Suck it NASA
Posted on: December 16, 2013 - 11:30pm
Offline
Suck it NASA
By Amina Khan
December 16, 2013, 5:44 p.m.
China’s Chang’e 3 spacecraft successfully touched down on the moon and deployed the "Jade Rabbit" rover, and now the pair have now sent their first images back to Earth.
The color photographs, which the rover and lander took of each other, elicited applause from the engineers at Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center.
~
The landing is the first soft landing on the moon since the Soviet Union sent the sample-collecting Luna 24 mission in 1976.
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-china-chang-e-3-lunar-rover-yutu-moon-20131216,0,5735654.story
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
- Login to post comments
Perhaps China is doing something right that the USA and Canada are not doing(what could it possible be?). The USA is too broke from entitlement/pension payouts to have a much of space program(without borrowing from China). US schools don't produce enough Engineers and technical people either.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
Yeah, China is trying. The US isn't. Hasn't been since Challenger. The US isn't too broke to have a space program worthy of mention, it doesn't care to. Cut the defence budget by 0.0001% and give that money to NASA, and clean NASA up so most of its budget isn't wasted on bureaucracy, and you'd be able to build a base on the moon and a colony on Mars within 10 years.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
in the '70s the US decided to switch its focus from long-distance rocket travel to the space shuttle (which cannot make long journeys), orbiting objects like space stations and satellite telescopes, and probes. if we hadn't done that, we would have been on mars by now.
the road the US has taken is not nearly as glamorous as building lunar colonies and human exploration of planets, etc., but it's probably allowed us to know more about the universe than we would have otherwise and it's definitely a more efficient means of finding things out.
i read a review a couple years ago of an alternate history novel where kennedy survives his assassination attempt and continues to pour money into the apollo program and scraps the idea for the space shuttle. apparently, the conclusion of the book is that, sure, we would have had men on other planets for a long time by now, but we would actually know less about thoae planets than we do now because our probes and telescopes are so much more suited to discovery than human explorers.
planetary bases, etc., are sexy and good propaganda, but they're not necessarily the best way to get scientific work done.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
I doubt you could find a single archaeologist who would say the rovers and satellites at Mars have done a fraction of what a few teams of people could have done.
There's also nothing to prevent taking both paths at the same time, except funding. We could easily have a base on the moon and be setting up a colony on Mars without sacrificing a single discovery.
But most important is our species survival, and sending probes into space isn't going to do anything to ensure it. Only sending people will actually give us a better chance.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.