China and NASA Shared Data About Historic Moon Landing (nypost.com) 77
hackingbear writes: "China exchanged data with NASA on its recent mission to land a Chinese spacecraft on the far side of the moon, the Chinese space agency said Monday, in what was reportedly the first such collaboration since a Cold-War-era-like American law banned joint space projects with China that do not have prior congressional approval," reports New York Post. "The Chinese space agency's deputy director, Wu Yanhua, said NASA shared information about its lunar orbiter satellite in hopes of monitoring the landing of the Chang'e 4 spacecraft. China, in turn, shared the time and coordinates of Chang'e 4s scheduled landing. He added that while NASA's satellite did not catch the precise moment of landing, it took photographs of the area afterward."
In response to the question about why would China allow this exchange given that the U.S. has put technological obstacles to China's lunar exploration program and refused to issue visas to Chinese experts, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said, "China could have chosen not to offer the relevant information to the U.S., but as a major country, we should act with the posture and bearing of a major country. I believe what Mr. Wu said has shown the confidence, openness, and broadmindedness of Chinese aerospace engineers as well as scientists and researchers and China's confident and open posture as a major country."
In response to the question about why would China allow this exchange given that the U.S. has put technological obstacles to China's lunar exploration program and refused to issue visas to Chinese experts, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said, "China could have chosen not to offer the relevant information to the U.S., but as a major country, we should act with the posture and bearing of a major country. I believe what Mr. Wu said has shown the confidence, openness, and broadmindedness of Chinese aerospace engineers as well as scientists and researchers and China's confident and open posture as a major country."
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And this information is from ... ?
US collected moon rocks were sent all over the world for research and as gifts - so far no country complained, including USSR (former Russia), which was at the time in cold war with US, which was able to monitor all the communication - yes, EM waves from the Moon can be received by anybody, and in 1970s there was no digital communication - all analog.
Not to mention that there are photos of the landings.
There is no discrepancies between USSR and US moon rocks - you're lyi
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There was a short blurb about some folks doing this very thing [youtube.com].
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Scientists unite the world, Politicians divide it up.
(and guess what the human race is electing to run it)
Scientists should set a higher example (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially in space, countries should share everything they can and set an example for the rest of humanity of how we can all work together - a great reason for all nations to continue exploring space BTW.
I realize there are very valid military reasons why some things like rocket technology maybe cannot be shared between countries that are at odds. However there's no reason at all we cannot all share data about what we find out there...
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they figure that since a new environment requires new behaviors, it's a good time to fix some old behaviors that the environment doesn't really force change on.
There are reasons for the US prohibitions, and... (Score:5, Informative)
good reasons for the recent data exchange.
Reasons for the recent data exchange:
1. It serves the interests of all nations operating spacecraft within an area to exchange basic telemetry so they can, for example, avoid collisions.
2. In this case, it would serve the interests of China to have the US publicly admit and even photograph (if possible) one of their space successes - giving obviously solid proof of a far away event to a wold mostly unable to verify it for themselves, much as the Soviet confirmation of the American moon landings in the '60s and '70s did.
Reasons for the prohibitions:
1. The Chinese science and military space programs are one-and-the-same; they're completely unified - so there's no way any sympathetic politician in the west can offer political cover when encouraging supposedly peaceful cooperation.
2. The Chinese military has a long track record of thresatening to nuke the USA.
3. In the 1990s, several American companies (Loral, Hughes... [washingtonpost.com]) wanted their satellite customers to be able to use cheap Chinese launch vehicles (which were failing at an alarming rate) in place of American and European launch vehicles, so they illegally transferred a bunch of launch vehicle tech to China. This had two major effects: [a] it enabled the Chinese aerospace industry to damage the American and European launch vehicle industries, and [b] suddenly Chinese ICBMs became far more reliable and accurate.
An orbital launch vehicle is just a more capable ICBM. As anybody with an aerospace background knows, if you can accurately place a large payload into orbit, you can more easily place a nuclear warhead on a sub-orbital launcher and hit any city on Earth. What that transfer of tech did (in addition to making some executives and share holders of a couple of companies a bit richer) was to enable the Chinese military to more effectively threaten to kill all the American taxpayers who paid to develop the technology. As a military vet, I personally resent the fact that the executives involved were not tried for treason and executed by firing squad. The Chinese military, yet again, threatened to nuke the USA just within the past week - THANKS, Loral and Hughes!.
The Unites States and Russia do not, to this day, exchange complete information with each other. They cooperate with the tech data needed to make systems interoperable (like docking systems, atmosphere standards, and such) and if the cooperation with China could be limited to that then there'd be nothing big to worry about, however too many American scientists and businessmen have spent 20 years proving they will not self-limit their tech transfers to China (see: Apple, Google, IBM, Motorola, etc) Nearly every major American company has sold-out to China, as have most American universities.
All the "peaceful cooperation in space" drivel that is so often spread by idiots usually ignores the existence of nuclear warheads (which in the case of China are not constrained at all by ANY arms reduction or limitation treaties).
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I'm told that Mutually Assured Destruction is good for peace. In that case, shouldn't the US have simply given the Chinese their space tech? Just to keep everyone even, and dissuade anyone from launching.
Seriously though, China got most of it's early space technology from Russia by simply buying it. Then they put vast resources into building their own talent and technology up too. Basically the same as the US after WW2, starting out with Nazi tech and expertise and then developing their own off the back of
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I'm told that Mutually Assured Destruction is good for peace. In that case, shouldn't the US have simply given the Chinese their space tech? Just to keep everyone even, and dissuade anyone from launching.
There's a saying "speech is silver, but silence is gold", in other words, it's better to know what to say, than say what you know:
- list of nuclear close calls [wikipedia.org]
- Stanislav Petrov, a man, who saved the world from WWIII [wikipedia.org]
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I'm told that Mutually Assured Destruction is good for peace. In that case, shouldn't the US have simply given the Chinese their space tech? Just to keep everyone even, and dissuade anyone from launching.
No, because (on an earthly, relative scale, of course) China's government is in fact bad and we are in fact good.
I know that gives some folks the vapors, but oh well.
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China got its early space technology from the Soviet Union and the USA.
ie it put vast resources into spying for technology.
Expecting the Soviet Union just to give away all its space tech.
The problem with spying for tech or using anther nations engineers is the nation doing the spying never learns very much.
Spying never gets the needed generational educational methods needed. A copy is often a few failed gene
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That's what people with an aerospace background with Dunning-Kruger and no actual knowledge "knows". In reality, launch vehicles and ICBM's are very different beasts - launch vehicles can't be readied on a moment's notice and when they are ready, can't stan
The Chinese can do this (Score:2, Informative)
They already have a wall.
Who are the adults in the room? (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary you need:
"Why did you cooperate with the Americans in space when they are being so rude in other ways?"
"Because we are sensible adults".
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It's absolutely the Chinese trying to send a not-so-subtle message about the way US politics and international affairs are at the moment.
FREE TIBET with every purchase of a Hong Kong!
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They're planning on executing a Canadian to make a point, they've put out a traffic advisory to not travel to Canada, all because Canada has a treaty with the USA that Canada is honouring even while the USA is accusing Canada of being a national security threat and actually behind the arrest of the Chinese VIP and threatening to put her in jail for life when the usual response to selling stuff to Iran is large corporate fines.
Re: Who are the adults in the room? (Score:1)
They are planning to execute a drug trafficker. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. I'm from Canada and I wish we would do the same thing here.
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Yes, starting with the heads of the pharmaceutical companies and ending with the coffee pushers, all drug dealers should be executed.
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Canada has a treaty with the USA that Canada is honouring
More likely that Canada is a puppet of USA and was threaten during its own trade negotiation to obey orders from the US intelligent and military agencies to launch joint attacks against China.
Canada always has the option to evade such order skillfully otherwise. For example, when the US demanded Hong Kong to hand over Edward Snowden, Hong Kong authority skillfully bounced the request for more "clarification" and let Snowden, whom was formally charged (whereas Meng hasn't been yet,) fret over to Russia.
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The timing and the publicity (opening up the court to the press) were quite the coincidence.
I'm actually hopeful (Score:2)
...That China watched the movie 'The Martian.
And took some international law advice from it. /s
China is positioning itself ... (Score:2)
... to take the lead over the US and America is helping by doing nothing of significance.
We've read of other countries deferring to China and making remarks that America no longer in the apex position.
Nationalism, isolationism, anti-immigration, climate denial, science denial, poor educational systems, deregulation of air pollution, coal mine support and "drill baby drill," all demote the US as a world leader and more toward third-world status.
"but as a major country ..." (Score:2)
China is expanding but as a major country it is generous but as a major country to let America to peek at it but as a major country doing what the second place country could have done, but NO, because but as a major country China is replacing the US, not as anti-globalism but as a major country .
So, scientists and professors, abandon the anti-science former major country and embrace the new but as a major country .
What am I missing here. (Score:2)