China on schedule for launch this year of 2nd space station
Source: AP
BEIJING (AP) — China on Sunday recovered an experimental probe launched aboard a new generation rocket, marking another milestone in its increasingly ambitious space program that envisions a mission to Mars by the end of the decade.
The launch of the spaceship aboard the newly developed Long March 7 rocket on Saturday was hailed as a breakthrough in the use of safer, more environmentally friendly fuels. The launch also marked the first use of the massive new Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on the southern island province of Hainan.
Since launching its first manned mission in 2003, China has sent up an experimental space station, the Tiangong 1, staged a spacewalk and landed its Yutu rover on the moon.
Following that, the Shenzhou 11 spaceship with two astronauts on board is scheduled to dock with the station and remain for several days. Administrators suggest a manned landing on the moon may also be in the program's future.
Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/4c73dc21c41b49e3986a5effd4e1d197/china-schedule-launch-2nd-space-station
So both the Russians and Chinese are planning manned moon landings.
NASA needs to get it together!
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First, back to the moon. Then, to Mars.
Mars is a really, really tough nut for a occupied mission. And if one wants to land there, it's a helluva lot tougher. Right now we do not have anywhere near the equipment. We've been to the moon before and it would serve as a good test base for Mars, albeit without the horrendous Mars landing issues. For a manned landing on Mars they will need a semi-permanent base, because they will be staying a lot longer than an Apollo moon mission simply because of orbital dynamics. Also, getting out of the Mars gravity well to return to Earth is no simple task. What better way than to first build one on the moon. So we get a moon base! Then, the Mars mission.
Just my opinion, which is shared by quite a few people. I know Robert Zubrin disagrees with this scenario. He would be on your side.
But I want a Moon Base Alpha. I wonder if Martin Landau is available.
I could be wrong, but I took it more as a NASA in general needs to get their stuff together. Again, I could be assuming more than I should with respect to that. But I've seen a lot of "NASA isn't doing anything, and we're being beaten by the China, Russia, etc in space". I don't get that impression at all based on what I've read. For example, NASA has a budget of about $19 billion. That's more than China, Russia, and ESA combined (based on my "research" So if those nations are making great progress with much more limited budgets, then it seems logical to me that NASA would be able to at least match their progress. Also, NASA and JPL also have far more ongoing missions than any other space agency. Don't get me wrong though, I wish we would spend way more on NASA.
I would also think that if NASA is developing rockets that can launch a spacecraft to Mars, then it seems likely that the same spacecraft and rockets could be used to get to the moon. So I would think that by making progress toward the more difficult goal, they are also making progress toward "simpler" goals. To which I would assume that if at some point the really smart people who work on this stuff determine that a stop at the moon would be easier/needed, then they would have already figured out a lot of the really hard stuff.
