China Looks To Be Next To Put Man On The Moon

The passing of Neil Armstrong on Saturday appears to be coinciding with a decline in American manned space exploration, as Asian countries develop plans to expand their footprint on the moon and in outer space.

China, Japan, and India have all unveiled aggressive space initiatives in the recent months and years. New Delhi has said it plans to launch the first manned mission by 2016 and a Mars orbiter in the coming years. The Japanese already participate in the International Space Station program and have discussed studying asteroids for potential mineral extraction.

But China has emerged as the most likely successor to the United States and its decades-long dominance in space exploration. The Chinese manned space program began in earnest in 1999 and sent the country’s first astronaut into space in 2003. In, 2008 a Chinese astronaut completed the nation’s first space walk.

Beijing also has lofty plans for the future of its aeronautics program. One of the government’s most recent press releases said they were working towards landing a man on the moon. In a potential precursor to landing a Chinese citizen on the moon, the country will attempt to land a craft on the moon in the second half of 2013. The moon lander is also expected to perform a survey of the lunar surface.

“Nobody knows where the next astronauts on the moon will come from. But I expect there is a good chance that they will be Chinese,” said Morris Jones, an Australian space expert.

“China’s space program is moving steadily forward. If they continue at this pace, they will develop the capability to reach the moon around 2030,” he said.

China’s space agency has also begun taking steps toward the country’s very own space station. A state news agency reported in July that a next-generation rocket engine powered by liquid oxygen was successfully tested.

However, fears of Chinese space dominance may be misplaced—at least for now. The Communist country’s first space docking that was performed this year was perfected by the U.S. in the 1960s.

For their part, the Americans are still making progress in the space race, albeit not as fast as some might like. The SUV-sized Curiosity Rover stands on the Martian surface partially as a testament to NASA’s on-going ability to achieve groundbreaking feats.

NASA is also developing a new ‘megarocket’ that the agency expects to become the backbone of American space exploration for the next few decades. Budget constraints have kept the project to a meager $18 billion, but when completed the rocket is designed to lift 70 metric tons into orbit, three times the weight of today’s most powerful rockets.

By comparison, Beijing has spent a total of $6.1 billion on its manned space program, according to state media reports. Seen as a symbol of Communist Party’s success in turning around the nation’s economy, some experts say that the Chinese space program also has more practical goals.

“Trips to the moon have always involved prestige, but there is also science,” said Jones. “A new trend could involve mining the moon for nuclear fuel. China has made no secret of their interest in this possibility.”

How big would their version of our Lunar Module be? With the legs folded, our LM was a sizable spacecraft. It filled the SLA on top of the Saturn V S-IVB. Currently, China doesn’t have a launch vehicle that could lift a similar spacecraft. Even a scaled down LM would be puching the booster capability. They would then need a seperate launch for the crew. Seems that they have a long way to go before they can even think of traipsing out where we’ve already been.

They are working their way up in launch capabilities, but nobody ever said they had to do everything in one launch. They could easily put the required vehicles into orbit in multiple launches - that was one of our early plans. Spreading the parts needed for a Lunar mission over 2-3 launches would allow them to do a lot more and stay a lot longer.

If we hadn't stopped, we had plans for putting habitats on the moon through unmanned missions. Hell, we even landed one of the Apollos near a previous probe that had been landed. It would be even easier these days to land there. They wouldn't have the computer problems Apollo 11 had when Buzz turned on the rendezvous radar during the landing and crashed the computer.

NASA did this in the Mercury program, and is presently almost ready to do this from private industry. There is a huge amount of technology to develop to go from an Earth orbit spacewalk to a moonwalk.

In the 1960s and 1970s, yes, now it's just a matter of money. The amount of experience and computing power since that time makes things much, much easier. The ability to simulate just about everything takes a lot of risk out of it - NASA didn't throw Curiosity's launch and landing systems together and hoped it all worked out, they went through quite a few years of testing.

Clinton didn't give away all of our rocket secrets. The Chinese will have to develop this technology without cheating.

Actually in the 1990s, the Chinese bought a lot of the "secrets" and technology from the Russians for a bargain price. Not only do they have the technology and computing power that the folks at NASA and the Soviet space program couldn't even imagine, but in one fell swoop, they acquired decades of knowledge from the Russians.

We like to make fun of the Russians, but since 1971, they haven't lost anybody on a mission while we've lost 14 people. Say what you want about Russian engineering, but keeping things simple does make them safer.

There really aren't that many secrets though. This is physics and rocket science (literally) and engineering, not the secrets of nuclear weapons. When the US and the Soviets put men into orbit, the US had only been working on it for about 3-4 years and they were using World War II technology and designs, just scaled up and with newer materials and engines.

Alan Shepard went up in 1961 on what was basically a short-range ballistic missile put into service in 1958, based on the V-2 from the 1940s. The system he went up on had only been around for just a couple of years.

India, England, France, Germany, possibly Brazil, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and quite a few other countries all have people who could setup a lunar program close to NASA of the 1960s, it's just a matter of funding, support, and time. India, China, and the Europeans have more lunar rovers in the works, along with Japan and Russia. Even the UK is working on its own Lunar satellite surveyor, without the help of the ESA.

It is very dangerous to assume that just because the US went from no space program,then a space program based on ballistic missiles that had a range of less than 200 miles, and then a space program that moved toto heavy launch vehicles and landing a man on the moon in the span of 12 years, that it will take a long time for anybody else to do it.

If we can go from no space program to a man on the moon in 12 years with 1940s-1960s technology, then a lot of other nations can do the same in the 2000s with decades of experience with ICBMs (much more powerful than the early Mercury launch systems) under their belts, in addition to the information and experience they've gained worked with others who have space programs.

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