China Launches Rocket With Its First Moon Lander And Rover

[Purveyor]

BEIJING--In hopes of ensuring that the next man on the moon is Chinese, Beijing launched a rocket carrying a buggy-like vehicle that is expected to roam and explore the moon's surface for three months.

The Long March rocket lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province at 1:30 a.m. Monday, Beijing time (9:30 a.m. PST Sunday), the official Xinhua news agency reported.

If all goes as planned, a landing vehicle and the roving vehicle will touch down on the moon’s surface in about two weeks. It will be the first time that anybody has done a soft landing (one in which the vehicle remains intact) on the moon since 1976, when the Soviet Union landed the Luna 24 probe.

The unmanned rover is a gold-colored vehicle that looks like a dune buggy. It is expected to conduct various scientific experiments such as planting a telescope on the moon’s surface and exploring under the surface of the moon, as well as transmitting photographs back to Earth.

The real purpose, aerospace experts believe, is to practice the techniques to eventually put a man on the moon.


http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-china-rocket-moon-20131201,0,5398170.story#ixzz2mGbSpf4I

[longship]

1. Here we go again!

Hopefully!

If only this was another Sputnik moment. However, that Sputnik moment in 1957 was not a very good reason to go to the moon. Unfortunately, that's precisely the monolithic, caveman thinking which I fear it will take for the USA to set aside ignorance and realize that there's something noble and embracing about doing something just because you can. And doing so just because what you learn in the doing will very likely help generations of life on our small, fragile planet in the future.

Then, it becomes not a contest, but an imperative.

Just my thoughts on the deal.

[DavidDvorkin]

2. The difference is that the Soviets beat us into orbit

The Chinese lunar rover is something we've already done -- with men aboard, moreover.

Now if they land men on Mars first, that might spark something, if not here, then in other countries.

[longship]

3. One would hope it wouldn't have to go that far.

As my post indicates, one should do it for none other than to show what we can do. The advantage to that strategy is that it becomes not a competition of humans (will not term it as "man&quot and not nations. Rather it's a competition of Earth life against the universe, which if you have not yet figured it out, is trying its best to wipe it all out.

That's why I recommend Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a primer on certain universal truths.

The universe does not fucking care about life on Earth, or anywhere else. It's up to us if we want our species to survive.

At least I am not employed as a telephone sanitizer.


Unfortunately, it didn't help the Golgafrinchams.

[DavidDvorkin]

4. Well, sure, in the best of all possible worlds

there would be a worldwide space program, to which all nations would contribute and from which all nations would benefit.

Wait a minute! In the best of all possible worlds, there wouldn't be nations, at least not as they're now constituted.

Wait a minute! In the best of all possible worlds, we would already have settled the Solar System and be making our early interstellar flights.

Oh, and of course there'd be no hunger or disease or war or poverty or ignorance.

In this world, those Sputnik Moments are necessary.

[longship]

5. I could not have put it better. Meanwhile...

There's the 100 year starship project.

One of the principles is none other than Mae Jemison. Trust me, click through and read her bio on Wiki. She's a physician, a Shuttle astronaut, a dancer, and an incredibly eclectic person -- a true polymath.



The future of humans is in space.

This shit is awesome cool. As are visionaries like Mae.



Please take the time to click through.

[DavidDvorkin]

7. Very interesting

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut -- except that that word hadn't been coined yet, so I always said that I was going to be a spaceman. That never happened, but I did get to work at NASA on the Apollo missions and write science fiction about future spacefaring societies.

Technologically, we are finally near becoming a spacefaring society. The long delay after the end of Apollo was a great tragedy, but we are (I hope) about to make up for that gap. Now it's up to politicians not to do something stupid and screw it all up.

[longship]

9. Thank you for your service!

That's service for the future of life on Earth. It's looking beyond. And finding out how the universe operates because that fucker is trying to kill us... eventually.

I love Mae Jemison. And Rusty Schweickart of the B612 Foundation who is looking to intercept and intervene on prospective Earth colliding astronomical bodies. We don't want to go the way the dinosaurs did.

It takes far thinking to solve the human problems. I see little of it outside these outstanding exemplars of thinking ahead.

Don't get me started about climate change.

[arely staircase]

6. does it say made in china on it?

And if so, can I buy one at HobbyLobby?

[2banon]

8. I'm thinking - the race for domination and exploitation continues

the uber wealthy are already at it - their inter/outer space adventures are underway and who knows what new "precious" metals among other elements are there for the taking. and so it goes...