Soooooo China landed on the moon on Saturday, thoughts?
Now China, much richer and stronger, aspires to become a globally respected power, and the government sees a major presence in space as a key to acquiring technological prowess, military strength and sheer status.
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NASA's budget is some paltry $19 billion per year and federal research grants total about $60 billion per year. The fact that there are several hundred billion dollars of waste, fraud and abuse in our federal government is just sickening. We could double NASA's budget and substantially increase federal research grants if we could get government waste under control.
With all that said, China is still far, far behind NASA in space exploration--the U.S. has rovers on Mars and is planning a manned Mars mission for the 2020s. In addition, U.S. private space exploration is rapidly advancing and will be really what takes space exploration into the next level. Now China can join modern civilization and participate in space.
About damn time. Only like 45 years late.
Did you know that: our military spends more money on air-conditioning...than it does for the entire NASA budget. You have to keep that military industrial complex cash a flowin'.
The military industrial complex is a major contributor to advanced technology, just as NASA is. It's also one of the rare things the government does that is within its Constitutional authority. No complaints from me about the military industrial complex. But there is a ton of pork in the military budget--military spending is highly (non-partisan) political, which is totally absurd. They'll literally throw hundreds of millions of dollars down the tube because a powerful Congressman or Senator can obtain pork for his or her district or state.
//www.youtube.com/embed/8y06NSBBRtY
An army general and president, the ultimate insider and yet people don't understand.
I am happy for China, but one must ask why a county with so many people living in poverty and with rampant pollution needs to spend some much time and money going to the moon, something that has been done decades ago. I mean I understand that China is communist and misallocates resources, but it strikes me as sad to celebrate something like this when you have so much smog you cannot even breath city air.
Oh well. As for NASA's budget, while I agree it should be much higher, we already have private industry taking over. I mean look at how wasteful we've been in the past and now you have Musk revolutionizing the industry. Plus, what are we going to really spend on? We've been to the moon, have a space station, have rover after rover on Mars. We need advancements in technology to really make going to Mars feasible.
There's a lot that can be done on the moon. There are literally dozens of trillions of dollars in value on the moon. There are enormous resources on asteroids. Our space station is crumbling (I think the article said it would be completely decommissioned within the decade). I love how private industry is filling in the gaps, but there is so much out there that NASA can do. Instead of importing a bunch of illegal aliens without any skill sets, I wish we were importing German, Israeli, Russian, Japanese, etc. scientists.
China's ultimate goal for its space program is twofold: 1) weapons and 2) mineral mining. I wish the U.S. would see China's challenge, as precocious as it is, as another space race to galvanize the public and Congress behind the endeavor of exploring the cosmos.
We already have plenty of military satellites plus a remote control mini shuttle so I am not worried about China's 40-50 year late rover. As for minerals, yes, I agree, but we haven't reached peak mineral yet. No sense paying out the ass to mine the moon when you can still get earth minerals easily. China would be better off focusing on reducing pollution in its cities instead of thinking about moon mining.
And yes, I agree with you. Educated immigrants are being screwed by this entire illegal immigration topic. Plain fact is we need less uneducated people, American or otherwise. If you get a dress from a US college we should make it easier for you to stay.
This is China's Lloyd Christmas moment haha
I think one area we might want to budget more money is the identification of asteroids on a possible collision course for Earth. If one actually was on course and we found out about it early enough we could def do something to slightly knock it off it's path.
It's cool to think about Earth beings finally evolving past the point of an asteroid ending all life on the planet since that was probably the reset button on this planet in the past.
Lets all not forget that the DoD is busy doing shit in space. I think we have a lot more going on than people know about. Lets all focus on Mars and not worry about the moon. While it is cool, that shit is old news. We are quickly getting to the point where going to the Moon could be a commercial, private enterprise endeavor.
Meanwhile on planet earth....
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-13/chinas-extreme-smog-for…
yeah we are breathing behind your neck... only 50 years later 一般一般，世界第三
Hahaha, 还真是世界第三
would you say the same about arsenal fc?
"Cute."
An "unmanned probe" landed on the moon. We've been landing "unmanned probes" on Mars for the last 40 years. Glad to see the Chinese are catching up to where the US has been for ages. When they land a manned vehicle there, you can color me impressed.
I think it's more of a prestige thing more than anything. It doesn't have to do with scientific research or even 'proving' their technological ability. It's about putting something on the moon, which is still an achievement in and of itself.
If you want to be concerned about shit China's doing, Spratley islands is where it's at.
Why? What is China doing concerning the Spratly islands?
This article is worth a read. This was the same deal that saw the standoff with the USS Cowpens.
http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/10/27/south-china-sea/
US needs to spend more money on NASA and less money on military stuff, cut the fat. China needs to spend less dough on outer space and more bacon on inner space, such as having breatheable air for instance.
Agreed. You know something's messed up when China proposes a ban on coming shellfish from California due to pollution, when the cause of the pollution was China in the first place...
NASA Funding Idea: Bi-yearly or yearly lottery for one citizen to go up into space for a week. Not sure how much they could charge per lottery ticket, but I think everyone would buy at least one.
I like it.
This is fucking brilliant. If lotteries can fund schools for rich neighborhoods, they can sure as shit fund space exploration.
Ha, you do realize that not everyone can just go to space right? It requires a lot of training and fitness and stuff. Man, it almost makes me think that you didn't even see Gravity, but then I realize that's just too outlandish.
Winner must meet certain health/fitness requirements (no fat chicks). Training will be minimal for non-essential personnel. Basically, just stay in the cabin, float around, do cool things, and shit in a vacuum toilet. If a monkey can go to space, I'm sure a 30yr old guy from a trailer park in Georgia with no education can, too. Then again, some monkeys can read.
We were landing on the Moon before we had color TV......I think we're still just a tad bit ahead of China.
This is just one step closer to the possibility of an iPhone factory on the moon. #progress
A future in which impoverished workers are contracted out for years at a time to work in factories on the moon... Paid just enough to survive and send money back home, but not enough to break out of their rut... with Justin Timberlake
I will say that it would be a diplomatic coup for NASA, CNSA, Russia Federal Space Agency and for the European Space Agency to combine efforts into one unified force. It's pretty ridiculous that CNSA, for example, is sort of wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on studying the Moon's surface and geography when we sort of already know this stuff from decades of probes, pictures, landings, etc. Space exploration is so ridiculously expensive--the last thing mankind needs is redundancy.
I say combine all the government space agencies into one unified force of science and exploration and let the private companies figure out ways to monetize the universe.
The ironic thing is that the U.S. flags on the Moon are now all white
LIES. It was filmed in a movie studio in Honk Kong. (sarcasm)
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