Posted on 12/16/2013 8:18:38 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Explanation: A new desk-sized rover has begun exploring the Moon. Launched two weeks ago by the Chinese National Space Administration, the Chang'e 3 spacecraft landed on the Moon yesterday and deployed the robotic rover. Yutu, named for a folklore lunar Jade Rabbit, has a scheduled three-month mission to explore several kilometers inside the Sinus Iridum (Latin for "Bay of Rainbows") impact crater. Yutu's cameras and spectrometers will investigate surface features and composition while ground penetrating radar will investigate deep soil structure. Chang'e 3 achieved the first soft Moon landing since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 in 1976, and Yutu is the first lunar rover deployed since the USSR's Lunokhod 2 in 1973. Pictured above, Yutu was imaged from its lander yesterday soon after rolling onto the Moon.
[Credit: Chinese National Space Administration, Xinhuanet]
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“And it as promptly set upon by De Blasios new squeegee mean.”
Yeah, but it’s stamped “Made in China,” and has stopped working already. No warranty. Wal-Mart won’t take it back.
But you can’t buy lunar rovers that cheap without Chinese workers and their substandard labor laws. Are you willing to pay a billion dollars for a lunar rover instead of a few million?
The Chinese threaten freedom of the seas and the US Navy rushes in to ‘do what they do’.
The Chinese threaten air passage over open seas and the US Air Force does, too.
The Chinese land a rover on the Moon and NASA...
...posts its picture on its website.
This offends me (can’t believe I’m alone here).
Maybe someday NASA will remember their glory days, stop playing fringe politics (this goes for former astronauts, too), stop peddling bad science and once again make a nation proud.
(lacking national leadership is, of course, a major problem here)
Wow, China - yutu?
You aren't alone here, not by a long shot. I could write several editorials, meaning, I suppose, this offends me on so many levels I'm left speechless.
In a Moon-science forum, hours ago, I had the effrontery to add to my comments the fact that the PRC is run by a totalitarian Marxist state, suggesting this simple fact as one reason why they had been "stingy" with their images, data, etc. To this day, I added, "in Beijing, when you call information, you better have some."
One wag liked my comments but said "can the politics, no one wants to hear about that..."
Sorry, I said, but no. That's the elephant in the room that starry eyed folks, especially in the bubble world of scientific academia, would like to skip over. But, no. Not I.
The technology that jump started this program and their ballistic missile accuracy was bought for a mere $2 million donated to the DNC back in '96.
These are communists, a one-party bureaucratic monster. Theirs is the model, not the Europeans, this administration hopes to form out of the "chaos" of American freedom.
Stopping here, because, you can imagine, I could go on and on...
So... no, you're not alone in being unimpressed with what is still "Red China," a nation which owes its success (from its beginning) to the United States...
Spot-on, but you neglected the stealing of all the other tech they continue to ‘acquire’ and use/develop throughout their economy/military.
Preaching to the choir, obviously...
I was so steamed I just couldn’t draw the words to comment further than what I wrote.
I have an idea for a so-called ‘photoshop’; I might work/post that later in a new thread under vanity.
Yutu...not named for the plane that Francis Gary Powers was flying on May 1, 1960, over the Soviet Union, as far as I know.
:’)
Naturally, jade would enter into it.
Thanks Prospero. That’s some nice sharp images of the surface details.
Yeah, a little. NASA has been transformed into a paper-pushing make-work classic pork-barrel. I’ve been known to discount the value of the ISS — which should have been “Space Station Freedom” as President Reagan called for — and that boondoggle ate up almost the entire NASA budget because the Shuttle was required to launch the modules.
The Shuttle was an amazing machine, and I very much doubt that any spacecraft will ever have that number of years in service again, at least in the chemical propulsion era. But it was an orbital vehicle, and for the same money the US could have launched four or five times as many missions to orbit, used iterations of the Apollo-era boosters to put up a space station with more capability (and much more quickly — the last Saturn V put the entire 150 ton Skylab into orbit in one shot), and used that big booster for missions beyond Earth.
Could be worse, it could end up on cinderblocks and missing its wheels!
The main problem is, the rover rolls out, circles the lander a few times, and rolls back in!
After thirty minutes no less.
The shuttle may have been a budgetary boondoggle, but it was OUR boondoggle. From a public impact standpoint, saving Hubble was probably its greatest accomplishment, something only a manned vehicle could have done at the time. Ironically it took a boondoggle to salvage what would have been another massive boondoggle. Nevertheless, I personally think Hubble was the single most important inspiration to get into science that I had growing up. I’m sure many other young scientists in my generation would agree.
Beyond the major scientific discoveries it has made, I think the intangible benefit of influencing education is even more important. It’s been more effective, and more important, than Jimmah’s entire bloated US Department of Education. Now, if you want to talk about a REAL boondoggle... Just think, every year the US Department of Education spends several times more money than Hubble has cost over its entire lifetime, all servicing shuttle launches included. What have we got to show for it? A completely broken education system. At least Hubble still works...
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