        And, if we can learn how to build a self-sustaining colony on the Moon, it will be much easier to build one on Mars. Not only will we know what to do, we won't have to do all of the exterior work in hard vacuum.

        Mars atmospheric pressure is 99.4% of a vacuum compared to Earth so there is no practical difference.

  • India's mission (Score:3, Funny)

    by OneHundredAndTen ( 1523865 ) on Saturday October 28, 2017 @06:33PM (#55451039)
    We'll see how they tackle the toilet problem - a technology that they have yet to master here on earth.
  • take India, China, and Japan with you! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • Big deal! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Saturday October 28, 2017 @07:54PM (#55451209)
    You go to the moon. We're doing the real high tech work of re-opening coal mines.

    • There you go. We'll still need coal-mining techniques for the moon. You know, to extract all the remains from the dinosaurs that got blown off the planet from the last comet.

      Plus, while everybody else is trying to shelter under their solar-panel farms because they forgot how to dig a hole, we'll be living in great underground caverns, housing all of our excess coal-miners from Earth.

      • There you go. We'll still need coal-mining techniques for the moon. You know, to extract all the remains from the dinosaurs that got blown off the planet from the last comet.

        Plus, while everybody else is trying to shelter under their solar-panel farms because they forgot how to dig a hole, we'll be living in great underground caverns, housing all of our excess coal-miners from Earth.

        I like the spirit of your post, but caution that most of what we do is strip mining or mountain topping.

    • It was coal powered industries that took us to the moon. Anyone that thinks we can return to the moon, or go beyond, using windmills and solar collectors is a fool.

      We are reaching the physical limits of chemical rockets. We can use chemical rockets to get to the moon and back but if we expect to get people to Mars or Venus then we will need nuclear power. We tried solar power on the moon, on Mars, on comets, and so much more. It turns out that solar power gets pretty weak out at Mars orbit. We lost som

      • It was coal powered industries that took us to the moon. Anyone that thinks we can return to the moon, or go beyond, using windmills and solar collectors is a fool.

        I'm not certain where I said what you seem to think I said. You need to show me.

        Or are you saying that we will not be able to go anywhere now if we don't increase coal production? I can play your game too.

        We are reaching the physical limits of chemical rockets. We can use chemical rockets to get to the moon and back but if we expect to get people to Mars or Venus then we will need nuclear power.

        We tried solar power on the moon, on Mars, on comets, and so much more. It turns out that solar power get

    • Man, Trump really triggered you with his sympathy for coal miners. You won't shut up about it, and I see it get injected into irrelevant conversations all the time, which means it's in your brain constantly. Boy, it sure bugs you that those oppressed rural working class people have someone to represent their interests now. Burns you up, 24 hours a day.

      • Man, Trump really triggered you with his sympathy for coal miners.

        Triggered is such an amusing word. As for sympathy for out of work coal miners, I live in the area and I have plenty of sympathy for the workers.. I'm also realistic enough to know that we could strip out every bit of coal around here, and they aren't getting their jobs back. Automation allows a few men to blast and strip huge amounts of coal. Hell, the post stripping land reclamation might employ more people.

        You won't shut up about it, and I see it get injected into irrelevant conversations all the time, which means it's in your brain constantly.

        While your concern for me is touching, it appears you pretty much exemplify the concept of being t

        • Well if you actually have any sympathy, you might want to lay off taking cheap shots at them. Just a thought. DURR HURR COAL HURR in a conversation about India and China's moon missions. Super-off topic and inflammatory.

          • Well if you actually have any sympathy, you might want to lay off taking cheap shots at them. Just a thought. DURR HURR COAL HURR in a conversation about India and China's moon missions. Super-off topic and inflammatory.

            You don't even know who I am taking the shots at. Just as a refresher, The present administration cynically used the concept of putting coal miners back to work in an effort to procure votes in the states that were affected by the downturn in the coal industry.

            For anyone keeping up with the news - why it wasn't obvious that they were the ones I was aiming at is curious to me, but I guess you must know on some level, given your umbrage.

            The fix for disappearing coal miner jobs is to enable employment o

            • Yeah! Because all a 54 year old father of three needs to do is move to New York City, call around to some friends, and get a job in publishing.

              A lot of people there were really optimistic that the solution to technological unemployment was to teach unemployed West Virginia truck drivers to code so they could participate in the AI revolution. I used to think this was a weird straw man occasionally trotted out by Freddie deBoer, but all these top economists were *super enthusiastic* about old white guys whos

              • That's true regardless of whether Trump or Clinton or Superman is President (OK, Superman's not native born...). Getting a new job is going to be hard, and technologically displaced people need serious assistance.

                However, Trump's the one talking about getting the mines open again and the coal mining jobs back, and that very simply isn't going to happen, and Trump doesn't want it to anyway. That gives false hope, and diverts people's attention from what needs to be done to help these people.

                Fundamental

  • Oh good, we should put a person on the moon soon because other people are doing it, right?

    We've already been there a half dozen times. Furthermore, we have limited resources for this type of thing. Is another mission to the moom really worth our time without some sort of concrete goal for the mission?

    I think not, NASA has far better uses for its resources

  • ... and Elon Musk! I think I read that he might be sending a manned spacecraft around the moon (and back).

    Seriously, I'm not too worried (or impressed) by other nations repeating something that the U.S. did fifty years ago and that now a private citizen is developing the technology to do himself (ok his company).

    And even if India's effort is cheaper than a NEW falcon heavy, will it be cheaper than one of his reused rockets? One that's been flown a few times? A dozen times? Once these space powers make r

  • I am also planning a moon mission. My piggy bank is already half full.

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