Posted on 02/27/2004 3:01:27 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
China inaugurated its lunar exploration programme on Wednesday by announcing its plans to send a satellite on a moon "fly-by" within three years.
A leading team with the programme held its first meeting in Beijing on Wednesday to lay out the moon probe's scientific mission and its development schedule, Zhang Tao, an official with the Commission of Science Technology and Industry for National Defence, confirmed Thursday.
Details of the meeting were not immediately available.
But the China National Space Administration said in a statement that the lunar mission is another of China's key sci-tech projects in the wake of the country's massive manned space mission.
Sun Laiyan, deputy director of the space agency, said the moon-fly by satellite will travel to the lunar planet by 2007. It will obtain three-dimensional images of the lunar surface and study its composition.
Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of the lunar exploration project, said Chinese technicians and experts are developing China's first lunar exploration craft, which, weighing around two tons, is projected to orbit the moon for at least 12 months.
The lunar orbiter was named "Chang'e-I,'' an apparent reference to an ancient Chinese legend about the fairy Chang'e who flies to the moon.
In fact, the lunar fly-by mission is just part of a three-phase moon exploration scheme, according to Sun.
After sending a satellite into lunar orbit, China will launch an unmanned vehicle on the Moon by 2010, and scoop up lunar soil and rock samples for return to Earth in around 2020.
Sun described the fly-by satellite project as an important step toward China's exploration of deeper space, and the Moon will provide a good platform from which to explore outward at longer distances.
China will use its Long March III A launch vehicle to launch the satellite, Sun said.
In a related development, Wang Yongzhi, chief designer of China's manned space programme, said last week China plans to send two astronauts up on a five-to-seven-day mission in 2005. It will later build a space station.
SFR
The main purpose of returning to the Moon is to prove we can use it's resources to live off-planet. The realization that we can will forever change space exploration. We will no longer be tied to Earth.
________________________________
Bush's charge to his space commission:
Scope and Objectives: The mission of the Commission shall be to provide recommendations to the President on implementation of the vision outlined in the President's policy statement entitled "A Renewed Spirit of Discovery" and the President's Budget Submission for Fiscal Year 2005 (collectively, "Policy"). The Commission shall examine and make recommendations to the President regarding:
a. A science research agenda to be conducted on the Moon and other destinations as well as human and robotic science activities that advance our capacity to achieve the Policy;
b. The exploration of technologies, demonstrations, and strategies, including the use of lunar and other in situ natural resources, that could be used for sustainable human and robotic exploration;
c. Criteria that could be used to select future destinations for human exploration; Long-term organization options for managing implementation of space exploration activities;
d. The most appropriate and effective roles for potential private sector and international participants in implementing the Policy; and
e. Methods for optimizing space exploration activities to encourage the interests of America’s youth in studying and pursuing careers in mathematics, science, and engineering; and Management of the implementation of the Policy within available resources.
Nobody has ever quite been able to adequately explain the military value of a base on the Moon, it's just supposed to be accepted as obvious.
Consider the mind-boggling expense of actually building silos and whatnot underground on the Moon and supporting them after they're built.
Take that same amount of money (however many hundreds of billions of dollars) and consider that defenses against Earth-based ICBMs are still in their infancy, and think about how many hundreds of mundane earth-based silos or mobile transporter missles you could build for the money to put ONE missle on the Moon.
Or, how many quiet SSBNs each carrying a dozen or more SLBMs could be built, that could get fairly close to US shores and hit us in minutes, that you could build for the cost of one Moon-based missle.
And as you note, anything fired from the Moon would take at least a couple of days to hit Earth.
It fundamentally makes no sense but people have this "Well, the HIGH GROUND must be REALLY VALUABLE" mentality.
So what would that be with the Shuttle? $50K x 32?
With a Russian Proton booster? $2K x 32?
What? $32 per pound to LEO? Seems low.
Price per pound for lunar landing = ?
Anyway, $50K x 32 = $1,600,000.
$2K x 32 = $64,000.
Obviously, we need something besides the Shuttle.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.