4 ms·

The frustrating aspect for me about CNSA is how little PR they do, at least towards west although I don't think even inside China they are giving that much extr

by zokier 4y ago

The frustrating aspect for me about CNSA is how little PR they do, at least towards west although I don't think even inside China they are giving that much extra info on the missions and their progress. Just compare the media spectacle around e.g. Perseverance rover wrt Tianwen-1. Sure NASA has more material to work with but still we are getting frequent mission updates and almost daily new pics to ogle; meanwhile there are just couple of press photos from Zhurong and barely any news gets around.

yrgulation 4y ago
I’ve noticed that a lot of news about china’s progress is censored, probably so we dont see how fast they are progressing.
- femto 4y ago
  > probably so we dont see how fast they are progressing. The problem is we don't know either way. They could be super advanced, or it could be that they are covering up shortcomings. It feeds into the bigger question of: why do this stuff? If it is to advance human knowledge the results should be shared. It the results aren't being shared it's an exercise in nationalism with limited significance. A similar situation arose in the history of computing. Colossus might have been the first programmable electronic computer, but it is a historical curiosity since it was kept secret until the 1970s. Humanity already had microprocessors by the time it was made public. Despite being a "first" it made little contribution to progress and is arguably of little import. Any secret research program runs the same risk.
  - yrgulation 4y ago
    > If it is to advance human knowledge the results should be shared. It’s easy for us to imagine that this day and age there are no competing civilisations and that every country will wholeheartedly share their progress. I suspect China, as Russia and perhaps India at some point, sees itself as such a competing civilisation. We assume that those times have ended but i think they haven't. In this context China does it for its own benefit. I somehow doubt they are not already either actively probing, or considering probing, mars, the moon and asteroids. Japan does it - we know this thanks to, albeit anaemic, coverage in the western media. If China has even a little bit of respect for its thousands of years of history it knows that the next meaningful territorial and resource expansion is space and it is only natural that it will try to outcompete us. Secret or not from us it makes no difference for china. Colossus may have been secret but the science that lead to its development wasn't and thats more important than the product itself. Just as the uk had fertile ground for developing it and later on for developing many computing advances, China is now creating fertile ground for space tech. We should keep an eye on it, and promote news about their progress, so the average joe will understand that unless we invest even more in space development then we are on track to becoming a secondary civilisation, ridden by debt and petty goals.
  - genocidicbunny 4y ago
    > It feeds into the bigger question of: why do this stuff? If it is to advance human knowledge the results should be shared. It the results aren't being shared it's an exercise in nationalism with limited significance. The point is to advance _their_ knowledge, not to share it with all of humanity. To establish a regular presence in space that they can build out from. If space is the next colonizable frontier, China would surely want to be getting in on the action as soon as they can. It's an exercise in nationalism in the sense that it's meant to advance their national interests, but whether it's of limited significance is for the future to know.
  - FooBarWidget 4y ago
    What do you mean "we don't know either way"? People can visit China and look around. China also sells technology so you could buy stuff and see how it works. They might be "covering up their shortcomings" but why would would they do that if that makes them lose customers? You can't sell technology based on hot air. It doesn't make any sense. What use is technology if you don't widely deploy it and commercialize it? It's not like China isn't one of the biggest trading nations in the world.
  - torginus 4y ago
    What does it mean to 'share knowledge'? Can I get a schematic for an US-based rocket turbopump? Or the schematics of a spacecraft telemetry module? Even if most of the stuff didn't wasn't sensitive in the national security sense, it would still constitute the IP of the companies who developed it.
    - femto 4y ago
      I mean this: "F-1 ENGINE FAMILIARIZATION TRAINING MANUAL" by Rocketdyne https://www.pdf-archive.com/2016/10/21/rocketdyne-f1-engine-manual/ https://www.pdf-archive.com/2016/10/21/rocketdyne-f1-engine-... NASA Technical Reports Server - Telemetry (23103 documents) https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search?q=telemetry https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search?q=telemetry NASA Technical Reports Server - Turbo Pump (2800 documents) https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search?q=turbo%20pump https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search?q=turbo%20pump
      - femto 4y ago
        As an aside, the F-1 manual includes the asbestos [1]! See the image on page 1-44. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33320294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33320294
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  I follow the EV scene closely and the quality and variety of EVs available in China is incredible. Yet most people don’t even know about it.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  It's not so much that this is censored but merely that the reporting on this is very selective/biased. Most news is simply interest driven. Also, the Chinese don't really seem to particularly care how the rest of the world feels about what they do in space. People like Scott Manly and a few others report on rocket launches around the world regularly on Youtube. The last few years China has really stepped up the number of launches. They are at this point not dependent on other countries to get stuff into orbit; or anywhere else in our solar system. I'd not be surprised if the next person on the Moon would be launched there from China. They have multiple unmanned lunar missions coming up in the next few years and several successful missions in the past few years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Program#Upcoming_missions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Prog...
walrus01 4y ago
Presumably there is a great deal more domestic PR in Mandarin and Cantonese in the state run media like the Peoples' Daily and Xinhua.
danieltanfh95 4y ago
you could visit zhihu when it was the top topic for a few days
ncann 4y ago
I've wondered about this as well. I remembered there were tons of news last year or so when their re-entry was "uncontrolled" and could potentially fall on populated areas. The news outlets made an absolute story out of that one, but barely any news about the station itself. I wonder if this is because there isn't enough info provided from the Chinese side in the first place, or if the (Western) news outlets just don't care.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  The latter. Try following western China reporters for a while. You'll notice that a lot of them are only interested in pushing non-stories that portray China negatively, rather than reporting facts. For example a couple weeks ago they made a huge amiunt of noise about Xi being couped. After Xi showed up they simply dropped that narrative and moved on to the next hysteric story. I've been following various journalists for years and journalistic quality seems to decline rather than increase.
carabiner 4y ago
Western media cherry picks negative stuff about China. Or they add their favorite caveat, "Experts say there could be military applications to China's ambitions." Ya, just like every fucking tech advancement in the US?
- beeboop 4y ago
  Western media cherry picks negative things about any country that isn't under the US's thumb. It's wild how much xenophobia US media causes that people aren't seeing, especially around Russia and Russians. Americans think of Russian leaders as awful people while also praising liberal US presidents that have continued death and destruction on foreign countries too.
- zokier 4y ago
  That is very cheap take. Just look at e.g. CNSAs own web page: http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/english/index.html http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/english/index.html or the main producer for space systems: http://english.spacechina.com/ http://english.spacechina.com/ Compare and contrast any content on there to what NASA is providing on e.g. Perseverances mission page: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ I can't even find homepages for Tianwen-1 / Zhurong. That is hardly because "media is cherry-picking negative stuff".

by zokier 4y ago

yrgulation 4y ago

I’ve noticed that a lot of news about china’s progress is censored, probably so we dont see how fast they are progressing.

femto 4y ago
> probably so we dont see how fast they are progressing. The problem is we don't know either way. They could be super advanced, or it could be that they are covering up shortcomings. It feeds into the bigger question of: why do this stuff? If it is to advance human knowledge the results should be shared. It the results aren't being shared it's an exercise in nationalism with limited significance. A similar situation arose in the history of computing. Colossus might have been the first programmable electronic computer, but it is a historical curiosity since it was kept secret until the 1970s. Humanity already had microprocessors by the time it was made public. Despite being a "first" it made little contribution to progress and is arguably of little import. Any secret research program runs the same risk.
- yrgulation 4y ago
  > If it is to advance human knowledge the results should be shared. It’s easy for us to imagine that this day and age there are no competing civilisations and that every country will wholeheartedly share their progress. I suspect China, as Russia and perhaps India at some point, sees itself as such a competing civilisation. We assume that those times have ended but i think they haven't. In this context China does it for its own benefit. I somehow doubt they are not already either actively probing, or considering probing, mars, the moon and asteroids. Japan does it - we know this thanks to, albeit anaemic, coverage in the western media. If China has even a little bit of respect for its thousands of years of history it knows that the next meaningful territorial and resource expansion is space and it is only natural that it will try to outcompete us. Secret or not from us it makes no difference for china. Colossus may have been secret but the science that lead to its development wasn't and thats more important than the product itself. Just as the uk had fertile ground for developing it and later on for developing many computing advances, China is now creating fertile ground for space tech. We should keep an eye on it, and promote news about their progress, so the average joe will understand that unless we invest even more in space development then we are on track to becoming a secondary civilisation, ridden by debt and petty goals.
- genocidicbunny 4y ago
  > It feeds into the bigger question of: why do this stuff? If it is to advance human knowledge the results should be shared. It the results aren't being shared it's an exercise in nationalism with limited significance. The point is to advance _their_ knowledge, not to share it with all of humanity. To establish a regular presence in space that they can build out from. If space is the next colonizable frontier, China would surely want to be getting in on the action as soon as they can. It's an exercise in nationalism in the sense that it's meant to advance their national interests, but whether it's of limited significance is for the future to know.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  What do you mean "we don't know either way"? People can visit China and look around. China also sells technology so you could buy stuff and see how it works. They might be "covering up their shortcomings" but why would would they do that if that makes them lose customers? You can't sell technology based on hot air. It doesn't make any sense. What use is technology if you don't widely deploy it and commercialize it? It's not like China isn't one of the biggest trading nations in the world.
- torginus 4y ago
  What does it mean to 'share knowledge'? Can I get a schematic for an US-based rocket turbopump? Or the schematics of a spacecraft telemetry module? Even if most of the stuff didn't wasn't sensitive in the national security sense, it would still constitute the IP of the companies who developed it.
  - femto 4y ago
    I mean this: "F-1 ENGINE FAMILIARIZATION TRAINING MANUAL" by Rocketdyne https://www.pdf-archive.com/2016/10/21/rocketdyne-f1-engine-manual/ https://www.pdf-archive.com/2016/10/21/rocketdyne-f1-engine-... NASA Technical Reports Server - Telemetry (23103 documents) https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search?q=telemetry https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search?q=telemetry NASA Technical Reports Server - Turbo Pump (2800 documents) https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search?q=turbo%20pump https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search?q=turbo%20pump
    - femto 4y ago
      As an aside, the F-1 manual includes the asbestos [1]! See the image on page 1-44. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33320294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33320294
spaceman_2020 4y ago
I follow the EV scene closely and the quality and variety of EVs available in China is incredible. Yet most people don’t even know about it.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
It's not so much that this is censored but merely that the reporting on this is very selective/biased. Most news is simply interest driven. Also, the Chinese don't really seem to particularly care how the rest of the world feels about what they do in space. People like Scott Manly and a few others report on rocket launches around the world regularly on Youtube. The last few years China has really stepped up the number of launches. They are at this point not dependent on other countries to get stuff into orbit; or anywhere else in our solar system. I'd not be surprised if the next person on the Moon would be launched there from China. They have multiple unmanned lunar missions coming up in the next few years and several successful missions in the past few years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Program#Upcoming_missions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Prog...

walrus01 4y ago

Presumably there is a great deal more domestic PR in Mandarin and Cantonese in the state run media like the Peoples' Daily and Xinhua.

danieltanfh95 4y ago

you could visit zhihu when it was the top topic for a few days

ncann 4y ago

I've wondered about this as well. I remembered there were tons of news last year or so when their re-entry was "uncontrolled" and could potentially fall on populated areas. The news outlets made an absolute story out of that one, but barely any news about the station itself. I wonder if this is because there isn't enough info provided from the Chinese side in the first place, or if the (Western) news outlets just don't care.

FooBarWidget 4y ago
The latter. Try following western China reporters for a while. You'll notice that a lot of them are only interested in pushing non-stories that portray China negatively, rather than reporting facts. For example a couple weeks ago they made a huge amiunt of noise about Xi being couped. After Xi showed up they simply dropped that narrative and moved on to the next hysteric story. I've been following various journalists for years and journalistic quality seems to decline rather than increase.

carabiner 4y ago

Western media cherry picks negative stuff about China. Or they add their favorite caveat, "Experts say there could be military applications to China's ambitions." Ya, just like every fucking tech advancement in the US?

beeboop 4y ago
Western media cherry picks negative things about any country that isn't under the US's thumb. It's wild how much xenophobia US media causes that people aren't seeing, especially around Russia and Russians. Americans think of Russian leaders as awful people while also praising liberal US presidents that have continued death and destruction on foreign countries too.
zokier 4y ago
That is very cheap take. Just look at e.g. CNSAs own web page: http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/english/index.html http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/english/index.html or the main producer for space systems: http://english.spacechina.com/ http://english.spacechina.com/ Compare and contrast any content on there to what NASA is providing on e.g. Perseverances mission page: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ I can't even find homepages for Tianwen-1 / Zhurong. That is hardly because "media is cherry-picking negative stuff".