Moon Base Alpha by digital painter Jon Hrubesch
Posted on 05/29/2023 10:12:11 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Weeks after Russia's former head of the Roscomsmos space agency cast doubt on the US moon landing in 1969, China announced plans to put a person on the moon by 2030.
Moon Base Alpha by digital painter Jon Hrubesch
In a Monday announcement, Lin Xiqiang, the deputy director of China’s Manned Space Agency, said that the CCP's moon landing project - part of the country's broader Lunar Exploration Project (Chang'e Project, named after the Chinese moon goddess) - had only "recently" been kick started. The project seeks to eventually enable short-term stays on the lunar surface, as along with the collection of samples and other research, The NY Times reports.
Chinese scientists have previously nodded at a 2030 goal in a less formal capacity; for example, the chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program said last month that a 2030 landing would be “no problem.”
The Monday announcement came at a news conference to mark the liftoff of three new astronauts on Tuesday to China’s new space station, which was completed late last year.
A manned lunar landing would be a major milestone for China’s, and the world’s, space exploration: No human has been on the moon since the United States’ Apollo missions in the 1960s and ’70s. And it could mark a significant achievement for China in its burgeoning competition with the United States in space. China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has said that the country should become a “great space power.”
The announcement follows one by NASA, which announced a plan to put a team on the moon by 2025 as part of the (repeatedly delayed) Artemis program.
A painting of a prospective future lunar colony by artist Rick Guidice for NASA
Both Beijing and Washington want to build research stations on the moon, and to land people on Mars.
The Times frames the announcement as a point of contention between the US and China, echoing the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
NASA’s administrator, Bill Nelson, has said that the United States should “watch out” for Chinese attempts to dominate the lunar surface and keep Americans out. A Pentagon report last year warned that China could overtake American capabilities in space by 2045. -NY Times
China has accelerated its space program in recent years, and is currently the only country (known) to have landed anything on the moon in the 21st century. The CCP also landed a lunar probe on the moon's far side for the first time in history in 2019.
If the moon is next for humans, it might be a good time to bone up on your Heinlein.
Careful, China. You never know what's up there!
It should be our moon, American territory. We should destroy any Chinese craft seeking to go there. Okay, probably can’t and won’t do that, but too bad we didn’t capitalize on our moon landings so many years ago.
60 years late.
With any luck, we’ll be there to greet them, and they can stop by our lunar gateway space station orbiting the moon on the way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program
Of course by 2030, it’s questionable whether either the US or Chinese economies will support such efforts.
For centuries Chinese sailors roamed the seas, reaching as far as the east coast of Africa and up into the Red Sea. Then about 1450 A.D. the Confucian bureaucracy prohibited all such exploration on the grounds that it did not benefit the Emperor enough to justify the expense.
Now the roles are reversing, (unless our private space ventures bear fruit and aren’t cancelled by our own selfish leftists).
So, they did not specify whether the guys they put on the moon would arrive dead or alive?
Or, be able to come back?
Buzz Aldrin says we didn’t go to the moon.....
When did Buzz say we didn’t go to the moon?
Does anyone else find it out that it has been 50+ years since we have gone to the moon and today we are told we need to develop new technology to get back?
There is still an international treaty which says no one can own the moon. Besides, you only own what you can defend, and while China has been going forward with its space program, we’ve been going backward the last 50 years.
Black astronaut says lunar mission will be ‘major accomplishment’ in American history
If you take my class’ picture — the eight of us that were selected — and you put it next to the next smallest class, the original Mercury Seven, they chose the same [type of] person seven times.
It was seven, white, male, military, English-speaking test pilot Christians, that were the same height, weight, roughly. I mean, they were all about 37 years old.
And so my class was four men, four women, racially, gender diverse, different backgrounds, scientists, engineers, military officers, and some pilots. So, it’s a sign of progress. We should continually take steps forward.
It took almost 5% of the entire national budget to reach the moon in 1969, so that two people could run around a few hours collecting rocks and come right back again. It just needs to be cheaper.
That would be about $240 billion today or 20% of one of the COVID stimulus aid packages that were passed by congress. In all honesty it would be even less as our budget has exploded and we fund far more things today than we did in 1969.
Exactly my thought. They are going to waste billions to do it but there is no reason to do so. In the meantime they have failing banks to prop up, aging workforce, and that pre-war budget.
We should encourage the chicoms to waste as much money as possible on this boondogle, and even offer to provide our 1969 technology.
Let’s send every last diverse person to space, works for me.
And I guarantee you that treaty means nothing if and once China gets there. All you have to see is “their” islands.
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