While the US is fighting over the debt, China is planning to go to the moon

[little_monkey]

http://ideas.time.com/2012/01/04/chinas-...-everyone/

[reverendjeremiah]

Yeah..our days of being great are over now, thanks to the Reagan legacy.

We shouldnt have a space program... we should pump that money back into the economy (and right to the rich)
We shouldnt have social security. Lets give that money to the rich to gamble with
We shouldnt have medicare or universal healthcare...lets make it mandatory to buy private insurance from the rich.
Why should we have peace when there are so many oil feilds around... lets pay the billionaires subsidies to sell us oil at inflated prices.
Why should we need good education? The non-rich are lazy, and should be thankful to the inovative job creators (the rich).

[Faith No More]

Canada is looking good from my perspective. Just a three hour drive...

[Anomalocaris]

To be honest, Chinese plan does not set a date for manned lunar landing, which seems to me to be a hedge against a later changing of the mind familiar to NASA. Also, Chinese plan appears to be purely prestige-seeking in style, doing absolutely nothing that has not been done by someone else before, even though by going to the moon at all, they demonstrate the possession of capability to break new ground. This tells me the grandiloquent goal of furthering human space exploration is the last thing on chinese minds. They want only the maximum prestige for the minimum risk and minimum cost, without a single extra dime spent on pursuing genuine exploration.

I don't think the Chinese will be the first to send a man to mars. It does not fit their style. They want to use the paths others have hewn for the minimum cost. They are not interested in hewing a path to where non have gone before.

[reverendjeremiah]

To be honest, Chinese plan does not set a date for manned lunar landing, which seems to me to be a hedge against a later changing of the mind familiar to NASA. Also, Chinese plan appears to be purely prestige-seeking in style, doing absolutely nothing that has not been done by someone else before, even though by going to the moon at all, they demonstrate the possession of capability to break new ground. This tells me the grandiloquent goal of furthering human space exploration is the last thing on chinese minds. They want only the maximum prestige for the minimum risk and minimum cost, without a single extra dime spent on pursuing genuine exploration.

I don't think the Chinese will be the first to send a man to mars. It does not fit their style. They want to use the paths others have hewn for the minimum cost. They are not interested in hewing a path to where non have gone before.

i tend to agree, seeing the history of China prefering to immitate rather than innovate. If American's came up with something, Chinese would backwards engineer it and then find a way to make it for less money.

Im not saying that is always the case, but even at a young age I have noticed that about China.

[orogenicman]

To be honest, Chinese plan does not set a date for manned lunar landing, which seems to me to be a hedge against a later changing of the mind familiar to NASA. Also, Chinese plan appears to be purely prestige-seeking in style, doing absolutely nothing that has not been done by someone else before, even though by going to the moon at all, they demonstrate the possession of capability to break new ground. This tells me the grandiloquent goal of furthering human space exploration is the last thing on chinese minds. They want only the maximum prestige for the minimum risk and minimum cost, without a single extra dime spent on pursuing genuine exploration.

I don't think the Chinese will be the first to send a man to mars. It does not fit their style. They want to use the paths others have hewn for the minimum cost. They are not interested in hewing a path to where non have gone before.

Break new ground? Much of China's technology to put men in space came from the Russians (their capsule is a Russian design). And their computer technology came from the United States.

[Minimalist]

Canada is looking good from my perspective. Just a three hour drive...

Too damn cold.

[reverendjeremiah]

More interested in the Netherlands myself.. would love to spend some time in Iceland.

[orogenicman]

Canada is looking good from my perspective. Just a three hour drive...

Too damn cold.

If global warming continues unabated, that may not be such a problem in the future.

[Anomalocaris]

Break new ground? Much of China's technology to put men in space came from the Russians (their capsule is a Russian design). And their computer technology came from the United States.

That's not the point. Any late comer stupid enough to try to reinvent the wheel is probably too stupid to successfully reinvent anything. Their capsule is not quite a Russian design. It uses the highly effficient Soyuz layout, but is larger in every dimension, and betrays every internal difference that is possible to observe from the outside.

Incidentally, we would have done better to copy the efficient Soyuz layout than repeat the louzy apollo layout. thanks to the separation of orbital working module from the heat shielded crew return module in the Soyuz, the basic Soyuz design offer more working and living space and more instrument capacity at much less weight than Apollo.