Posted on 06/27/2012 2:02:57 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The successful launch of the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft has attracted worldwide attention. People in some countries, while approving China's rapid progress in space technology, feel it a shame that their own role in space has largely slowed down. Such responses are generally normal. However, a recent article published by Foreign Policy, "Red Moon Rising," astoundingly depicts China's lunar exploration plan as first step toward a "moon colony."
The author, US professor John Hickman, predicts that Washington is wearing blinders if it thinks the 1968 Outer Space Treaty will prevent a Chinese lunar land grab. He believes Beijing might seek to assert extraterrestrial territorial sovereignty, effectively declaring part of the moon's surface Chinese territory.
The evidence Hickman cites is that Beijing plans to put a man on the moon by 2020, and its space agency has suggested establishing a base on the moon. Hickman comes to the conclusion, "let's not write off a Chinese moon colony as sheer fantasy."
If the logic of this article makes sense, then the US has long occupied the moon, as it landed Neil Armstrong there 43 years ago and planted its national flag. Even if China can put a man on the moon within one decade, it will still be half a century behind the US. US ambitions came much earlier.
In the 1990s, Wendell W. Mendell, a planetary scientist of NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Houston, proposed a detailed plan on building a large-scale moon base. In December 2006, NASA publicized part of its plan to return to the moon. Due to financial problems, the lunar probe project hasn't been put into play yet.
The article, while strongly questioning China's objectives in lunar exploration, demonizes China's plans, and calls for the US government to halt the Chinese ambition. "Unless steps are taken now to stop it, our children might someday look up to the night sky and really see a red moon rising."
This ludicrous, aggressive perspective discloses the distorted mentality of a few Americans facing the rapid rise of China. They actually see the moon, where the US put a man four decades ago, as US territory where other countries can't venture. This is a minority view, but a disturbing one.
Exploring the moon and outer space has been humanity's dream for millennia, and remains a common goal for many countries today. The US should be happy about other countries' space exploration. It should lay out more plans for joint exploration, rather than attempting to prevent other countries' space development plans.
The author is a researcher with the Equinox Institute in Shanghai.
The cheapest way to ship stuff back from the moon to Earth is going to be a mass driver mounted on the moon. The other name for a mass driver?
Railgun.
As in artillery.
As in “we can throw rocks from the moon to hit any point on Earth for damn near no money at all and on impact they will generate more ‘explosive’ force than any ICBM-carried warhead could ever produce - for damn near free.”
Heinlein laid out the basics and the mechanics of it in “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.” The short version is that the moon is the ultimate high ground and there’s no way to intercept such projectiles in a meaningful fashion. And the lunar installation could see any military strike coming a long way off - far enough off to do something about it.
If they can get there and set up a colony, I have no problem with them declaring extraterrestrial territorial sovereignty over any area they can physically control.
They’re doing it, we’re not. I support their efforts as a human being that hopes our species will someday achieve the stars. It would be nice if we could do it, but obviously we need all the money we can borrow or steal to give out food stamps and Obama phones.
AD ASTRA!!!!
They will be trying to stay ahead of the internal chaos that will ensue by marching toward the middle-east to grab enough oil real estate to try and keep their fantasy going.
Why ship stuff back? You take and use what’s there to move outward. You beat Earth’s powerful gravity well.
The Chinese will control the space overhead where advanced countries’ satellites orbit.
You might want to take a sec and read some of the comments after his OpEd.
“The short version is that the moon is the ultimate high ground and there’s no way to intercept such projectiles in a meaningful fashion.”
Yup. First thing I thought of too (having read my Heinlein!). OTOH, I don’t see how we can really object to them putting a station up there if they want to. I mean, on what grounds? “We think you have an aggressive viewpoint and will someday want to lob rocks at us?” True enough, but really, impossible to prove.
The best way to control what goes on up there is to be there ourselves, either on Luna or nearby.
China's preparations for extending force are real, and they more resemble those of Japan than the methodical national strategic goals of what, on paper at least, is still a free people.
The Moon is our world's deep water port to deeper space, and yes its resources. If the U.S. were not considered a strategic competitor, an attitude pioneered by Japan eighty years ago, and was just another "peace loving nation" the author might have a point. But it does, and the world as it will be around 2050 and beyond is being shaped today.
The Chinese are quite open about their goals and methods. We can be like Portugal and pioneer the navigation of "this new sea," only to retreat from influence and the stage of history, or we can be like England, determined to protect our realm, now and in the future.
Its true, the Chinese have just performed their first manual docking, a technique central to the regular success of each of the Apollo surface expeditions forty years ago, and the Space Station paid for with our treasure. and debt. But consider their steady progress. The last soft-landing on the Moon, of any kind, took place in 1976. Though the U.S. today has, after a long drought, a total of five spacecraft in orbit around the Moon at this hour, care to guess which nation, at this hour, is most likely to accomplish the next soft landing there?
You are correct that the author has sketched a false and misleading outline of what the facts and implications are.
Too few understand the situation. It was heartening to read your comments.
Probably not. A lunar base would be the ultimate glass house.
Tungsten rods in orbit probably more economical, although if the PLA follows through, no doubt a military component will be part of any Chinese lunar base.
Rather than scrap the ISS, retrofit it and put it into lunar orbit. That would force us to think moon daily.
Better yet, put the ISS into Martian orbit...
A lunar land grab isn't economical, or militarily worthwhile, otherwise we'd be doing it. China's space program (with Russian built space parts) is intended to inspire their people, and to impress the world.
Good for the Chinese.
We could have done it twenty years ago if our blatantly and infinitely corrupt government weren’t so eager to throw away our hard earned tax dollars buying up votes with social give-aways.
Now we’ve got what we deserve - a Kenyan Moslem-in-Chief and his filthy law-breaking Chicago-style attorney general out to break our public finances with the give-away of all give-aways, putting the United States into debt to our creditors (namely the Chinese) for the next twenty years.
And those collecting the government checks cheer them on.
And why wouldn’t whatever they shoot from the moon burn up on reentry?
Not to mention, we can object all we want and there’s not a damn thing we can/will do about it. Obama has reduced us to “also ran” in terms of space expansion.
Another turd in his “legacy”.
Depends on the whatever.
A typewriter, flung from that height, would burn up. If someone drops a safe on your head, even from the moon, it's going to be a bad day for you.
The point is, the math calculations to be able to hit a specific target, five days in the future, is a bit more complicated than figuring out what shape and weight to use to get an effective artificial meteor.
Has NONE of our FR posters realized how EXPENSIVE it would be to do ANY of these fantastic things they’ve imagined the Chiunese doing?
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