China plans three-phase Moon exploration

NewScientist.com ^ | March 03, 2003 | Will Knight

[Willie Green]

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.

China has revealed further details of its plans to explore the Moon - the first unmanned probe could be launched by 2005, say officials. They also hinted that the motivation for the missions is to mine the Moon's resources.

The lunar program, named Chang'e after a legend about a fairy that visits the moon, would be in three phases. First an orbiter would be sent to the Moon, followed by a lander, and then finally a sample return craft.

"We will be able to embark on a maiden unmanned mission within two and a half years if the government endorses the scheme now,'' Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of China's lunar exploration programme, told The People's Daily.

However, a firm timetable for these missions has not been announced and funding has yet to be approved.

Mineral and energy resources

Ziyuan said exploring the Moon "probably holds the key to humanity's future subsistence and development". Chinese officials have previously said that some sort of permanent, most likely unmanned, base could be established on the Moon's surface by 2010.

Furthermore, Luan Enjie, director of China National Space Administration, hinted that China would be interesting in exploiting rare resources found on the Moon's surface.

"The prospect for the development and utilisation of the lunar potential mineral and energy resources provide resource reserves for the sustainable development of human society," he told the newspaper.

However, James Oberg, a space analyst and veteran of the US space program, believes the projects are more about national pride than scientific or industrial exploration. Nonetheless, he says the lunar missions are well within China's means.
 
Head of the queue

"They've already developed the capabilities to operate spacecraft around the Moon and even on its surface," he told New Scientist.

China has so far launched four "Shenzhou" spacecraft in preparation for a crewed mission into space. Such an achievement would make China only the third nation in the world, after the US and Russia, to place humans in space.

Oberg adds that China has set itself a number of ambitious goals. "As with their manned programme, they don't intend to recreate the US and Russian programmes," he says. "They intend to go to the head of the queue in terms of capabilities."

[bert]

For reference see "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert hainlein. The plot involves just such a strategy.

[bert]

....Seeing as how the US sat on its laurels for the past 30 years.....

From an acativist point of view this might be true but....

We have not exactly been sitting on our hands. There was a recent disaster in space that will be written up to experience. We will have learned something just as we have been learning and researching on a daily basis since the last lunar mission. Experience is costly but when challenging the unknown is valuable thing to have around.

Steven J Gould liked to talk about evolution that had punctuated equilibrium. He meant that there are periods of slow steady change interrupted by sudden surges. This is the way I view the space program. There will be a surge when enough of the various parts and pieces now under slow development advance to reach a new critical mass.

I favor quicker, but politically, quicker is probably not possible. Competition from China might help. China is in transition from totalitarian to some different status and a space exploration program might get lost in the change.

[RightWhale]

I personally boxed up parts of the space program when those parts were cancelled shortly before launch. Those parts were carefully stored and no doubt will never see the light of day again. There is a rate of progress that amounts to zero--similar to having a paycheck of a positive nature that barely covers daily expenses: you never get anywhere but older.

[RightWhale]

Sure, time will tell. At the moment China is making good progress and NASA is making no visible progress in certain high-profile portions of its mission. Not to say that NASA can't make astounding advances anymore because NASA absolutely can --if it is suitably tasked and funded.

NASA needs big projects with big goals. We think of Mars as "been there, done that" but when we actually send men to Mars and build a settlement we will feel the difference at the cellular level. Everything will change.