China yesterday launched its Jade Rabbit rocket to send a spacecraft to a soft-landing on the moon. It was a pretty cool week-end for launches as India also launched a rocket to Mars. I imagine the Las Vegas bookies have low odds for the Indian mission being successful but probably fairly high odds that the Jade Rabbit will accomplish the Moon landing.
People may say China's lunar landing vehicle is just a copy of the U.S. landers which are exploring Mars. What seems more likely is that there are only so many ways to make a lander that works and the generic design of six-wheeled vehicles seems to be sorting out as the most effective.
America once led the space race but then it decided it liked starting wars better. One of the problems with that is wars cost much more.
One thing America could do that would be cool would be to adapt its drone technology to do something more than just this insane Muslim whacking and instead send them into space to eat space junk. There are thousands of things orbiting the Earth and most of the things are junk but no-one ever does anything to fix the problem, instead relying on gravity to eventually pull these objects back to Earth. That's fine if you don't mind waiting hundreds of years and don't mind lots of things being hit in space in the meantime.
People often say we should deal with Earth before dealing with Space but the latter is a trifle relative to wars. Bush spent a trillion in Iraq in a year while it's not likely NASA has spent that much since its inception more than fifty years ago.
I noticed in CNN's coverage of the Jade Rabbit launch that the reporter referred to the 'military-backed' space program in China. Apparently that was supposed to give the idea that America's space program is not military-backed. America has been shooting off military space vehicles from Vandenberg AFB for decades.
It will take about two weeks before Jade Rabbit is in position to try a landing on the Moon so it looks like the Chinese are trying for the Neil Armstrong Effect in staging a landing around Christmas time. What the Chinese care about Christmas is anybody's guess but it will still be a cool thing to see.
People may say China's lunar landing vehicle is just a copy of the U.S. landers which are exploring Mars. What seems more likely is that there are only so many ways to make a lander that works and the generic design of six-wheeled vehicles seems to be sorting out as the most effective.
America once led the space race but then it decided it liked starting wars better. One of the problems with that is wars cost much more.
One thing America could do that would be cool would be to adapt its drone technology to do something more than just this insane Muslim whacking and instead send them into space to eat space junk. There are thousands of things orbiting the Earth and most of the things are junk but no-one ever does anything to fix the problem, instead relying on gravity to eventually pull these objects back to Earth. That's fine if you don't mind waiting hundreds of years and don't mind lots of things being hit in space in the meantime.
People often say we should deal with Earth before dealing with Space but the latter is a trifle relative to wars. Bush spent a trillion in Iraq in a year while it's not likely NASA has spent that much since its inception more than fifty years ago.
I noticed in CNN's coverage of the Jade Rabbit launch that the reporter referred to the 'military-backed' space program in China. Apparently that was supposed to give the idea that America's space program is not military-backed. America has been shooting off military space vehicles from Vandenberg AFB for decades.
It will take about two weeks before Jade Rabbit is in position to try a landing on the Moon so it looks like the Chinese are trying for the Neil Armstrong Effect in staging a landing around Christmas time. What the Chinese care about Christmas is anybody's guess but it will still be a cool thing to see.
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