China plans manned moon mission

Discussion in 'World Events' started by cosmictraveler, Jan 3, 2012.

  1. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Paranoia, no, damage to our ego, yes. If china can go back to the moon and we can't it stands as a shining example of our fall, that America's peak was 1969 and everything went down hill from their. It also stands to reason that by the time china does go back to the moon (Late 2020's early 2030's) it will have reached or exceeded the USA in capita becoming officially the worlds largest economy, not just in people but in spending power. Americans will have to get use to saying they are the worlds 2nd largest economy as well as the worlds 2nd most technologically capable country. Our only remaining stand to grace might be that we will still have the worlds most expensive military.
     
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  3. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    I'd think that you are forgetting many things America has accomplished like 2 rovers on Mars with another one on its wat there now, landing on an asteroid, catching debris from a comet and returning them back to Earth, building the worlds first and best telescope in space, building the ISS and on and on. I'm sure that if you would open your eyes you'd see everything that's been done and that's being planned for including a manned visit to Mars instead of the Moon mission.
     
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  5. wlminex Banned Banned

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    1,587
    . . . Moon . . . . also a 'good' missle-launching platform . . .
     
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  7. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah and the Russians were doing unmanned sample returns and had lunar rovers at the same time as the American manned Luna exploration program, guess which one stole the show for prestige? What kind of robotic achievement could we do while China is walking on the moon that would one up them? The fact is it is way harder and far more expensive to land men then robots, hence why we are using robots, If china can take that expense and we can't its evidence of or fall.

    Man visit to mars? when? with what rocket? The spaceshuttle is (thankfully) dead proof that NASA can spend decades dinking around with manned space travel despite grand plans on the drawing board. Reagan, Bush, Dumbass/eeer Bush Jr, all pushed for grand manned programs to the moon and mars only to have them fall apart due to congress being unwilling to fund them. NASA is presently in ruins there is significant doubt that even their shuttle derived booster will ever fly, all that is left to hope for is corporate space travel like SpaceX.
     
  8. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    How about sending a robotic craft to Mars and get samples of stuff there then send them back home? That would be a very good accomplishment for many aspects of traveling to Mars with a manned mission one day in the future. Could also send robotic craft to other places and get stuff from there to bring back too.

    Not only is it harder to have manned missions in space it is very dangerous due to the radiation which cannot be insulated from thereby putting human life in great peril. So many problems to overcome with manned missions to planets but we can and will, I hope, work together one day with other countries to go together as the human race instead of for the glory of being the first nation.
     
  9. RedRabbit Registered Senior Member

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    Pffttt! American spaceshuttles...Russian rockets...Chinese spacestations.

    FFS! A species of ape has gone to the moon, are planning to go again, intercepted comets travelling at thousands of miles an hour in space, built and put robots on another planet, sent Blind Willy Johnsons' music on it's way to interstellar space, launched telescopes that can see nearly as far as the creation of the universe, studied the birth and death of stars, found planets revolving around distant suns and are looking for the answers as to why we exist at all in as many corners of the Cosmos as we can reach. But, no, some people are more worried about lines on a map!



    ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!!
     
  10. birch Valued Senior Member

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    5,077
    lol
     
  11. birch Valued Senior Member

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    5,077
    i agree. it is really stupid and immature to just go it alone or do something just for prestige and it doesn't make sense. best to work together for the purpose and it will bring more results.
     
  12. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    I guess we could build a robot that would go around reminding China that we walked on the moon 50 years before they did?

    Getting a man to the moon when the Russians could only get a robot there was a prestigious accomplishment. Getting a man to the moon 50 years later is not. It's a way of saying "we're only 50 years behind America, instead of the hundreds we used to be!"

    It's not an issue of "can't" but of "don't have any reason to want to." Once China has shown they can do this (supposing they follow through), they will likewise have little reason to keep going back.

    Well, speaking of prestige, there's one: while China is working to copy America's feats of yesteryear, the USA is looking to open up commercial space tourism.
     
  13. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Again what we could do 50 years ago does not matter, we can't do it now! How about this, what if China builds a base on the moon, would that finally prove to you their dominance?

    Aside for the huge monetary gain in mining the moon. Rocket propellant produced on the moon could make travel beyond LEO affordable. We "don't have any reason to want to." At the time because we were idiots and chose reduced spending then for lack of infrastructure today and in the future, if china learns from our mistake they will dominate space, space mining, space colonization, the whole future of mankind.

    And if that fails? Also note we are now looking for profit in space: the moon and the asteroids more so could provide ludicrous profit in rare earths, rocket propellant, etc, there are enough resources in the asteriod belts alone to support a human population several fold greater then presently exists on earth.
     
  14. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    ? Sure we can. We still have all of the original technology, plus a bunch of improved version. And we have way, way, way more money.

    We just don't want to. Why would we?

    Why does China, other than to show that they can also do something like that?

    Their dominance at spending astronomical amounts of money on prestiage projects that are essentially useless dog-and-pony shows, sure.

    Remains to be seen.

    Also very speculative. People have been talking this kind of science fiction for decades - it remains unclear whether it's actually do-able.

    What if it does?

    But it is unclear whether such resources can be extracted and used in an economical way. And it is not clear that China is any closer to accomplishing such than is the USA, for that matter.
     
  15. michael_taylor Registered Senior Member

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    Sounds like a good idea.

    If they stick to this direction, it will increase employment in the sciences, earn a bit of prestige for the Chinese government, foster interest in engineering in the schools and media, produce innumerable spin-off technologies, maybe even establish a viable jumping off point for the asteroid belt and other planets.

    The only downside I can see would be the pollution.
     
  16. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Sitting on a lawn rusting. We can't re-manufacture them, all the infrastructure for the Saturns was destroyed decades ago.

    Really? We got a rocket that could lift 119+ tons to LEO?

    NASA got 6 times as much funding in adjusted dollars during its peak in the 60's compared to what its funded today.

    Because it could have provided HUGE profits! A lunar base producing LH2 & LO2 fuel from lunar permafrost would have meant that launches from earth would only need to pay for moving cargo to LEO, everything higher could have been provided by lunar fuel. Lunar provide aluminum even silicon could have made a orbital power station economical, imagine that: virtually perpetual energy beamed from space. A Lunar bases could have provided the launch point for asteroid mines which would satisfied all earthly demand for rare earth minerals and much much more. The resources of space with a continuous power supply not blocked by clouds or atmosphere or nighttimes and with asteroid providing concentrations of materials impossible to find on earth, human populations in the trillions could be supported with a standard of living many fold beyond todays. Its simple mathematic simply add up all the mass of the asteroid. But because we choose to do the easy things and not the hard, we did not build the infrastructure when we could, and have left our selves doom on this mud ball with ever more expensive and harder to find resources. I recommend reading "Mining the Sky" by John S. Lewis, he demonstrates with brutally simple math that even using 60's era technology that space mining would have been self sufficient, openly stating that more advance technology makes the scenario even more viable. The only problem is getting people beyond LEO, because we choose to drop that capacity, none of the above is presently possible.

    For the reasons mentioned above. Perhaps they have learned from their own history. In 1433 china choose to decommission is merchant fleets, why mess with the barbarians, let them come to us, well centuries later they would pay dearly for that decision. America has done the same thing now, perhaps mandarin will be the language of the solar system and beyond?

    Imagine had Europe decided not to send ships to the west. Someone could have said "but there is huge profit to be gained, there may even be a whole continent out there" and then someone like you would say "Remains to be seen". Of course it remains to be seen no one had done it yet, and it will remain never seen until someone tries. The moon landings were even more tragic then the above scenario, it like Columbus coming back and no one goes after him "Oh yeah some guy did go out there and did find a continent, but we saw no profit in going back."

    The physic and chemistry have been know for decades, we electrolysis water in science classes there nothing sci-fi about. We had the rockets at one time to do it, we did in fact land on the moon, or was that sci-fi to? Its not "do-able" because no one has been willing to finance it, its not a problem of physic or engineering its a problem of lack of human will power.

    Then we won't have any manned space flight capabilities. And if the above happens before the extinction of the human race it certainly won't be by Americans, America will be one of those empires of old, like the British, French, and Roman empires.

    Oh so we need a sure bet to do anything these days? Such cold feet explains some of the decline of America today. If we are not willing to take risks we will never progress. It is clear though that china is technically closer, if still literally light seconds away: china can launched people into space, we can't anymore.
     
  17. towards Relax...head towards the light Registered Senior Member

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    China has proven to be a nation that one cannot easily "work together" on any project that requires sharing technology. They have a national policy that clearly states that stealing intellectual property is in their own best interests.
    Finally, this is a government that has made huge economic strides in the last few decades, but few real political changes. This is not a nation that other countries should be rewarding with joint projects like space exploration.
     
  18. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    Maybe not, but when you are talking about the world economy, money talks. As their population becomes accustom to a higher standard of living they will be in the same boat as we are. Clearly they won't want to lose anything that's providing that new standard of living. That does include the rest of the world does it not? Anyway, we need to be able to live with them in some productive way. Over the next few decades I think their government will be changing quite a bit and if we play our cards right, those changes could favor a better world environment. But I don't think I'll be holding my breath anytime soon.
     
  19. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    I think we SHOULD have a colony on the moon as well as on mars, just in case something smacks into the Earth or a biological agent wipes us out - we'd have humans as well as all the samples needed to restart civilization again. We are getting to the stage where the means to create viruses that can wipe out billions is within the grasp of nearly any nation with two brain cells to rub together.

    Everyone is worried Iran will "get the bomb". Big deal. It's big bomb, not that big though. A genetically modified virus OTOH is seriously dangerous and we've made them. Just this year N1H1 was made airborne "to see if could be done". Well, it could. Even the researchers stated: Yes, if this got out, it could potentially kill hundreds of millions of humans". That was published THIS YEAR.


    We need human colonies JUST in case the worse of the worse happens. To worry about money seems a bit trite and short-sighted. We wasted trillions on Iraq and Afghanistan. TRILLIONS. We should have been building on the moon base and working towards Mars colonization.
     
  20. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    Someone is going to be first and the U.S. is starting to drag it's feet. Establishing first moon base will be very prestigious for the country doing it. They have a lot to gain by being first, so if they can do it they should.
     
  21. fedr808 1100101 Valued Senior Member

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    I fail to see what the big gain is...
     
  22. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    How would things have changed for us if Russia put a man on the moon before we did?
     
  23. garbonzo Registered Senior Member

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    Its so obvious. And also the mining. But I have a question. Wont mining effect the moons orbit or the tides or something? If we mine the asteroid belt, will that effect our solar system?

    Wont it cost more money to sent the cargo to Earth than the ore it has inside?
     

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