Why the next man on the moon will be Chinese

The Guardian ^ | 07/02/09 | Alok Jha and David Adam

[KevinDavis]

Since the crew of Apollo 17 returned from the moon in December 1972, no human has ever left low-Earth orbit. Five space shuttles, scores of Russian Soyuz capsules, the International Space Station, and more than 450 men and women have left the Earth since Apollo, but all have been bound to a small shell of space just outside our atmosphere.

[KevinDavis]

Like hell........

[Batman11]

Delivery?

[KevinDavis]

[stboz]

Alla youa moon are berong to us! Make youa speed.

[cripplecreek]

Our space program has become shamefull since we lost our desire to reach further.

[Nervous Tick]

>> Like hell........

Why do you say that?

Thanks to Clintoon, the possess all our technology; thanks to the short-sighted greed of the American consumer, they have all the money they need to do it.

One thing the ChiComs DON’T burden themselves with is pesky safety requirements and such. Therefore they can put up 10 vehicles for what we spend on 1.

Astronaut candidates are more plentiful too — by about 5 to 1. Hey, who needs monkeys when you have poor rural Chinese?

And, finally, they’re ruthless.

I’m not betting against them.

[max americana]

Does anyone know which studio in China will film the moon sequence?

GOOGLE: CHINA SPACE WALK FAKE
#
Did the Chinese fake their space walk? | Bad Astronomy | Discover ...
Antiscience | No.I assume, as usual, you want more info, though!There is a rumor going around that the Chinese government faked their space walk last week.
blogs.discovermagazine.com/.../did-the-chinese-fake-their-space-walk/ - Cached - Similar
#
Bubbles, Reflections and Space Walks… Did China Really Fake It ...
Oct 8, 2008 ... Tracks of seven objects during Chinese space walk. Red tracks are the visual ..... china went to space? yes. the footage is fake? yes. ...
www.astroengine.com/?p=1531 - Cached - Similar
#
Chinese publish tales from space, even before take-off - Times Online
Sep 26, 2008 ... Yet the CCP spends BILLIONS on a space rocket. Ghang Rinpoche , Xining, China. The Chinese probably got the idea of the fake spacewalk from ...
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4826302.ece - Similar

[Popman]

I didn’t Wal-Mart built a store on the moon

What other reason would the Chinese want to go there

[Secret Agent Man]

Seeing that they faked the spacewalk stuff, I doubt it.

[iowamark]

Revealing Neil Armstrong video: “Proof of moon landing hoax!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mouUUWpEec0

[Prophet in the wilderness]

Well, if we ever get a live feed from the China's landing on the moon and see a Walmart flag, we know who sponsored them...

[cripplecreek]

I think rockets all painted up like race cars would be cool.

[Alberta's Child]

Interesting perspective, but a couple of things immediately come to mind as I read this:

1. Why would anyone WANT to go back to the moon? In the case of U.S. space exploration, I'd say the Apollo program provided very little in return for the enormous cost of the endeavor.

2. The Soviet Union -- whose space program was comparable and maybe even superior to ours in some ways during the Cold War -- never put a man on the moon even though they probably had the ability to do so. I wonder if they had a better sense of the "bang-for-the-buck" of lunar exploration than we did.

[dr_lew]

If they were to do it, it would be a magnificent achievement. Most people don’t realize how much harder it is to do than achieving earth orbit. For us, everything came together at one moment in history, with Wernher Von Braun at the center of it.

[Costumed Vigilante]

[dr_lew]

2. The Soviet Union -- whose space program was comparable and maybe even superior to ours in some ways during the Cold War -- never put a man on the moon even though they probably had the ability to do so. I wonder if they had a better sense of the "bang-for-the-buck" of lunar exploration than we did.

They were trying their hardest. They had the lifting power, but that was about it. They didn't have the flexible and innovative aerospace industry that we had. They were just a decade removed from a gargantuan effort to duplicate a B-29 that fell into their hands. Everything was driven from the top, and they had no culture of innovation.

They NYT magazine had the gall, maybe ten years ago, to put on the cover an altered image of an astronaut on the moon next to a Soviet flag. The theme of the cover article was that we ( the USA ) were "better communists" than the Russians, in that all the disparate government and industrial elements worked in concert, whereas the Russians fell into rival factions. Talk about a "left-handed" compliment!

[stboz]

I saw Apollo 11 ascend all the way across the state in Tampa that July day in 1969. I still have the pictures I took off our TV screen, too.

[Alberta's Child]

Very good post. You have better insight into the Soviet space program than I do.

I've always been under the impression that throughout the Cold War the U.S. generally had better technology, while the Soviets had better personnel and were better at doing "routine" space missions. I think this is why they always seemed to be a step ahead of the U.S. when it came to the development of manned space stations in the earth's orbit.

[dr_lew]

I never attended a Saturn launch. Each time I said to myself, “I should go see it,” but I never did. In fact, I never made it to Florida until just last summer.

[SunkenCiv]

An American couple with three children decided to stop after that, because they read somewhere that every fourth child born is Chinese.