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China has already launched yet another rover/lander, which actually is a complicated 4-stage system with an Ascent vehicle to get rock samples from the far side of the Moon. Why does it seem like they are moving at good speeds getting things done and we're over here just testing stuff?
China launched its complex and ambitious Chang’e-6 mission Friday to collect the first ever samples from the far side of the moon.
A 57-meter-tall Long March 5 lifted off from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center at 5:30 a.m. Eastern (0930 UTC) May 3, carrying the roughly 8,200-kilogram Chang’e-6 into orbit.
If successful, samples delivered by the 53-day-long mission could change our understanding of the Earth and moon and the history of the early solar system.
Chang’e-6 consists of a stack of four spacecraft that will perform specific roles.
China's sending probes to the Moon, the US is working on sending people to the Moon. A higher magnitude of difficulty.
But good for China...it's not like the US needs to have a monopoly on space exploration.
Unfortunately, all the knowledge which was gained in the early years of Moon landings has now disappeared and been forgotten. Many of the old guard have now long since retired or worse. (gone to the Great Planet in the sky.)
NASA are trying to leapfrog that forgotten stuff and send men & women to the Moon. We have to ask ourselves if a more cautious approach to find out if the old wisdom and knowledge still works, may not be the better way forward.
Unless, of course, we have secretly been doing trips to the Moon and have a Moon Base there already. In which case, NASA still know all about the ups and downs of Moon travel.
Unfortunately, all the knowledge which was gained in the early years of Moon landings has now disappeared and been forgotten. Many of the old guard have now long since retired or worse. (gone to the Great Planet in the sky.)
NASA are trying to leapfrog that forgotten stuff and send men & women to the Moon. We have to ask ourselves if a more cautious approach to find out if the old wisdom and knowledge still works, may not be the better way forward.
Unless, of course, we have secretly been doing trips to the Moon and have a Moon Base there already. In which case, NASA still know all about the ups and downs of Moon travel.
It's not space exploration, but there is a parallel to leading edge technology involved in the complex and demanding process of solid state chipmaking. That's something the US used to have great capacity for domestically from revered companies like Texas Instruments, Motorola and Intel. But they got out of this business years ago and I have read that it would take at least 10 years to re-establish this industry here in the US, and a big part of that long timeline is that the people who new how to do those amazing things are either dead, or retired, or forgot what they knew, and that's before you get to the reality that the state of the art has moved on in the meantime as well.
I think we need to get over the fact that some countries are better than others or have the skills to do one thing better than others. It is only our aggressivity and posturing which makes it necessary to have all of the resources under our own roof.
If everyone played nicely then everyone could buy and sell to each other and the world economy would flourish. It is a control game which is played on an international level - whether it be money, oil, computer chips, water, space exploration or whatever. It reflects the greediness of mankind and wanting to control everything.If money was diverted from military spending to infrastructure development then it could be done in less time I am sure, but that will never happen.
China has already launched yet another rover/lander, which actually is a complicated 4-stage system with an Ascent vehicle to get rock samples from the far side of the Moon. Why does it seem like they are moving at good speeds getting things done and we're over here just testing stuff?
Does it seem that way? Well the US has Juno orbiting Jupiter, Psyche is on the way to rendezvous with an m-class asteroid, Lucy is heading for the Jovian Trojans, the Parker Solar Probe is orbiting the Sun, Ingenuity just finished 72 flying missions on Mars, the Perseverance rover is collecting Mars samples, New Horizons is on the way to a trans-neptunian object fly-by after sending back our first images of Pluto, and OSIRIS-REx is heading for another asteroid fly-by. Oh, and we launched and deployed the JWST, which is telling us a lot about how the universe formed.
But yes it will be very good to get lunar far side samples. They can probably tell us a lot.
The US has never had a successful space program. NASA's only successes came after we took all of the Nazi's scientists and made them citizens. So much of our space programs failed due to government's failure to operate without budget overuns until NASA was gutted by Obama and now our space programs are privatized and outsourced.
NASA has been a huge failure, once China and other countries catches up they will leapfrog our space agency with better efficiency.
The reason NASA and Russia refused to let China participate in the ISA is to prevent China from gaining access to Space station tech which China is building their own space station now. Whatever we block China in doing, they will build their own.
The US has never had a successful space program. NASA's only successes came after we took all of the Nazi's scientists and made them citizens. So much of our space programs failed due to government's failure to operate without budget overuns until NASA was gutted by Obama and now our space programs are privatized and outsourced.
NASA has been a huge failure, once China and other countries catches up they will leapfrog our space agency with better efficiency.
The reason NASA and Russia refused to let China participate in the ISA is to prevent China from gaining access to Space station tech which China is building their own space station now. Whatever we block China in doing, they will build their own.
I'm curious how you define a successful space program. Clearly not one that has landed humans on the Moon or sent space probes to every planet in the system.
China launches complicated 4-stage vehicle to get rocks from far side of Moon
Why? Are the rocks on the far side so different from the ones on the near side? Does China not have access to rocks already collected?
No. China has access to all research already done. They want to claim research that cannot be verified.
I don't believe a word they say. Especially in an instance like this, that makes no sense.
Hey, China!.... Retrieve a rock from Mars. That hasn't been done.
The US' sample return, called MSR (Mars Sample Return) will not occur until 2031.
Why? Are the rocks on the far side so different from the ones on the near side? Does China not have access to rocks already collected?
Yes, the far side is quite different from the near side. For example, the South Pole-Aitken basin, which is the largest such feature on the Moon and is five miles deep. That could provide information not available from surface deposits. The chemical composition of the far side appears to be different: why? Plus there's bragging rights to be had.
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