The Legacy Of Zheng He

Fox News ^ | May 23, 2002 | Rand Simberg

[NonZeroSum]

I've occasionally gotten emails asking me what I think about the Chinese space program.

Now, I'm prompted to respond,

[NonZeroSum]

An interesting follow-up to the earlier stories about Chinese Moon mining.

[NonZeroSum]

Ping

[RightWhale]

Zheng He's journeys were a failure

The other story is that the heathens followed the ships back to China and they came with weapons superior to what the Empire had. So the voyages were cancelled and isolation implemented to preserve China from being overrun in return.

We would do much the same thing if we find space aliens and they follow us home.

[RadioAstronomer]

We would do much the same thing if we find space aliens and they follow us home.

"Against the Fall of Night" by Clarke. :-)

[RightWhale]

Against the Fall of Night

For reasons unknown, my wife's fav sci-fi story.

[Brett66]

Thanks for the ping. I really enjoy Simberg's articles.

I still believe a likely scenario to occur would be for China to set up a moon base and then abandon it because it's too expensive. Private companies could move in and purchase it at fire-sale prices and we would have a lunar hotel at that point.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

I have often wondered why we and Russia are building a space station rather than putting something similar on the moon. What are the supposed advantages of the space station?

[NonZeroSum]

It depends on what you're trying to accomplish. A space station is a lot less money that a lunar base, all things being equal, and many perceive it as being a step on the way to developing a lunar base.

Now, as it turned out a lunar base could probably have been done much cheaper than ISS (though almost certainly not by NASA), and this space station has almost zero value in supporting lunar activities.

But when all you're trying to accomplish is to maintain jobs at various influential NASA centers and their contractors, it doesn't really matter very much what you do in space, since the goal isn't really to do anything in space...

[altair]

What are the supposed advantages of the space station?

I'll name two. One is delta vee. By the time you get to orbit, you're half way to anywhere. In contrast, you have to expend fuel fighting the moon's gravity twice to go on from a moon base. Two is there are things you can do in orbit that you cannot do in gravity. Mixing chemicals is one example. In gravity you will always have some lossage with the heavier component of a compound tending to go below a lighter component. Another example could be that you could build a spacecraft that never had to land (like the USS Enterprise in Star Trek).

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Thanks for the short, concise, excellent answer.