As NASA Faces Cuts, China Reveals Ambitious Plans For Planetary Exploration (arstechnica.com) 52
As NASA faces potential budget cuts, China is unveiling an ambitious series of deep space missions -- including Mars sample returns, outer planet exploration, and a future Mars base. While some of China's plans are aspirational, their track record of successful missions lends credibility to their expanding role in space. Ars Technica reports: China created a new entity called the "Deep Space Exploration Laboratory" three years ago to strengthen the country's approach to exploring the Solar System. Located in eastern China, not far from Shanghai, the new laboratory represented a partnership between China's national space agency and a local public college, the University of Science and Technology of China.
Not much is known outside of China about the laboratory, but it has recently revealed some very ambitious plans to explore the Solar System, including the outer planets. This week, as part of a presentation, Chinese officials shared some public dates about future missions. Space journalist Andrew Jones, who tracks China's space program, shared some images with a few details. Among the planned missions are:
- 2028: Tianwen-3 mission to collect samples of Martian soil and rocks and return them to Earth
- 2029: Tianwen-4 mission to explore Jupiter and its moon Callisto
- 2030: Development of a large, ground-based habitat to simulate long-duration human spaceflight
- 2033: Mission to Venus that will return samples of its atmosphere to Earth
- 2038: Establishment of an autonomous Mars research station to study in-situ resource utilization
- 2039: Mission to Triton, Neptune's largest moon, with a subsurface explorer for its ocean
Not much is known outside of China about the laboratory, but it has recently revealed some very ambitious plans to explore the Solar System, including the outer planets. This week, as part of a presentation, Chinese officials shared some public dates about future missions. Space journalist Andrew Jones, who tracks China's space program, shared some images with a few details. Among the planned missions are:
- 2028: Tianwen-3 mission to collect samples of Martian soil and rocks and return them to Earth
- 2029: Tianwen-4 mission to explore Jupiter and its moon Callisto
- 2030: Development of a large, ground-based habitat to simulate long-duration human spaceflight
- 2033: Mission to Venus that will return samples of its atmosphere to Earth
- 2038: Establishment of an autonomous Mars research station to study in-situ resource utilization
- 2039: Mission to Triton, Neptune's largest moon, with a subsurface explorer for its ocean
Well, defunding NASA is understandable (Score:1, Troll)
Edgelord mikola erollovich musko has to pay his Chinese investors off somehow.
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Your mom really should have taught you to wash your mouth as a child, muskolover.
Re:Well, defunding NASA is understandable (Score:4, Informative)
Explain the wealth of a Biden or Clinton child. I fucking dare you.
Book and media deals, guest speaking fees, consulting etc. Pretty standard for former presidents. Biden's net worth is $10mil, hardly "where did this all come from!?" money.
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Here you go https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com] . This is shit I learned as a kid btw.
Fuck are AC posters ignorant.
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You MAGA dipshits are really in an identity crisis, aren't you?
What the fuck does anything in this article, or even the comment you responded to have to do with Hunter Biden?
Talk about derangement syndrome. You guys just can't accept that your tribe is FUCKING EVERY SINGLE THING UP THEY TOUCH, and still want to blame the scapegoats of yesteryear, no matter how debunked it's been and how stupid it makes you look.
Enjoy wallowing in stupidity and denial while you can - it's only going to get worse for you as
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> At least I know how Musk became rich. Explain the wealth of a Biden or Clinton child. I fucking dare you.
Similar way as Jared: Saudis lubricated him to get favor with The Tinted One.
As far as Hunter's abstract paintings, Fox News gave Hunter free publicity. How nice of Fox!
"China Reveals Ambitious Plans" (Score:5, Funny)
Or CRAP for short.
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Let's be happy if ANY nation does space science and publicizes the results. The Soviet's Venus landings were amazing, for example. It's just an embarrassment for us to become a Citrus Republic.
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Sure. We'll be able to fish in the sea of Dirac for anything up there.
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Cost to orbit will be at least one order of magnitude lower and space missions we have only dreamed of will become possible.
Cost to orbit is only relevant if your goal is to get to orbit. The space missions we dream about will not change in cost beyond a rounding error.
Re: Starship will change everything (Score:5, Informative)
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Probes... You and I are dreaming of very different space missions. When you set your sights to something grander as I did you'll agree with me.
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China has heavy lift rockets (which built its space station) and there are even bigger ones coming in the next few years. The cost to orbit isn't really the issue for them, they are not subject to the political bean counting that NASA is.
That said the ones they already have are enough for a sample return mission. If necessary they can just sent two. One with the rover and sample return vehicle, one with enough fuel to make the journey home with the sample.
I can't see SpaceX managing to get Starship into a s
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I can't see SpaceX managing to get Starship into a state where it can get to Mars and back for launch in 2028.
I can’t see starship doing anything but streaking a frozen firework across the sky and shutting down air travel from coast to coast until at least 2028. Remember, Musk personally oversaw and provided input at every level and he has the education of a 4th grader and a room temp IQ in Celsius from the constant ketamine saturation.
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I guess you missed those launches where they soft landed in the ocean.
Something's up with block 2 Starship. They'll figure it out.
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I guess you missed those launches where they soft landed in the ocean.
Something's up with block 2 Starship. They'll figure it out.
You mean where it was so stripped down it basically is 100% worthless and cannot even carry a tiny payload? The ones where multiple in flight problems nearly but did not make it explode, Yes I saw those.
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Cost to orbit will be at least one order of magnitude lower and space missions we have only dreamed of will become possible.
Cost to orbit is only relevant if your goal is to get to orbit. The space missions we dream about will not change in cost beyond a rounding error.
Lowering cost to orbit means lowering cost overall for any space mission. With a low enough cost to orbit, it's entirely possible to build a fueling station in orbit that launched ships target, refuel, then go on their merry way wherever it is you envision going. Yes, regular fuel carrying missions will have to become routine, but I don't see how lowering the cost to orbit doesn't eventually change the cost to anywhere in this scenario.
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Lowering cost to orbit means lowering cost overall for any space mission.
Space missions I'm dreaming of aren't limited by the cost of getting to orbit. Dare to dream a bit.
Re:Starship will change everything (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, Musk has gone mad. Not relevant.
See, the thing is, you can't start by uncritically repeating one of Musk's many many promises and then put in a little disclaimer at the bottom. Musk is a hype man who promises anything and everything, and has delivered on a tiny portion of that.
The cost-to-orbit numbers that he has promised for Starship are absurd. Yes I'm sure that it will function, the government is dumping enough money into it that it's bound to work eventually. And when that happens we will start getting the excuses for why payload costs are not anywhere near what he promised and how that's all going to change in the future (with more money).
I hope you're not one of those people sitting on car with full self driving capability. Or still waiting for that smooth-as-glass rail transport system under Las Vegas.
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Reliability (Score:2)
... will soon work properly ...
Satellites and launches are so expensive that unreliable, cheap options are extremely expensive when compared to more reliable ones.
Re: Reliability (Score:2)
Re:Starship will change everything (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea that it being a bit cheaper to orbit will somehow revive US space exploration is daft.
The rest of the mission is expensive and takes a long time to execute, from initial planning and approval, through R&D, to launch, round trip, and retrieval. There is a large window covering multiple administrations where it can get cancelled. China doesn't have that problem.
China is usually pretty good about its planned dates for space missions, so it looks very likely that they are going to be the first to return samples from Mars. I can't realistically see any way that the US can launch a sample return mission before 2028.
Re: Starship will change everything (Score:1)
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It's never about affordability, it's about the political will to spend the money.
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It won't be that cheap, and the rest of it - developing a lander that can return to orbit with a sample, collecting it in-orbit and then returning to Earth - is not going to get any cheaper.
Most importantly it won't be ready by 2028 when China launches their mission.
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The prospect of a Starship leaving for Mars by 2029 affects the political will for funding that mission more than other factors.
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It's entirely possible that the specter of another nation doing it first might be the kick in the pants the Congress critters need to stop fucking around with NASA like it's a badminton birdie to be swatted back and forth.
Probably not, but it worked once. It could work again if there is a sudden outbreak of common sense - but that's getting increasingly improbable every day.
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I don't think Congress is in control of that anymore.
Re:USA, USA, Go DOGE! GO! (Score:5, Informative)
If you are an American and watch this interview, and tell me you aren't pissed at how the government is wasting our money? https://x.com/i/status/1905393... [x.com]
Posts to social media are not a reliable source of information.
40% of the social security support calls are fraudsters trying to get seniors' direct deposits moved to the a fraudsters bank account.
Let's do a sanity check. There are 80 million [ssa.gov] support calls to social security per year. You are claming that that there are 32 million calls per year trying to move social security direct deposits to fraudsters' bank accounts? If there were even hundreds of cases of scammers doing his successfully, AARP would be sending their members to call their congressmen to complain and sending letters outrage letters to every newspaper in the US. But they're not.
So, from your numbers the Social Security Administration is apparently successful at preventing fraud by at least a million to one, maybe better! They must be the most effective agency in the government!
(The social security fraud that AARP is fighting is not from scammers calling social security, it's from scammers phishing seniors: https://states.aarp.org/pennsy... [aarp.org] )
Good (Score:2)
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
NASA returns $3 for every $1 spent.
https://www.nasa.gov/news-rele... [nasa.gov]
https://www.scrippsnews.com/po... [scrippsnews.com]
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
What a stupid comment.
The return on investment for NASA is about 3 to 1 in direct economic returns and is estimated to be as high as 40 to 1 in indirect benefits- in other words for every dollar we spend, we get back $40.
That's not a waste of money, it's actually a phenomenal investment.
https://nss.org/settlement/nasa/spaceresvol4/newspace3.html
"Estimates of the return on investment in the space program range from $7 for every $1 spent on the Apollo Program to $40 for every $1 spent on space development today."
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Re: Good (Score:2)
Re: Good (Score:2)
Loss in interest (Score:1)
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Feel free to give back all the technology you use on a daily basis that was a direct result of NASA's efforts in the 1960s and 1970s then. Clearly you see weather satellites, microprocessors, and global communications networks as a "waste" and therefore don't need to use them.
simulate long-duration human spaceflight (Score:3)
"- 2030: Development of a large, ground-based habitat to simulate long-duration human spaceflight"
How will they simulate the effects of microgravity and cosmic radiation?
These seem to be the likely main difficulties in human voyages to other planets.
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All the Mu$k fanbois here... (Score:4, Insightful)
So, it's ok for the US to be utterly dependent on ONE company whose PRIVATE rockets get us up there.
You see nothing wrong with that. You're morons.
If they cancel the Titan mission (Score:2)
...I'm gonna kick somebody in the Uranus. I gotta see those lakes!