The mission has significance for the Moon race between China and the United States.
See full article...
See full article...
China has completed another impressive robotic mission to the Moon
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
Is there a plan for where potential moon bases would be? In particular, will they be on the far side or near side? I can see the pros and cons of each.
Upvote
2
(3
/
-1)
Yeah, but if you call yourself a "very stable genius"... who would dare argue?
Upvote
11
(13
/
-2)
All those systems you mentioned are bespoke to the mission requirements. Delta v to orbit and the later Mars orbital insertion are probably the most flexible of the requirements, but everything else will depend on specific requirements of the Mars mission.
I don't think we will ever see a ship lift off Mars in our lifetime. Scaling up the Moon mission starts to make logistical challenges that we've barely started addressing off of paper.
Upvote
-13
(0
/
-13)
You joke, but the Cold War was dangerously close to hot when Apollo 11 landed in 1969. The US was fighting in Vietnam, missiles were on high alert. Kissinger was playing games with DEFCON to get the Soviet's attention. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-...04-08/crises-alerts-defcons-1961-1976-part-ii
Upvote
7
(7
/
0)
All I have to go by is the on pic in this article and I dont see it referenced in the article itself, but is there info they cracked it open at the landing site or hauled the whole thing off to a facility before opening it?
Upvote
5
(5
/
0)
This is insulting - Costa Rica doesn’t have army, but they are very proud nation.
Upvote
-1
(2
/
-3)
Ok, I'll bite. What is a "useful place to be" when it comes to manned space exploration if its not the moon? There are some good arguments for Mars being a "better" place to explore, but since the US Government and the PRC are currently funding moon missions and not Mars missions, they seem somewhat moot.
Upvote
10
(10
/
0)
Crying Croc
Ars Praetorian
Well, pure capitalism doesn't exist either. Charles Dickens even wrote about orphanages and poor houses that capitalists had to support by forces of the State. Food for thought...
Upvote
8
(8
/
0)
Crying Croc
Ars Praetorian
Calm down, little grasshopper. Yes, we have gone to all the places you mentioned (and then some). BUT, we haven't been back to the Moon since 1972. So yes, we gotta keep up - if we are still interested in Moon exploration/exploitation - which I believe we are. Especially if our biggest competitor has the same interest too!
Upvote
3
(6
/
-3)
Upvote
-2
(3
/
-5)
Wouldn't that be nice? Ticos seem to have a few things sorted.
Upvote
0
(1
/
-1)
Mars landings are tricky: enough atmosphere to be challenging (like the upper Earth) but not thin or slow enough to just kiss down with retros.
Tsiolkovsky hates our guts, so when you do an orbital insertion, etc, etc, etc, everything needs fuel you gotta bring, unless you're doing curveballs like ISRU. Which would totally change the archimatecture.
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
Any place that brings humanity closer together IS a useful place to be. Besides, how can we fulfill the prophecy of the EXPANSE if we don't have a MOON BASE!
/s just in case...
Upvote
3
(3
/
0)
Any place that brings humanity closer together IS a useful place to be. Besides, how can we fulfill the prophecy of the EXPANSE if we don't have a MOON BASE!
/s just in case...
don't we need the fusion drive first?
Upvote
3
(3
/
0)
No, it's absolutely not. The whole point of the scientific process is results are verfied by duplication. That's how science works.
Yes, it is the best thing. Competition brings out the best in humanity when not done in an agressive way. Scientific competition, the pushing of boundaries to achieve results in a noncombative way is always going to be better than cooperation or we'd have only one set of K-12 schools and one national university, and only one national lab. The competition between the entitites is what makes things go forward, faster. History tells us this.
Upvote
3
(6
/
-3)
Nothing has been published yet! That's where the methods are described. smdh You clearly have no idea how science, peer review, and experimental replication work.
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
Never pictured them as chest-thumpers though. That's something to be proud of.
Upvote
-1
(0
/
-1)
I think that the Epstein drive was invented after the colonization of Mars; fusion drives before that were much less effective. That said, it's inventor did buy his secondhand ship from a Chinese owner, so it looks like the legacy of today's space race is still around then.
View: https://youtu.be/1lS_WxQ3zeU?si=mcEgbfbQv1aYN523
Upvote
9
(9
/
0)
The two aren't mutually exclusive. Parties can compete and cooperate simultaneously. In fact, in order to be be mutually beneficial, that's exactly what has to happen.
Upvote
2
(3
/
-1)
I have a counterexample, where competition was very harmful.
E D Cope and O Marsh were fierce competitors in obtaining Cenozoic and Mesozoic fossils (esp. dinosaurs), and describing and naming them. Besides the fact that their haste may have destroyed some fossils, the rush to publish resulted in a lot of bad taxonomy as everyone wanted to get the naming privileges. That taxonomic mess is still being cleaned up.
Search for the names, “bone wars”, or “gilded dinosaur” if you are curious.
Upvote
5
(6
/
-1)
It basically is, except the different type of connection between parachute and capsule, and the exclusion of retro rocket triggered right before touchdown.
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
Cooperating with another genocidal totalitarian enemy state, Russia, is a gift to Russia. The idea space cooperation is more than political window dressing targeting the desperately naive is hilariously unworldly.
Enemy aerospace programs are not "civilian" activities. Funding enemy armed forces even more than the billions we permit in trade is dangerous not wise. The US has the option to work with the worlds largest democracy, India, instead of India's enemy, China. It can work with the democratic nations of Europe and Asia.
Upvote
-7
(1
/
-8)
Upvote
-6
(0
/
-6)
I don't see that as a counter example. I see that as a byproduct (the taxonomy) being poorly constructed, but the overall work as being beneficial due to the competition. Just because there was conflict over the outcomes of the work doesn't mean the work itself was bad due to competition. My opinion, YMMV. Although the benefits/consequences to all humanity from the work you point out may be less obvious?
Upvote
-6
(0
/
-6)
The race you're talking about was all about being the first to land on the moon, and yes, the US won that race. But all they really accomplished in '69 was a flags & footprints mission. Yes, that was historic, but then they did the same thing 5 more times, and the significance of their achievements dropped more every time they did it. No wonder the general public stopped paying attentiion.
Most of us here have no problem understanding that the 'race' is to do long-term missions and possibly establish permanent outposts, neither of which have been done before. It's not the same race if you're running to a different finish line.
Upvote
7
(7
/
0)
NASA's current relationship with Russia was an insurance policy for the US and its allies, not a gift to Russia. It was a means by which the US government paid rocket experts to not go work for weapons programs in places like Iran or North Korea. It's a bit of a convoluted way to go about achieving that goal, but that's politics for you.
And overall, it has been a very successful foreign policy program for the US. Russian rocket scientists, engineers, and technicians, have remained gainfully employed and have now gotten old enough to not longer be as great a risk for radicalization.
The amount of money transferred from the US to Russia is hardly a dent in the coffers of either country's economy, but the safety that has been purchased was way more cost effective than money spent on the military to achieve similar aims.
Upvote
10
(10
/
0)
Regarding some perceptions among commenters about competition and duplication of efforts ...
Independent replication of results is a key foundation of legitimate science. Having different organizations collect and analyze planetary samples actually helps overall scientific credibility.
Also, science itself is a very competitive enterprise. Being first to make a big discovery is an undeniable motivator among human scientists. In that context, competition also provides essential checks and balances on the quality of scientific evidence.
Independent replication of results is a key foundation of legitimate science. Having different organizations collect and analyze planetary samples actually helps overall scientific credibility.
Also, science itself is a very competitive enterprise. Being first to make a big discovery is an undeniable motivator among human scientists. In that context, competition also provides essential checks and balances on the quality of scientific evidence.
Last edited:
Upvote
4
(4
/
0)
The rush of competition caused the taxonomic confusion. If they had shared samples and worked collaboratively the confusion would have been avoided. I contend that this is a bad consequence of competition, and cooperation would have been better.
As to your final utilitarian argument, I confess it is not obvious to me which of (a) novel samples of lunar rocks or (b) understanding evolution of life in the Mesozoic is greater or lesser ”benefit/consequences to all humanity”. But this is an Ars rocket thread, so that balance of values may be atypical.
And anyway, the utilitarian argument isn’t related to your contention that scientific competition is always better than cooperation, viz.
(my emphasis)
which is what I disagreed with, and still do.
Upvote
4
(4
/
0)
Crying Croc
Ars Praetorian
The moon samples are safely stored inside a container, so no worries about Earthlings contaminating them. We can be sure Chinese scientists/technicians will be opening that container in a sterile environment - just like they did the last time around. As for the capsule potentially contaminating earthlings with Moon baddies, America has already shown that to be of no concern a good 55 years ago!
America - being first - had to be extra cautious (and all). China did a great job to be sure, but it didn't have to learn absolutely everything from scratch - like we had to!
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
Again, its not verification if methods are not shared. You verify an experiment by repeating exactly what was done, not by doing it your own way. Verification argues for cooperation.
Upvote
-9
(1
/
-10)
If China decides to share some of the rocks with international scientists, would a US funded researcher be able to collaborate or would that fall afoul of the Wolf Amendment?
Upvote
3
(3
/
0)
Key challenge there is peacefully. I think that's going to be the big problem in the future.
In terms of the political side -- I've been thinking about the way this lunar return mission was handled versus the way NASA handled the OSIRIS-REx return. I"m not going to call the United States innocent of political jingoism and propganda -- but the CCP operates on a completely different level, because of the personalization of power towards Xi Jinping.
Upvote
-1
(1
/
-2)
The Ukraine is just the first one everyone decided to care about. The US was working with them through Chechnya, Crimea, and Georgia without any issues.
Upvote
-5
(2
/
-7)
Your argument is rather like suggesting that intercontinental travel is stupidly expensive and has binary results, so why bother figuring out a couple of different ways of organizing very complex engineering and supply chain systems to get there?
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
You, sir, win the Internetz today. I wish I could upvote this more than once.
Upvote
-1
(1
/
-2)
Even there. After all, we compete with Japan, with South Korea, with Britain, with the EU and its individual nations, with Australia... Yet we have strong cooperation with all those governments.
Upvote
1
(1
/
0)