Dang, I was shocked to read China soft-landed on the moon. I consider myself informed of national and inter-national news, but never heard about their moon shot until the Drudge headline yesterday.
Anyone else surprised as I was? Guess they owe it all to Bill Clinton!
Beijing (AFP) - China’s Jade Rabbit rover vehicle drove onto the moon’s surface on Sunday after the first lunar soft landing in nearly four decades, a huge advance in the country’s ambitious space programme.
They want the high ground… And, think about the incredible scientific and engineering advances we made in pursuing goals in space. I am sure the Chinese have the same expectations of rapid progress that will have both military and commercial implications.
So, in parallel with their effort we have spent 4 trillion dollars to stimulate… Nothing. And, we have a spiffy new socialized healthcare system that is working as well as socialized healthcare systems everywhere else, and will cost us trillions more to provide less.
Just think what we could have done with just one or two of those trillions. Perhaps:
Increased the size of our Navy by 50%.
Purchased the original quantity of F22’s.
Established a self sustaining colony on the Moon.
Landed a man on Mars.
Cured cancer?
Hopefully we can get some leadership after 2016 that will restore America to preeminence.
We could easily go back to the moon. We just dropped a rover on Mars. Space is just not a national priority for us anymore. For the Chinese, the moon is a national priority.
And, not to hijack the thread, but we need more F22’s like we need herpes. The Air Force cannot perform it’s Strategic Lift mission in the war they are currently supporting. What are they going to do with F22’s for a war that does not exist? The DoD wastes a lot money. Sending more money to the DoD will fix nothing. The DoD needs to be put on a diet and start counting calories. I am sick to death of hearing $1,000,000 being referred to as “budget dust.”
Easily? How many years?
When that war starts, maybe because we are weak, we won’t have 5 years to build more air dominance fighters. We could easily add more air lift and tankers to my list, it was not intended to be all inclusive. Heck, it took us 10 years to let the contract for new tankers.
The moon is a priority for the Chinese because they intend to be a super power. We have been going backwards since the Soviet Union folded up shop.
What’s impressive is that our private industry would be ahead of China were they not building off of old Russian hardware. I was in Beijing right after they sent a guy into space, and saw the capsule. When I asked my chaperone why all the capsule markings were russian with tags in Chinese over some of them, I was told ‘it’s all Chinese’. Suuure…
We just need to leave industry alone and see what they’ll come up with if unmolested and not taxed to death.
Without an aggressive national level priority shift that focuses on space exploration and superiority be it for economical, scientific, and military purposes our nation will be relegated to the dust heap of history.
It’s shameful that we as a nation do not have a thriving space infrastructure anymore… especially considering the literal crap we waste money on.
I’ve said it in past threads, want to turn this country around atleast economically? Put man on Mars in a decade.
As for the chinese I’m not all that surprised considering it is something they’ve been desiring for some time. Good boost in nationalistic pride for them all the while making us look even more anemic in our present state. The fact that worked is another story lol
So sure, they did what we did 50 years ago. Big whoopie and all…
But the fact they are aggressively getting things done in space is what concerns me. Not unlike the Soviets back in the 60s, they are pressing ahead no matter the cost and getting caught up with the accomplishments we had very quickly. And I don’t believe this is good for our nation as we should be leading the way in space exploration.
We could have/should have had a man on Mars back in the 80s, maybe early 90s. But really, since the Apollo Program, what great feat has NASA really accomplished? STS was a good program that should have been the stepping stone to a full manned space station in the 80s. Space Station Freedom was foregone in a cooperative effort with Mir and later the ISS. Freedom could easily have turned into an orbital launch platform and our further exploration of the Solar System.
Sad fact is we have been stagnant in the space exploration realm since the early 80s and have had really nothing new in the past three decades that hasn’t been done before. New discoveries, certainly, but nothing really new that’s captured the public’s imagination like the lunar landings did. And China is taking advantage of that and progressing rapidly. It’s estimated that a crewed mission to Mars would cost in the realm of $500 Billion. Funny how many of the so called “stimulus bills” have failed in the long run instead of capturing the nation’s imagination by putting that money towards achieving something we can be proud of as a nation and as humanity.
Listening to my short wave last night and caught a English version news broadcast from China… The lander they put on the moon weighs 144 grams according to them… I cannot see how it being that small has very many capability’s. IF, that is the case,(and for all I know they could of ment kilos, instead of grams, but, they did say grams) the analogy of it, to a RC car, may more correct than we know…
I think this is another example of both the decline of the United States and the rise of China. The sad thing is the United States used to be a country that could do big things like win WWII in 4 years, put a man to the moon in under 10 years, build the Panama Canal, etc… Now regardless of what one might think about government healthcare, we are a nation that can’t produce a f***ing website that works in 3 1/2 years. Although I think Obama is a terrible president, what is rarely mentioned by anyone is the drastic decline in basic institution competence in America in the last decade or so.
Also, consider that 40 years ago only national govts had resources to go into space. Now, in the US, space is largely a private commercial venture and the govt only does R&D with no immediate commercial benefit.
I deal with budgets everyday. There is no worse place to send money than to the govt. It will never be well spent. Perhaps the “Decliners” would like to see higher TAXES to pay for more DoD and NASA spending?
You are correct, 40+ years ago it had to be a national endeavor. But not everything is commercially based just yet. Lot of progress on that front though and I wouldn’t be surprised to see additional companies following the lead of Virgin Galactic in the commercial spaceflight realm as it comes along. And actually eclipsing the US Government with manned spaceflight.
And on the second part, how about the misappropriation of funds being re-appropriated instead? Like I said, the stimulus cost almost double what experts agree that it would cost for a manned Mars mission. Now which one will have greater jobs benefits? Sending $500 million to a company that goes bankrupt without repaying its loans or $500 million to a company that already has the technology mature enough for something tangible like the space program? Which one creates more jobs? Solyndra or Lockheed-Martin?
