10 ms·
China prepares mission to land spacecraft on moon's far side
- foobarbecue 8y ago"Its program also suffered a rare setback last year with the dialed launch of its Long March 5 rocket." Failed, I presume.
- saagarjha 8y ago> It may also carry plant seeds and silkworm eggs, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. Is there any scientific/experimental reason for this, or is it just a symbolic gesture?
- varjag 8y agoIt's traditionalist/nationalist symbolism of claiming the greatness, much like Russians hanging up Orthodox icons on ISS.
- lyrachord 8y agoClaim what? NASA landed that point? To do biotic experiment, just a common sense.
- isostatic 8y ago"hanging up" How can you "hang" something in microgravity
- entity345 8y agohttps://www.wired.co.uk/article/international-space-station-leak-hole-drill-what-happened https://www.wired.co.uk/article/international-space-station-...
- varjag 8y agohttps://i.imgur.com/uEnk8gj.jpg https://i.imgur.com/uEnk8gj.jpg
- taneq 8y agoEasier than in full gravity, I imagine.
- jcranmer 8y agoVelcro, I imagine.
- mikro2nd 8y agoDuct tape.
- oh-kumudo 8y agohttp://www.xinhuanet.com/tech/2017-06/13/c_1121136834.htm http://www.xinhuanet.com/tech/2017-06/13/c_1121136834.htm Seems like an experimental attempt to create a "Moon Surface Micro Ecosystem". Not sure how legit it is though.
- gardaani 8y agoAccording to this article, they try to build a mini biosphere: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/13/china-plans-grow-flowers-silkworms-dark-side-moon/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/13/china-plans-grow...
- saagarjha 8y agoHuh, interesting. I'm left wondering whether China has a Planetary Protection Officer, though of course the Moon is barren so it doesn't really matter…
- OscarTheGrinch 8y agoThrow enough bullshit at a problem and something is bound to grow...
- jerf 8y agoIt isn't just barren. It's sterilized of any Earth life that may have happened along every month, which gets up to 250 degrees F (~120 C), and even if something survives that, there's never a window of time in which something like livable conditions obtain, because once out of the sterilizing sunlight the temperature immediately heads for a decent approximation of the average temperature of the cosmos. (Doesn't seem to quite get there, but it's cold enough that you could pour liquid nitrogen on to the ground and it would stay liquid if you held it at 1atm pressure. Dunno about vacuum.) So between the extreme thermal cycling and hard radiation, even Earth's best aren't going to get a foothold up there. This is in contrast to places with a non-trivial atmosphere or standing liquids, which may moderate the environment enough that something could conceivably live. Something could conceivably live on Mars, something that isn't even necessarily that far from some things that live on Earth. Nothing will live on the Moon. You can fling as many gallons of the scummiest pond water you can find from any pond water on Earth on the moon, and you're not going to "contaminate" it with life.
- saagarjha 8y agoI'm sure tardigrades have fared worse and survived, at least for a little while.
- cauldron 8y agoDon't know this time, but Chinese textbooks mentioned the radioactive space environment could cause mutations in the genes, creat new varieties.
- saagarjha 8y agoIs this something they are trying to study, or trying to protect against?
- gus_massa 8y agoYou can do it more cheaply using a radioactive source on Earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding
- narag 8y agoNice: giant worms in a world with scarce water laying in caves.
- illegalsmile 8y agoLet me know when I can buy a stillsuit and then we'll talk.
- ccozan 8y agoTeoretically you learn to build it yourself....
- pavel_lishin 8y agoI have ridden the mighty moonworm!
- thelastidiot 8y agoThere are already hard at work planning for a clothing factory.
- nradov 8y agoI assume it's to provide food for the cane toads. https://www.theonion.com/moon-now-overrun-with-cane-toads-after-species-accident-1830745531 https://www.theonion.com/moon-now-overrun-with-cane-toads-af...
- Symmetry 8y agoWe really, really need more data on the responses of living creates to 1/8g. We've got all the 1g data. We've got a considerable amount of 0g data from ISS experiments. But we just don't know how living creatures respond to lunar or martian gravity. And knowing that will be very important for future colonization efforts.
- cookingrobot 8y agoCouldn’t we get that from a spinning satellite closer to earth?
- mrtksn 8y agoNo, the satellites stay in orbit only because the net G they experience is 0.
- i_am_proteus 8y agoI believe the parent was referring to pseudogravity via rotation ('centrifugal force')-- hence the reference to a spinning satellite.
- mrtksn 8y agoAnd how this related to the proximity to the Earth? I think the OP meant being close to the Earth would result in a gravity due to the proximity.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- melling 8y agoPerhaps we’ll get another Space Race with China. At a point, the United States was spending over 4% its budget on NASA: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/feb/01/nasa-budgets-us-spending-space-travel https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/feb/01/nasa-b... The money would probably be better spent on several projects (e.g. AI, hypersonic flight).
- ohitsdom 8y agoNASA does a lot of work on hypersonic flight. Lots of sources to link to, here's an article from a few years ago: https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/meet-nasas-new-x-planes-quiet-sonic-booms-and-engines-at-the-back/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/meet-nasas-new-x-pla...
- melling 8y agoThat’s Nasa’s quiet supersonic project. Hypersonic is five or six times the speed of sound. It would of course be nice to have both.
- cauldron 8y agoThe tech gap is too big, despite media hype, don't think China can even catch up.
- melling 8y agoSo, you’re saying the world’s second largest economy, soon to be the first, can’t catch up in 10-20 years? The US only spends $20 billion a year on NASA.
- chillacy 8y agoYou can land on the moon with 60s technology, what basis is there for not being able to reach that?
- 2trill2spill 8y ago
- gardaani 8y agoThe lander plans to transmit data to Earth using a relay satellite orbiting at the Earth-Moon L2 halo orbit: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2018/0519-change-4-relay-satellite.html http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2018/0519-change-... The relay satellite included two micro-satellites for the moon, only one of them survived: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2018/20180615-queqiao-orbit-explainer.html http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2018/20180615-que...
- Isamu 8y agoThat Earth-Moon L2 halo orbit is cool, I didn't even know that was a thing. [edit] I mean I was aware of Lagrange points, but not the practicality of the halo orbit. This is a nice explanation: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Mechanics/lagpt.html http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Mechanics/lagpt.h...
- Florin_Andrei 8y agoYeah, it instantly makes sense if you calculate the force at the Lagrange point and notice the vector points back at the exact L point when you're in the vicinity - and then you go, hmmm, looks like it might be possible to orbit that thing.
- acranox 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point
- Isamu 8y agoAn interesting point from that page: >A full n-body dynamical system such as the Solar System does not contain these periodic orbits, but does contain quasi-periodic (i.e. bounded but not precisely repeating) orbits following Lissajous-curve trajectories. These quasi-periodic Lissajous orbits are what most of Lagrangian-point space missions have used until now. Although they are not perfectly stable, a modest effort of station keeping keeps a spacecraft in a desired Lissajous orbit for a long time.
- stencil25 8y agoBut that's where the Mi-Go are hiding...
- point78 8y agoSave these comments for reddit
- leojg 8y agoI really like the Chinese approach to space exploration. They go slow but steady and focus on interesting stuff.
- xrayzerone 8y ago> They go slow but steady and focus on interesting stuff. A trait shared with their social credit apparatus.
- ramos_arian 8y agoRemember, It is made in china.
- bigtech 8y agoI'll see you on the dark side of the moon.
- BurningFrog 8y ago[Adjusts glasses] Actually...
- czbond 8y agoWhen will China publish their own pictures of the satellite dish, cooling tower, and woman on the moon? <snark> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNkmhY_ju8o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNkmhY_ju8o