China push to put astronaut on the moon

[dipsydoodle]

China has declared its intention to land an astronaut on the moon, in the first official confirmation of its aim to go where Americans last set foot nearly 40 years ago.

While Chinese scientists have previously discussed the possibility of a manned lunar mission, a government white paper published on Thursday is the first public government document to enshrine it as a policy goal.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/313ff212-321b-11e1-9be2-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1hyOsT7wc

[bahrbearian]

1. Didn't we put up a 'No Trespassing' Sign?

[cowcommander]

2. Good, I hope they succeed

Space exploration is a human endeavor to be shared and celebrated by all, not just by individual countries for selfish nationalistic purposes.

[tawadi]

15. I hope the Chinese feel the same. eom

[Richardo]

20. Yeah, China's not at all nationalistic.

Very sharing too, I understand.

[kenfrequed]

40. Yeah...

Maybe they will land there a few times and have videos of Chinese astronaughts cavorting and jumping around. Maybe they will even plant a flag somewhere... those pesky nationalists.

[Richardo]

42. Point being - no nation is going to the moon and NOT be nationalists

Unless, of course, there are citizens of other nations on the mission. What are the odds?

[LanternWaste]

45. I imagine there are many different degrees of nationalism-- from the benign to the destructive

I imagine there are many different degrees of nationalism-- from the benign to the destructive-- of which we are all of us guilty.

I also imagine many people believe they have absolute knowledge of where other particular countries are precisely aligned on that scale.

[Ichingcarpenter]

90. Outer Space Treaty

The treaty explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet, claiming that they are the Common heritage of mankind.[2] Art. II of the Treaty states that "outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means". However, the State that launches a space object retains jurisdiction and control over that object.[3] The State is also liable for damages caused by their space object and must avoid contaminating space and celestial bodies.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

[girl gone mad]

87. Agree, and..

I hope this will lead them to Mars in the near future. They are probably humans' best hope for extraterrestrial colonization now.

[onehandle]

3. Good. We should be ashamed of our giving up on space.

99% of the time I am opposed to anything China. But if this will light a fuse under our asses... more power to them.

[truthisfreedom]

24. Wait, what? There's three new companies (and possibly a fourth) who are building rockets now, and

NASA and other entities are contracting them to put satellites, probes, and PEOPLE into space! SpaceX (Elon Musk's rocket company, the guy behind Tesla Motors and a former partner at Paypal) will be launching for NASA in January. He hopes to put a man on Mars within 10 years! The commercialization of space travel is a great thing for America. Why should we be paying for everything with our tax dollars when we can let commercial entities take all of the financial risks?

Let's look at the list of companies entering the space race right now.

Elon Musk's SpaceX (my personal hero)
Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic (yep, THAT Richard Branson)
Paul Allen's Stratolaunch Systems (he's a co-founder of microsoft)

There are more. Check out this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_spaceflight

The future of commercial spaceflight is actually pretty bright! Don't despair! We're still leaders, but it's moving to the commercial sector!

[onehandle]

43. Space tourism and satellite launching for the highest bidders is not quite the same.

Buzz Aldrin assembles seismic experiment

[Kolesar]

86. Wow. Thanks for the iteration of continuing space exploration

I had no idea.
I used to love that stuff when I was of school age.

[girl gone mad]

91. SpaceX has no plans to go to Mars.

Where would they even get the money?

The future of commercial spaceflight is always bright. It's been bright for centuries. The present is never quite so illuminated.

[EX500rider]

98. ("SpaceX has no plans to go to Mars") But NASA does..

....the next more advanced Mars Rover is already on the way...

[DeathToTheOil]

60. Amen, onehandle!

I'm not an American, so perhaps this is one of those "having the luxury of" opinions, but I consider Obama's decision on the space program to be his worst mistake.

[DavidDvorkin]

4. I hope this will push us back into manned spaceflight in a big way

In a replay of what the Soviet challenge did earlier.

[Bob Wallace]

102. And I hope we stay far away from manned spaceflight...

The questions we want to answer can be done without humans on the ground.

Humans greatly add to the cost and reduce the payload of really useful gear.

We can stick rovers on surfaces and keep them working for years. Much better than having a human spend a few hours stumbling around in a very restrictive space suit.

We've been to the Moon. We've spent years floating around in the Space Station. Been there, done those things.

Let's use our limited funds to gain as much knowledge as possible.

[0rganism]

104. +100: unmanned missions are the way to go for now

If we're really serious about colonizing our moon and other planets, we'd want to have robots going in first, doing all the initial site surveys, setting up starter facilities including hydroponic farms, air recycling, and water purification systems, while making as many correct decisions as possible on their own, to minimize communication delays. This could be a huge magnet project for applied AI research with side benefits for all kinds of terrestrial hostile-environment exploration.

The thought of spending huge amounts of money on sending humans on a 6-month flight to Mars without a damn thing waiting for them when they arrive is infuriating. And yet that seems to be the direction our leaders want to take us, probably because it sounds exciting and romantic and makes for great campaign slogans. That indicates to me humanity is still not over our nationalistic phase of merely posturing with space exploration, and very much not serious about doing anything productive with such missions.

[Bob Wallace]

107. I can't think of a reason why we would want...

to colonize the Moon or another planet. Except to say that we did it, and that would be a really expensive bragging right.

We might want to harvest raw materials on other balls of dirt. We're not going to put people to work with pick and shovel sending back wheelbarrow loads of hard-to-obtainium. Robots can scoop it up and pack it for shipping.

We're not going to ship surplus humanity to another ball of dirt in order to reduce crowding on this one.

Perhaps, a billion or two years from now, we might want to start hopscotching our way to a different solar system as our Sun starts its overheating phase, but we've got a few million years to figure out if there is some other solar system that might offer us a decent planet and to develop the propulsion system to take our frozen DNA there.

[jberryhill]

5. GOP Candidates Declare Plans For Border Fence Around Moon

[ngant17]

6. Can they fake it as well as NASA did?

there must be plenty of realistic backgrounds in the Gobi desert, not unlike some of the sandy terrain in New Mexico which was used as props for the faked Apollo missions.

Note: Although I believe that the first 3 Apollo moon missions were faked, I do not rule out that one or two of the last manned lunar missions actually could have taken place.

[drm604]

8. I know I'm whistling in the wind here

but you really should read this: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html

It nicely debunks "Apollo was a hoax" thinking.

[Posteritatis]

30. Hahaha, you used "apollo was a hoax" and "think" in the same sentence. (nt)

[Dreamer Tatum]

9. Also faked: your education. nt

[Odin2005]

12. I hope you are being sarcastic.

It's hard to differentiate between sarcasm and seriousness anymore.

[stevedeshazer]

16. I'm reading DU and the moon missions were faked. Really?

So Walter Cronkite just went along?

Give me a break.

[Posteritatis]

31. You should've seen the wankfests on that a couple years ago.. (nt)

[itsrobert]

22. You are missing an "I", "O", and "R"

n/t

[Iggo]

92. Only took me two days.

[Warren DeMontague]

28. Wow. How eminently reasonable of you.

Guess they faked the recent LRO photos of the Apollo landing sites, too?

[AtheistCrusader]

32. Face. Fucking. Palm.

[Eliminator]

44. TOS violation

Delete before they tombstone you

[Codeine]

71. I alerted and the jury said it was just fine.

People often confuse idiocy and iconoclasm.

[uppityperson]

78. Skinner, however, didn't. Posting revoked

[Eliminator]

79. Can't say I didn't warn him...

Here I am trying to do a good deed and all....

[Codeine]

80. Su-weet. nt

[Warren DeMontague]

81. praise fucking Jesus

enough of that gibberish.

[EX500rider]

99. Thumbs up on that! (n/t)

[Codeine]

65. This is the sort of stupidity that makes DU look absurd. nt

[Codeine]

110. alerted.

Whackadoodle nonsense has no place here.

[Gemini Cat]

67. You're joking, right?

[neverforget]

75. I heard NASA was going to blow up the Moon

because it's made of cheese. And we're all out of cheese.

[MineralMan]

76. Moon cheese is terrible. It's monumentally stinky cheese.

Worse than Limburger, but without the creamy goodness. Truly foul is moon cheese.

[sakabatou]

93. Really?

[doc03]

7. Thay are looking for another Walmart location to dump their junk in n/t

[David__77]

10. Sour grapes...

China's advances are for the benefit of the world.

[doc03]

11. If you say so n/t

[stevedeshazer]

17. Really?

Nuclear weapons? Lack of pollution controls? Child labour?

Please explain how these benefit the world.

[David__77]

19. Disinformation.

There are pollution controls that are being applied more and more stringently. In fact, China will be a major hub for the development of energy efficient technologies. Child labor is less and less of a problem, except in the countryside, where children still engage in family farming. The Human Development Index is rising consistently, increasing literacy, education levels, quality of health care, and so on.

China's nuclear weapons serve to defend its sovereignty. Unlike the US, China has pledged a "no first strike" policy. China's few ICBMs and nukes are dwarfed by those of the US. The US would nose around were it not for China's deterrent capabilities.

[cstanleytech]

23. What about the censorship? Is it as bad as we have heard or is that also disinformation?

[cstanleytech]

26. Be nice. He is after all entitled to his views

[Dreamer Tatum]

27. I was nice. But the fact remains. nt

[tabasco]

56. And we are entitled to ridcule him.

No requirement to be nice that I am aware of.

[AtheistCrusader]

33. China is improving.

It's difficult to quantify or measure these things objectively between two countries.

We haven't been too hot on the civil rights score lately either, you know.

[cstanleytech]

35. Well perhaps we can narrow it down, can you search about the Tiananmen square protests now?

What about video games? Are they still doing things like demanding that skulls cannot be shown nor can anything like skeletons in games?

[DissedByBush]

55. There is no Internet censorship in China

However, people do sometimes have technical problems getting to certain sites.

Seriously, a Chinese government rep once said this at an Internet conference.

[cstanleytech]

69. techincal problems perhaps like say a firewall blocking access?

[DissedByBush]

72. It's all semantics

We say censorship, they say techical problems.

We say cruel and unusual, they say billing the family for the bullet is good financial sense.

I guess it's all a matter of semantics and perspective.


I assume a sarcasm tag is not necessary.

[EX500rider]

100. "Unlike the US, China has pledged a "no first strike" policy."

Well if they said that I guess we can trust 'em.....lol

What if their nukes just "volunteer" to attack like their army did during the Korean War?

[LanternWaste]

46. Are we then to presume that destructive social policies in 1960's America

Are we then to presume that destructive social policies in 1960's America resulted in the Apollo missions lacking any benefits to the world also?

[Odin2005]

13. Meanwhile, we need the Russians to get people into orbit, now.

We should have been colonizing Mars by now.

[Posteritatis]

70. And even that seems like playing Russian roulette with a chainsaw these days.. (nt)

[Kolesar]

14. Space exploration was a proxy for the Cold War in the 1960s

Just like the race to build the fastest steam ships a century ago.
They could spend the resources improving peoples' lives instead.

[Gore1FL]

29. The space race did improve peoples lives. It holds much more promise. n/t

[Warren DeMontague]

34. Space exploration DOES improve peoples' lives.

And it's gonna happen whether we like it or not. We're part of the universe, and we will move off of this planet.

[inna]

39. "Space exploration DOES improve peoples' lives." - completely unsupported

please prove it if you can - although i highly doubt it

[baldguy]

47. You're working on a computer, aren't you?

And I'm sure the central processing unit doesn't take up an entire 12' x 12' room and use enough electricity to power a small city. That drive for miniaturization is a direct result of space exploration.

That's just one example; there are thousands more.

[inna]

48. omg! LOL! +5 (arbitrary!) points for trying so hard, but... no cigar!

Space exploration was *not* the cause of computer development; the two were largely independent (although co-related to some degree) events.

A cookie for trying though?...

[baldguy]

50. How many communications satellites use vacuum tubes?

Are you THAT IGNORANT of history? Or just to enamored of your own opinions that simple facts are unable to get through your armor of arrogance?

When the first computers were developed they were industrial-sized machines. The primary users were the govt, major educational & research institutions and fortune 500 corporations. There was no demand in the '40s, '50s and '60s for smaller computers, and until the '60s computer engineers & designers did have the transistors required to build them, and they weren't even thinking of any applications for such devices.

Until we started going into space.

[inna]

53. failure to see the difference between correlation and causation;

projection of one's faults onto others;

poor sense of humor and completely unwarranted condescension/pissiness!


-5 and i take back the cookie! so there

[baldguy]

54. -5 for not answering the question. -20 for not knowing what you're talking about.

-50 for being having an arrogant condescending attitude yourself.

I'm thinking someone didn't get a Gold Star for participation in kindergarten. You poor baby.

[sakabatou]

94. *facepalm*

[Kolesar]

84. Basic research should be funded by the federal gov't, but the space program isn't the way

Companies cannot adequately fund basic research. However, money should be prioritized for medical science and basic physics before indulging in fantasies of the aerospace industry.

[girl gone mad]

88. There is no need to pick and choose.

We can invest in all of the above (though I'm not sure what you are referring to by "basic physics&quot .

The only constraints would be resources and skilled labor, but we currently have plenty of both.

[Eliminator]

58. Jesus Mother of Christ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off

The ignorance is astounding.

[PavePusher]

73. 'Taint just ignorance. Denialism isn't just a Republican trait. Sigh.... n/t

[Kolesar]

85. You sound like you are going to start your "Republican gun grabber" speech

spare us

[PavePusher]

95. Wow. Off topic, much? n/t

[sofa king]

106. Think of all the cute little critters it saved.

To stay reasonably comfortable in North America prior to the space race, we walked around covered in dead animals from the feathers in our caps to down stuffing, fur lining, and leather shoe soles.

It was the improvements in materials science necessary to send humans to the moon which ushered in a new era of inexpensive, highly durable synthetic clothing materials which supplanted animal skins as the preferred winter wear. Most of the winter gear we wear now had its research antecedents in the materials science R&D paid for by NASA in the 1960s.

So there's that. In addition to showing we had the biggest techno-schwanze.

[alp227]

18. More convenient instead of hitting the FT paywall here's an NY Times article

"Space Plan From China Broadens Challenge to U.S."

[dipsydoodle]

41. Its odd that

When I posted it I checked the FT link for safety and it still worked ok. I can see it doesn't now so thanks for the other link.

If you've ever wondered - our papers already have gone to press by late evening GMT and their front page headlines and some other content is discussed on both Sky News and BBC at about 11pm here. As such I always know how the websites will be updated soon as we cross midnight . Broadly speaking its only the Guardian which updates its website throughout the day - the others don't bother too much.

[Deep13]

21. Finally.

Now the USA has a reason to go back.

[joshcryer]

36. By the time China gets to the moon SpaceX will be on to Mars.

[girl gone mad]

89. I would put the chances of that at zero percent.

SpaceX is completely dependent on funding from NASA, and their primary focus over the past few years has been designing space station cargo transport mechanisms. I don't even think they've been all that successful at it.

[joshcryer]

96. Their first F9 launch was a complete success. Their second? First non-government...

...to safely return a payload from orbit. First. Only governments have achieved that.

Within two months they will be the first non-government to latch onto the ISS.

The question is whether or not they can ramp things up after their R&D phase. If their reusable rocket design works then they will completely obliterate all other space launch companies.

[girl gone mad]

105. "Non-government"..

who are almost 100% funded by government.

[joshcryer]

108. Government got them there quicker.

That's all. SpaceX was fully solvent before government got involved.

Half of their launch manifest is non-government.

Of course, they'll likely become the military's new launch provider, so that point will be moot, I'm sure, from your point of view.

What's important is that, while they got government funding (a measly $500 million or so), they didn't get paid on toxic, costly, cost-plus contracts. They made a deal beforehand, did the job, and got paid afterward. No cronyism here.

[tclambert]

38. Hey, anybody remember when America used to do great things?

You must be really old.

[Gemini Cat]

66. I remember

Now some spend time debating if the Apollo missions were faked, and others spend time trying to put creationalism in public schools. It's amazing how far we have fallen.

[sce56]

83. I remember the the Eagle Landing

I also remember a lot of the misfires at Cape Canaveral on live TV! Gee I really am dating myself here! And yes we did go to the moon was not a fake and I have touched a moon rock at the Smithsonian! If we faked it don't you think the Russians would have called our BS!

[Javaman]

49. Been there, done that.

sorry, couldn't resist.

I bet the conspiracy nuts will believe that china will actually do it, while they continue to not believe that the U.S. already did.

[pscot]

51. Chinese announce plans

to jump shark! This is the perfect response to a dwindling resource base.

[LeftinOH]

52. ...."Americans last set foot nearly 40 years ago"? When was this written?

It's been over 42 years since the moon landing. (???)

[Posteritatis]

61. Considering the amount of Apollo deniers out there I'm just glad they got the right century. (nt)

[Codeine]

68. The last Apollo mission (Apollo 17) landed on the moon in December, 1972. nt

[Ratty]

57. Better them than us

It'll be nice to see someone on the moon again. As long as we're not the ones who have to pay for it.

Good luck China!

[Flatulo]

82. yeah, except they're doing it with our money, while we got crappy products that

will be in a landfill in 5 years in return.

[Baclava]

59. Let them have it. The moon is boring - and humans are too weak and puny for deep spaceflight

Robots will carry our seed to the stars!


Robonaut becomes 1st humanoid robot in space



http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20035935-1.html

[Uncle Joe]

62. The moon is the best next logical step for a base, Mars is too far away at this time

with our current/near future technological ability.

I'm all for putting robots in space as well, but without the human exploration componet of learning to crawl, walk, run and then fly through space travel and living technology, it will all be for naught.

Humanity's best long term chance of survival means gaining the ability to migrate beyond our tiny blue marble in mass numbers.

[Baclava]

77. I still think too much money is spent on HUMAN spaceflight - - let our metal brothers lead the way

They have a much higher tolerance envelope for radiation, and they don't need consumables and they won't get bored and kill each other on a 2 year trip to Mars.

Go now - take them HD cameras to really interesting parts of mars like Valles Marinas



We got drones...put the technology to better use...quit piddling around, send out some sexy missions. Science sells if it captures the imagination.









Yeah - we'll need human eyes eventually....but I think that's at least 50 years off...when we can get off the chemical rocket teat and get a real propulsion system that can get us there and back in 6 months.

Humans always want to land in the safe and smooth parts too. Screw that - I demand entertainment.

[Neoma]

63. Cool!

[fujiyama]

64. Welcome to 1969!

All snark aside, I wish them the best of luck. Space exploration benefits all of humanity and our understanding of the universe. And I'm saddened that we haven't been back in over thirty years and that our manned program is in the state it's at.

But as the other poster above noted, there are some exciting developments in the commercial space flight sector. It will be interesting to see where things go!

[Steerpike]

74. Good for them!

Their government sucks, but I love the Chinese people. Space exploration and possible colonization/exploration of the moon is a move that displays vision. Good luck to them and all space explorers!

[Bucky]

97. I wish 'em luck.

I hope a lot of astronauts don't get killed in the process. But I don't doubt they'll learn a lot of valuable lessons along the way.

[dmallind]

101. Good - they'll be needing to import lots of expensive stuff from the US to do it too.

The space part of the Aerospace industry is almost all here.

[aikoaiko]

103. they'll change their minds once Apollo 18 is dubbed with Mandarin.