Space Race 2: Electric Boogaloo - China's Going To The Moon

[jimmy olsen]

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/dec/30/china-manned-moon-mission-lunar

China plans manned moon mission

Nearly 40 years after Nasa last did it, Chinese space agency announces its 'preliminary plan for a human lunar landing'

    Ian Sample, science correspondent
    guardian.co.uk, Friday 30 December 2011 18.30 GMT
    Article history

The first moon landing in 1969
The US is the only country to have put men on the moon. Photo: Aldus Archive/Nasa/Mirror Syndication International

Nearly 40 years after the cold grey soil of the moon was last disturbed by bounding humans, the lunar surface has become an official destination once more.

Tentative plans to land a man on the moon have been outlined in a document published by the Chinese government that confirms the nation's intention to become a major spacefaring nation. Officials in China have spoken before of their hopes for a crewed lunar mission, but the government document is the first to state the aim as a formal goal for the nation's space agency.

Details of the plan – which would see a human walk on the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in December 1972 – were published in a white paper that serves as a roadmap for the next five years of Chinese space exploration.

It says China will "push forward human spaceflight projects and make new technological breakthroughs, creating a foundation for future human spaceflight", and describes preparations for orbiting laboratories, space stations and studies that underpin "the preliminary plan for a human lunar landing".

"Chinese people are the same as people around the world. When looking up at the starry sky, we are full of longing and yearning for the vast universe," Zhang Wei, an official with China's National Space Administration, told the Financial Times. Chinese officials have not announced a firm timetable, but the mission could take place around 2025, the chief scientist of the space programme, Ye Peijian, said last year.

China's ambitions in space contrast with an uncomfortable hiatus for the US space agency, Nasa, which lost its ability to send astronauts into space with the retirement of the space shuttle in July.

Under proposals adopted by the Obama administration, US astronauts must now hitch lifts into space aboard Russian Soyuz rockets until private US space companies can take on the job. The strategy aims to leave Nasa free to focus on a new rocket to take astronauts beyond Earth orbit, with a mission to an asteroid on the agenda.

China's rise as a spacefaring nation owes much to a steady programme of investment and development that dates back to the 1950s. While the US and Russia are decades ahead in terms of technology and expertise, both nations' space programmes have suffered from changing priorities of successive governments.

"Assuming the Chinese are serious, which recent history suggests they are, then I believe the impact could be game-changing," said Professor Ken Pounds, a leading figure in UK space research at Leicester University.

"Modern communications will allow the experience of operating on the lunar surface to be delivered into the classroom and living room, with enormous socio-political impact around the world."

Pounds added that the scientific – and commercial – potential of a serious programme of lunar research was likely to be substantial, and go far beyond what was achieved with Apollo.

Another consequence of a Chinese moonshot might be to reinvigorate Nasa's vision of human space exploration.

"It is very unlikely the US would not respond," said Pounds. "That could breathe new life into their space exploration programme, which is currently going nowhere."

In 2003 China became only the third country to send one of its citizens into space independently. Yang Liwei's mission aboard Shenzhou 5 was followed by another substantial milestone when Zhai Zhigang conducted the first Chinese spacewalk five years later.

China has mapped the moon from two orbiting spacecraft and has plans for an unmanned lander, a lunar rover, and a mission to return 2kg of moon rock to Earth by 2020. The space agency this year demonstrated in-orbit rendezvous and docking tests between two spacecraft, laying the foundations for the construction of a future space station.

The emergence of China as a spacefaring nation has the potential to threaten US prestige in space, by inspiring a new generation with headline-grabbing crewed missions.

The former chief administrator at Nasa, Michael Griffin, criticised the Obama administration's plans as an admission that the space agency would not be a major player in human missions into space for the foreseeable future.

Speaking before the Senate in 2007, Griffin said he admired China's achievements in space, but was concerned the country would "leave the United States in its wake".

[Syt]

I'm all in favor of putting as many Chinese on the moon as possible.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Meh.  If they're like the Sov's they'll expend a lot of money and trained personnel to get there.

[Eddie Teach]

I'm all in favor of putting as many Chinese on the moon as possible.

One of these days, Alice?

[Syt]

I'm all in favor of putting as many Chinese on the moon as possible.

One of these days, Alice?

Honeymooners never caught on over here. Of "old sitcoms" I watched as a kid I recall Mr. Ed, I Love Lucy, I Dream Of Jeanny, Get Smart, . . . (and I guess I'm of the last generation to have watched reruns of those). Heck, I doubt many people here recall Three's Company or Taxi. Similar with a number of 70s crime shows. Who recalls Petrocelli? Even Kojak or Rockford Files are pretty esoteric these days. A co-worker who's a few years older than me was genuinely surprised that the current Hawaii 5-0 had a predecessor. EVen 80s shows have pretty much disappeared. Trapper John M.D. (ok, 70s/80s)? Cagney & Lacey? Hunter? Booker? 21 Jump Street? St. Elsewhere?

I knew I was old when I got a lot of references to old shows in the early seasons of Family Guy, and friends who were 5, 10 years younger didn't. I felt like Stuntman Mike in Death Proof, where he rattles off the old tv shows he's worked on (which I all knew) and the young chicks just give him a blank stare.

[Habbaku]

Who are they racing with?

[Razgovory]

Slargos.  He's an amazing racist.

[dps]

One of these days, Alice?

Honeymooners never caught on over here. Of "old sitcoms" I watched as a kid I recall Mr. Ed, I Love Lucy, I Dream Of Jeanny, Get Smart, . . . (and I guess I'm of the last generation to have watched reruns of those). Heck, I doubt many people here recall Three's Company or Taxi. Similar with a number of 70s crime shows. Who recalls Petrocelli? Even Kojak or Rockford Files are pretty esoteric these days. A co-worker who's a few years older than me was genuinely surprised that the current Hawaii 5-0 had a predecessor. EVen 80s shows have pretty much disappeared. Trapper John M.D. (ok, 70s/80s)? Cagney & Lacey? Hunter? Booker? 21 Jump Street? St. Elsewhere?

I knew I was old when I got a lot of references to old shows in the early seasons of Family Guy, and friends who were 5, 10 years younger didn't. I felt like Stuntman Mike in Death Proof, where he rattles off the old tv shows he's worked on (which I all knew) and the young chicks just give him a blank stare.

Petrocelli never was even a hit here when it was first on, so I'm surprised you ever got it over there. 

Generally speaking, old sitcoms are still rerun a lot in the US, so most people are still passingly familiar with the.  Old crime shows and dramas, not so much.

[Eddie Teach]

I've never seen The Honeymooners, just know it from all the pop culture references.

[Razgovory]

Better then I love Lucy.

[Ed Anger]

Slargos.  He's an amazing racist.

[Martinus]

I'm all in favor of putting as many Chinese on the moon as possible.

There was a joke like this from a communist era Poland. "Dad! The Russkies went to the moon!" "All of them?!" "No, just one." "So why are you pestering me, you little brat?!"

[sbr]

When I was Christmas shopping I saw the complete set of Greatest American hero, I really wanted to buy it for myself but I held off.

[Ed Anger]

I'm all in favor of putting as many Chinese on the moon as possible.

There was a joke like this from a communist era Poland. "Dad! The Russkies went to the moon!" "All of them?!" "No, just one." "So why are you pestering me, you little brat?!"

[Tonitrus]

This is good.  Soon China can join the U.S. in spending billions to fly a person to a great rock in space (consisting of various unremarkable ores) and then never return there for  40 years.