I love how the article says we have "de-emphasized" our manned space program as the politically correct way to say we "de-nutted NASA".

Can someone explain the headline, please?

It's a repeating comic scene in the movie "The RIght Stuff". The CIA is always a step behind in telling the President what's going on with the Russians and Space. There's a shot of Jeff Goldblum running down a hall to burst in with old news, everyone else already knows it and tells him to sit hus ass down and stop interrupting the briefing.


As far as the article: key point: The Chinese program is modest but steady, with a long term goal. The US programs are constantly monkeyed with by the fickle wills of changing administrations every 4 years. And that costs us money and progress. I've said much the same for years. NASA can do awesome things if the government would just leave it the fark alone to complete a long terms project. But Congressmembers like to raid it or divert it's funding for defense contractors in their districts, and it's constantly being given conflicting Presidential direction with an attitude of "we have to tear everything up and go with a clean sheet of paper" under each successive administration, lest the previous pres get credit for some accomplishment. They remember the image of Nixon welcoming home Apollo 11 astronauts from Kennedy's program. So if a mission can't be done in 4 years or less, it's generally farked.

Good for china. At least *SOMEONE* is still interested in space exploration. I don't even care that it's most likely driven by military concerns and the desire to 'beat' the west. Honestly, if it's a choice between the current world or one where an actively space-faring china is the dominant superpower, I'd pick the latter. At least in that case we'd be doing *something* to advance the long-term interests of the species.

I love how the article makes a point of noting that china is roughly where the US and russians were in the 60s. That would sound a *lot* more impressive if it wasn't for the fact that the two of us are still stuck in the 80s. Being 20 years behind is a lot less noteworthy than 50, and they'll be passing us up in less than 20 at this rate.

And I'm glad the article lays the blame at the feet of our ever-so-wonderfully-incompetent civilian government. As noted, it's rather hard to actually get anything done when your mandate changes every 4-8 years, plus the fact that we're so in love with wasting all our cash on blowing up brown people rather than spending it on anything useful.

One step closer to the world of Firefly?

1969 - America lands two astronauts on the moon.

2012 - China challenges US by stating they will put men on moon


A little late for a challenge, isn't it? Who starts a race some 40 years after the other side crosses the finish line?

chuckufarlie: 1969 - America lands two astronauts on the moon.

2012 - China challenges US by stating they will put men on moon


A little late for a challenge, isn't it? Who starts a race some 40 years after the other side crosses the finish line?

China, they're playing the long game.

/Of course, Space X will still be ahead of them in 5 years.

considering all the unintended benefits from the space program (pops) it's as if we'd like to guarantee China rockets ahead of us in technology.

Any Pie Left: It's a repeating comic scene in the movie "The RIght Stuff".



Thank you, APL.

chuckufarlie: 1969 - America lands two astronauts on the moon.

2012 - China challenges US by stating they will put men on moon


A little late for a challenge, isn't it? Who starts a race some 40 years after the other side crosses the finish line?

Probably someone who is on the verge of having a functional fusion reactor and is about to claim mining rights to the only nearby source for Helium 3.

FTFA
"the Chinese government on Thursday announced an ambitious five-year plan for space exploration"


Approves

Badmonkey82009: I love how the article says we have "de-emphasized" our manned space program as the politically correct way to say we "de-nutted NASA".

No, it's a way of saying "useless cargo cult".

Asmenoth: chuckufarlie: 1969 - America lands two astronauts on the moon.

2012 - China challenges US by stating they will put men on moon


A little late for a challenge, isn't it? Who starts a race some 40 years after the other side crosses the finish line?

Probably someone who is on the verge of having a functional fusion reactor and is about to claim mining rights to the only nearby source for Helium 3.

Oh of course, that must be it. Never mind the oceans full of deuterium. It must be the mythical, delusional space mining thing.

The Chinese will conclude the same things we (well, the West and Russia) did decades ago. Manned space is a waste. It's a show, a stunt, nothing more. China is just going through the "due diligence" of becoming the next world power. Geeks need to settle down, physics and engineering won't be different in Cantonese. There won't be orbital colonies, offices on the Moon, bungalows on Mars or Wal Marts on Jupiter.

It'll be the same cramped tin can with not very much useful going on. Sure, many papers will be published, a few billionaires will get their equivalent of a "billionaire merit badge" to show off to their millionaire friends.

Get over it, geeks. China is re-living our past. Let them. The future is all about energy, adapting to our new expensive-energy future (you don't think we'll ever see the Concorde again, do you?). It's also about bio-tech and the thousands of little things we'll be discovering about biology.

Space? It's dead. It's nothing but a cargo cult now.

T-Bone42: Can someone explain the headline, please?

This? 5 out of the six symbols in the first quote won't show correctly for me..

chuckufarlie: 1969 - America lands two astronauts on the moon.

2012 - China challenges US by stating they will put men on moon


A little late for a challenge, isn't it? Who starts a race some 40 years after the other side crosses the finish line?

Its like saying Spain won the race to America and the British were just wasters who happened along decades later ....to colonize and use the new found money and influence in their ongoing attempts at conquering the world.

Problem with the moon as we saw this in the form of a sprint instead of the land rush it was supposed to be, and hence signed away the four decade lead.
In terms of present day the Chinese are where the Russians were, and we are behind both of the. With most of our space access capability existing only on paper, it's a serious question if we'll ever re-evolve a lunar access system.

So far as the president has decreed, it's robots only.
I'm actually looking forward to the Chinese landing to see if our political tune stays the same.

way south: Problem with the moon as we saw this in the form of a sprint instead of the land rush it was supposed to be, and hence signed away the four decade lead.

You realize, of course, that the Moon is not even "land"? The driest, coldest and emptiest desert on Earth is millions of times more hospitable and easy to get at. "The land rush it was supposed to be"... Only in the imagination of delusional 13 year olds, maybe. The Space Age was never anything more than a saber-rattling contest built out of WWII technology, yes?

When will you face reality? We have neither the capacity to enable the mass hysterical delusions of the Space Age, and either way, space is empty, cold, deadly and desolate.

Do you have any idea of the amount of technology and resources you take for granted even with 17th century mining technology? NONE of that exists on the Moon. You'd have to totally re-invent every single industrial process (who's gonna pay for that? You?), or bring half the planet with you.

What the hell for?

Quantum Apostrophe: Space? It's dead. It's nothing but a cargo cult now.

exactly the point of my prev post. Space may be dead, but the tangible benefits on earth, aren't.

Badmonkey82009: I love how the article says we have "de-emphasized" our manned space program as the politically correct way to say we "de-nutted NASA".

The line appears to have been intended as a gross oversimplification, but it's completley wrong.


Please don't acknowledge Quantum Apostrophe, folks. He thinks anything other than life extension research is a waste of time and can't be reasoned with.

Quantum Apostrophe: way south: Problem with the moon as we saw this in the form of a sprint instead of the land rush it was supposed to be, and hence signed away the four decade lead.

You realize, of course, that the Moon is not even "land"? The driest, coldest and emptiest desert on Earth is millions of times more hospitable and easy to get at. "The land rush it was supposed to be"... Only in the imagination of delusional 13 year olds, maybe. The Space Age was never anything more than a saber-rattling contest built out of WWII technology, yes?

When will you face reality? We have neither the capacity to enable the mass hysterical delusions of the Space Age, and either way, space is empty, cold, deadly and desolate.

Do you have any idea of the amount of technology and resources you take for granted even with 17th century mining technology? NONE of that exists on the Moon. You'd have to totally re-invent every single industrial process (who's gonna pay for that? You?), or bring half the planet with you.

What the hell for?

For a number of reasons that have been explained to you time and again in the past. But you shrug it off because they don't fit your idea of an 1800's strip mining operation in the sky. Your as bad as bad as the anti science politicians we have now, so I don't see much of a point in going over this again.
No matter since there are a number of rich and talented blokes who get it and will back space colonization once they develope independent systems.

My fear is that the Chinese have also figured it out and will begin to dump state resources into a game where our government is not competing.
Mucking up an otherwise peaceful future in space with their brand of nationalism.

It's like waking up to find the military setting up shop in your farmers market.
Good things won't come of it.

way south : .

My fear is that the Chinese have also figured it out and will begin to dump state resources into a game where our government is not competing.
Mucking up an otherwise peaceful future in space with their brand of nationalism.

It's like waking up to find the military setting up shop in your farmers market.
Good things won't come of it.

Space was never going to be peacefully settled. Eventually, someone will not like what the home country/company is doing, and they will get all independent-cy.

Musk/SpaceX recently commented on the business plan of Mars, about making the cost of a trip to Mars at around $500k. Once this happens, it won't matter what's there or not, people will move.

Whatever QA's problem with space is, once that happens all the complaints fall away, since the reality of the situation is irrefutable.

The way to live forever, Q.A., is to be known for making it possible for your descendants to enjoy all the new resources and opportunities provided by space exploration and colonization.

way south: Problem with the moon as we saw this in the form of a sprint instead of the land rush it was supposed to be

For it to be a land rush, there'd have to be something of value there. The moon just isn't worth it right now. The US's space program, with its emphasis on robot missions, is a vastly more cost effective tool for exploring space. And when we do send humans back out there, they're going to intimately depend on robots for 90% of their survival anyway, unless you think a group of astronauts can run a self-sustaining ecosystem without significant automation.

You can't have any real human presence in space when our spacecraft are little more than pressurized cans. We don't have the understanding of ecology to build a functioning ecosystem that can support human life in a semi-closed system. That's the limiting factor to getting man into space.

For those who have never seen the movie, it was Jeff Goldblum's first role, as a Washington orderly who runs down a hallway. The first time he bursts into a dark smoke-filled room and says, "It's called Sputnik!", and one of the men at the table says, "We know. Sit down." The second time, he says, "They've got a man up there! It's Gregarin!" and is met with the same curt reply. Kind of a running (no pun intended) gag in the movie. I couldn't find the first scene but here's a link to the second (new window).

T-Bone42: Can someone explain the headline, please?



It's a Skyrim thing.

t3knomanser: We don't have the understanding of ecology to build a functioning ecosystem that can support human life in a semi-closed system. That's the limiting factor to getting man into space.

Its a solution that will come with time.
At present life in space is more like life in a submarine than a fully independent system. With time and practice we get better at recycling (and making) air and water, and may pack off with an entire eco-system in a bottle one day... but we don't need that to start.
The real limiting factor is the cost of travel and that was mostly defined by a government, that didn't care about the costs, when it went to the moon. So there is much room for improvement.

That said, we were the first to put boots on the ground and the first to actually survey the land. We are the only ones who knows what is there and have firsthand experience with this situation. We had a forty year head start with this knowledge. But instead of using this information to advance our machinery and better the engineering, we quietly packed it away.
Worse, we signed a land treaty that we soon would have no means to enforce. So now even the little bit of land we touched can have no legal owner.
All for the supposed good of a mankind that is quick to forget who is first to go somewhere in favor of who currently controls it.

It would have been alot easier to enforce our ideals if we were the controlling authority instead of being reduced to bystander status.

Like I said in the "NASA is going down the pan" thread, either get into space properly or be the people that get rocks dropped on their heads. China will not stop or care and will end up ruling everything.

Imagine everybody lives in a big well. The nations in the well fight over the slime on the walls and the pebbles on the floor. One day someone looks out of the well and says "Hey guys, there`s loads of space and stuff out there just waiting to be picked up and used!" and all the nations except one say "Nah, we would rather just fight over the slime on the walls and the pebbles on the floor" These pebbles over here have some oil on them.

The nation that climbs out discovers lots of rocks just lying around that are large enough to crush a hundred men and iron to make machines to lift them and solar power to power the machines so they make everyone in the well their slaves and force them to export the slime and pebbles out of the well (which now has a metal grate covering the top) or else they will drop the rocks on everyones head.

Now one nation lives in the sun with lots of power, food and tech and everybody else lives in a dark smelly well fighting over slime and pebbles (some of which have some oil on)

Who do you want to be?

The end for everybody who didn`t go out of the well....