6 ms·

Why China is fixated on the Moon

32 points by poissonpie 13y ago

girvo 13y ago
Who "owns" our Luna? Seriously, if China did decide it was economically feasible to mine it, are the resources theirs for the taking, or do we have international treaties defining things, similar to Antarctica (although that's also up for debate...)
- jamesbritt 13y ago
  Well, there's this: http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/SpaceLaw/moon.html http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/SpaceLaw/moon.html Enforcement is another thing.
  - loceng 13y ago
    I wonder if the moon could be the start of WWIII.
  - andyjohnson0 13y ago
    From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Treaty#Ratification http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Treaty#Ratification - "As of 2013, only 15 states (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Uruguay) have ratified it. France, Guatemala, India and Romania have signed but not ratified it." The only country in the list with a current space capability is India.
- jotm 13y ago
  There's the Moon Treaty, but technically, it's first come, first serve - if the Chinese figure out how to mine the moon, they can just go do it unless the other countries step in and stop them.
- Raphmedia 13y ago
  Who "owned" the continent of America when it was "discovered"? Same here... execpt this time, there is no need for a genocide.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
ams6110 13y ago
Getting to the moon is not a technology challenge (we've shown it can be done with 1960's era technology) it's a financial one. It's hugely expensive. I'm not sure how you "exploit" the resources of the moon when it's entirely cost-prohibitive just to get there and return.
- vanderZwan 13y ago
  > it's entirely cost-prohibitive just to get there and return. On the other hand, the scientific advances required to solve that issue would probably have wondrous consequences even for transportation that doesn't leave the planet.
- adventured 13y ago
  China is the only country capable of conquering that financial challenge. Next to using SpaceX + robots, China is the only entity that can build something on the moon. It helps that they have both the industrial base (as America did in the 1960s), cheap labor and are ascendant on wealth. Once China masters the basics I believe they'll find it much easier than most expect to build a small colony on the moon. Many people may die in the process, but that's likely to be a sacrifice they're willing to make (which many countries would not be). If you're willing to fail a lot more often - resulting in deaths - you can reduce costs significantly and expedite the timeline. The Soviets demonstrated that in many ways space can be brute forced if you're less worried about death. Strap people to rockets and shoot them at the moon, many will make it there intact.
  - kgabis 13y ago
    The Soviets demonstrated that in many ways space can be brute forced if you're less worried about death. Strap people to rockets and shoot them at the moon, many will make it there intact. Not really. "By space program, 18 NASA astronauts (4.1%) and four Russian cosmonauts (0.9% of all the people launched) died while in a spacecraft." [0] [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_acc...
- gaius 13y ago
walid 13y ago
So is it time to start taking photos of the moon before the image seen from earth completely changes. Every time I read about the moon and mars I think about how humans are going to change the environment after living there for a while. The moon also happens to affect nocturnal life on earth, which means it will end up being an environmental issue too.
- hrkristian 13y ago
  By the time we'll be able to actually destroy our moon or send it off, I'm pretty sure we'll also have the tech to just borrow one from one of the other planets. Personally I would love Europa, but our distance to the sun would no doubt melt it.
- tokenadult 13y ago
  Nothing done by human beings to earth since Homo sapiens began walking on earth is visible from the moon, so it is doubtful that anything about the appearance of the moon will change in your lifetime or the lifetimes of your great-grandchildren. See http://what-if.xkcd.com/13/ http://what-if.xkcd.com/13/ for just how large the moon is and how limited earth resources are for even reaching the moon.
  - walid 13y ago
    Although your point about earth isn't completely true (night lights are very visible from space and we don't have photos from before space missions), the thing that concerns me is whether mining Helium 3 from the moon will affect the terrain's reflectivity. Helium 3 will simply be scooped off of the surface and while only small amounts of it are needed I don't exactly know how little will the impact on the moon be. Remember that the moon is many times smaller than earth so the comparison is apples and oranges.
- jerf 13y ago
  "Every time I read about the moon and mars I think about how humans are going to change the environment after living there for a while." There is no environment on the Moon. Can't 100% guarantee that for Mars but it's still the smart bet. Repeat that as often as it takes to understand it. In the way most people mean the term, there is NO environment on the Moon. There is NO environment on the Moon. There is not a SINGLE LIVING THING on the Moon. If you want to be a Moon environmentalist, then you should be in support of Human growth onto it, because until that happens, there is no environment on the Moon to even become "changed". Unless you really are in favor of some right for literal rocks, utterly lifeless, sterile, dead, unconscious rocks with absolutely 0 probability of any of that changing to remain "undisturbed", there is no current environmental concern for the Moon.
tokenadult 13y ago
This fixation on the moon in a country with stark poverty for most of its rural majority is a sign of China's tyrannical government. The government is seeking glory for the ruling party rather improvement of the daily lives of the common people. (Yes, I do read Chinese and I have been to China more than once and I have been studying China's national policies since the 1970s.) I wish there were a higher percentage of participants on Hacker News who have both thorough knowledge of the language and culture and regular access to the Chinese press and mass media to comment on stories submitted here about China. I especially wish that more of those participants were old enough to have direct personal memories of the Cultural Revolution period and personal travel to both sides of the Taiwan Strait. The article kindly submitted here reports the thoughts of a British space scientist (not a Sinologist): "He believes China could have astronauts on the lunar surface by 2025." I will make a testable prediction here, which I hope all of us live to see confirmed or disconfirmed. China will not have astronauts (the Chinese term is "taikonauts") on the lunar surface as part of a Chinese national space mission by 2025. (By contrast, I think it is barely possible, but not particularly likely, that an international space mission with a crew from several countries may return astronauts to the lunar surface by that year.) As China democratizes, which is something I fully expect to happen between now and then, China will readjust its national policy priorities. The big priority for China in the next decade will be opening up the political system to more dissent and more effective participation by the masses, especially the rural masses who make up the majority of the population, and avoiding the "middle-income trap" of economic growth stagnating while China is still a relatively poor country on a per-capita basis. China has a lot of issues to work on that are a lot more important than putting taikonauts on the moon as part of a Chinese national space mission.
- wisty 13y ago
  They're cancelling the pointless one child policy. Hukou's will go at some point in the near future, which will help a lot of the rural majority (most of the working-age ones live in big cities, but only semi-officially). So they are taking some steps in the right direction. Just as long as they don't have to give up any power. > avoiding the "middle-income trap" of economic growth stagnating http://i.imgur.com/flymMWZ.png http://i.imgur.com/flymMWZ.png - if they can avoid a crisis in the next 2 years, I'll be surprised. On the whole moon thing ... it's 10 billion a year for 10 years. From this article (http://www.tealeafnation.com/2013/04/a-breakdown-of-chinas-trillion-dollar-budget/ http://www.tealeafnation.com/2013/04/a-breakdown-of-chinas-t...), China spends about 150 billion (US) per year on defence. And a truly ungodly amount on "payments of unspecified or unknown purposes", by local governments.
jds375 13y ago
While China certainly has other things it should be working on (poverty, hunger, pollution, etc.), I think that the Chinese view this as a "coming-of-age". As China works to build its image as a superpower, it needs to be capable of other great feats beside economic prowess. Space exploration has always been one of the ways nations do this (read: space race). Sure, China is a bit late to the game... But better late than never.
marincounty 13y ago
I hope we have spies in place. They never play by the rules. NQ mobile is a perfect example.
cygwin98 13y ago
This scene somehow reminds me of one of my favorite old DOS games -- Civilization I. Ａ lot of you may share the same good memory. In the game a number (up to six) of civilizations/nations compete, you control one while the computer AI takes care of the rest. The game would end should one of the two goals achieved: 1. One civilization/nation conquered/destroyed all others 2. One civilization/nation managed to assembly a spaceship and launched it to fly to the closest Solaris -- Alpha Centauri The first goal seems easy and tempting to follow, but turns out very difficult. In the end, to win the wars over those nations that often have huge cities (20plus) and perfectly armed with numerous tanks and battleships, you often resort to nukes to take them over. In more difficult levels such as deity level, it's very likely your populous cities get nuked. After a short while, I started focusing on building spaceships instead and had a few wins and felt better that way. In retrospect, it may reflect the believing of the designer Sid Mier's, whom I totally agree with and respect for. Following the same spirit, we as human beings might as well put our inner conflicts aside and target the space instead.
znowi 13y ago
I'm glad the Chinese go for it, for whatever reasons. It's a net gain for everyone, technology or socially-wise. I'd rather see funding for the moon program or new exciting probes rather than dozens of useless companies like Buffer.
ChuckMcM 13y ago
It is pretty clear that any country that has their own access to space is stronger than a country that does not. It provides a strategic advantage if you can freely put satellites up, it provides a military advantage if you can freely put people and satellites up. If you are competing with someone who can freely access earth orbit, then you can only have the upper hand if you can freely access the moon. Stations on the moon can take out anything in earth orbit, and they can take out places on the Earth by just throwing large rocks at them. A lunar rock attack can be as devastating to a city as a nuclear attack, with no fallout and no long term radiation risk. And you have a nearly infinite supply of rocks on the Moon. Thus any nation that can establish and maintain a permanent presence on the Moon, and build the facilities for throwing chunks of the moon at any particular point on Earth, Will have overwhelming military superiority over any nation that cannot do that. Up to this point, the US has been the only country with the economic strength and technology to pull that off. That we did not do that, reflected more on the fact that we did not need to, rather than we could not. If you are a foreign policy wonk, China getting a permanent moon base with manufacturing capability makes Iran developing a nuclear weapon seem insignificant. There are many nations in the 'nuclear' club, there are none in the 'moon' club.
- chj 13y ago
  Interesting, but ridiculous. Why build such a moon base when you could easily fly in a spaceship and destroy it without the effort of actually landing and building on moon?
  - ChuckMcM 13y ago
    Ok, follow that line of reasoning for a bit. In order to destroy a Moon base, you have to get to it to destroy it. That takes time, up to several days if you don't have a favorable launch window from your launch pad. Next you need a pre-text. I'm going to assert that it is a reasonable assumption that the Moon base is presenting as either entirely docile (scientific research etc) or entirely hostile (sending rocks at the planet). If its the latter taking out the handful of launch facilities is pretty straight forward which prevents any future attack from that vector. If its the former, well your attacking country needs to come up with a reason why they are flying what is no doubt a nuclear warhead, in the guise of a satellite toward the Moon. Then there is terminal control (targeting at the site). So you may know in general what facilities are on the Moon from an initial landing point, but if the base has existed there for any length of time all bets are off. Also making the initial establishment on the dark side would force an adversary to first orbit the moon trying to identify your base, and then de-orbit into an attack orbit. During its orbit your attack device will be vulnerable to orbiting defensive satellites which probably also play the role of communications relay which justifies them in lunar orbit in the first place. My point is that mounting an attack on the Moon from the Earth is much more difficult and expensive than mounting an attack on the Earth from the Moon. Because the moon has a much shallower gravity well and the Earth has a much wider variety of targets which are more easily threatened. The US and Soviets understood this although the technology to implement it was so expensive neither could afford to carry through. The cost of the technology has come way way down and once again there is another country putting its hat in the ring as 'superpower.' In a weird way, that means someone is going to the Moon, to create a permanent installation. My thought is that the US is like the hare in the story of the tortoise an the hare, confident in its ability to make that happen if it becomes necessary.

32 points by poissonpie 13y ago

girvo 13y ago

Who "owns" our Luna? Seriously, if China did decide it was economically feasible to mine it, are the resources theirs for the taking, or do we have international treaties defining things, similar to Antarctica (although that's also up for debate...)

jamesbritt 13y ago
Well, there's this: http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/SpaceLaw/moon.html http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/SpaceLaw/moon.html Enforcement is another thing.
- loceng 13y ago
  I wonder if the moon could be the start of WWIII.
- andyjohnson0 13y ago
  From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Treaty#Ratification http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Treaty#Ratification - "As of 2013, only 15 states (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Uruguay) have ratified it. France, Guatemala, India and Romania have signed but not ratified it." The only country in the list with a current space capability is India.
jotm 13y ago
There's the Moon Treaty, but technically, it's first come, first serve - if the Chinese figure out how to mine the moon, they can just go do it unless the other countries step in and stop them.
Raphmedia 13y ago
Who "owned" the continent of America when it was "discovered"? Same here... execpt this time, there is no need for a genocide.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

ams6110 13y ago

Getting to the moon is not a technology challenge (we've shown it can be done with 1960's era technology) it's a financial one. It's hugely expensive. I'm not sure how you "exploit" the resources of the moon when it's entirely cost-prohibitive just to get there and return.

vanderZwan 13y ago
> it's entirely cost-prohibitive just to get there and return. On the other hand, the scientific advances required to solve that issue would probably have wondrous consequences even for transportation that doesn't leave the planet.
adventured 13y ago
China is the only country capable of conquering that financial challenge. Next to using SpaceX + robots, China is the only entity that can build something on the moon. It helps that they have both the industrial base (as America did in the 1960s), cheap labor and are ascendant on wealth. Once China masters the basics I believe they'll find it much easier than most expect to build a small colony on the moon. Many people may die in the process, but that's likely to be a sacrifice they're willing to make (which many countries would not be). If you're willing to fail a lot more often - resulting in deaths - you can reduce costs significantly and expedite the timeline. The Soviets demonstrated that in many ways space can be brute forced if you're less worried about death. Strap people to rockets and shoot them at the moon, many will make it there intact.
- kgabis 13y ago
  The Soviets demonstrated that in many ways space can be brute forced if you're less worried about death. Strap people to rockets and shoot them at the moon, many will make it there intact. Not really. "By space program, 18 NASA astronauts (4.1%) and four Russian cosmonauts (0.9% of all the people launched) died while in a spacecraft." [0] [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_acc...
gaius 13y ago

walid 13y ago

So is it time to start taking photos of the moon before the image seen from earth completely changes. Every time I read about the moon and mars I think about how humans are going to change the environment after living there for a while. The moon also happens to affect nocturnal life on earth, which means it will end up being an environmental issue too.

hrkristian 13y ago
By the time we'll be able to actually destroy our moon or send it off, I'm pretty sure we'll also have the tech to just borrow one from one of the other planets. Personally I would love Europa, but our distance to the sun would no doubt melt it.
tokenadult 13y ago
Nothing done by human beings to earth since Homo sapiens began walking on earth is visible from the moon, so it is doubtful that anything about the appearance of the moon will change in your lifetime or the lifetimes of your great-grandchildren. See http://what-if.xkcd.com/13/ http://what-if.xkcd.com/13/ for just how large the moon is and how limited earth resources are for even reaching the moon.
- walid 13y ago
  Although your point about earth isn't completely true (night lights are very visible from space and we don't have photos from before space missions), the thing that concerns me is whether mining Helium 3 from the moon will affect the terrain's reflectivity. Helium 3 will simply be scooped off of the surface and while only small amounts of it are needed I don't exactly know how little will the impact on the moon be. Remember that the moon is many times smaller than earth so the comparison is apples and oranges.
jerf 13y ago
"Every time I read about the moon and mars I think about how humans are going to change the environment after living there for a while." There is no environment on the Moon. Can't 100% guarantee that for Mars but it's still the smart bet. Repeat that as often as it takes to understand it. In the way most people mean the term, there is NO environment on the Moon. There is NO environment on the Moon. There is not a SINGLE LIVING THING on the Moon. If you want to be a Moon environmentalist, then you should be in support of Human growth onto it, because until that happens, there is no environment on the Moon to even become "changed". Unless you really are in favor of some right for literal rocks, utterly lifeless, sterile, dead, unconscious rocks with absolutely 0 probability of any of that changing to remain "undisturbed", there is no current environmental concern for the Moon.

tokenadult 13y ago

This fixation on the moon in a country with stark poverty for most of its rural majority is a sign of China's tyrannical government. The government is seeking glory for the ruling party rather improvement of the daily lives of the common people. (Yes, I do read Chinese and I have been to China more than once and I have been studying China's national policies since the 1970s.) I wish there were a higher percentage of participants on Hacker News who have both thorough knowledge of the language and culture and regular access to the Chinese press and mass media to comment on stories submitted here about China. I especially wish that more of those participants were old enough to have direct personal memories of the Cultural Revolution period and personal travel to both sides of the Taiwan Strait. The article kindly submitted here reports the thoughts of a British space scientist (not a Sinologist): "He believes China could have astronauts on the lunar surface by 2025." I will make a testable prediction here, which I hope all of us live to see confirmed or disconfirmed. China will not have astronauts (the Chinese term is "taikonauts") on the lunar surface as part of a Chinese national space mission by 2025. (By contrast, I think it is barely possible, but not particularly likely, that an international space mission with a crew from several countries may return astronauts to the lunar surface by that year.) As China democratizes, which is something I fully expect to happen between now and then, China will readjust its national policy priorities. The big priority for China in the next decade will be opening up the political system to more dissent and more effective participation by the masses, especially the rural masses who make up the majority of the population, and avoiding the "middle-income trap" of economic growth stagnating while China is still a relatively poor country on a per-capita basis. China has a lot of issues to work on that are a lot more important than putting taikonauts on the moon as part of a Chinese national space mission.

wisty 13y ago
They're cancelling the pointless one child policy. Hukou's will go at some point in the near future, which will help a lot of the rural majority (most of the working-age ones live in big cities, but only semi-officially). So they are taking some steps in the right direction. Just as long as they don't have to give up any power. > avoiding the "middle-income trap" of economic growth stagnating http://i.imgur.com/flymMWZ.png http://i.imgur.com/flymMWZ.png - if they can avoid a crisis in the next 2 years, I'll be surprised. On the whole moon thing ... it's 10 billion a year for 10 years. From this article (http://www.tealeafnation.com/2013/04/a-breakdown-of-chinas-trillion-dollar-budget/ http://www.tealeafnation.com/2013/04/a-breakdown-of-chinas-t...), China spends about 150 billion (US) per year on defence. And a truly ungodly amount on "payments of unspecified or unknown purposes", by local governments.

jds375 13y ago

While China certainly has other things it should be working on (poverty, hunger, pollution, etc.), I think that the Chinese view this as a "coming-of-age". As China works to build its image as a superpower, it needs to be capable of other great feats beside economic prowess. Space exploration has always been one of the ways nations do this (read: space race). Sure, China is a bit late to the game... But better late than never.

marincounty 13y ago

I hope we have spies in place. They never play by the rules. NQ mobile is a perfect example.

cygwin98 13y ago

This scene somehow reminds me of one of my favorite old DOS games -- Civilization I. Ａ lot of you may share the same good memory. In the game a number (up to six) of civilizations/nations compete, you control one while the computer AI takes care of the rest. The game would end should one of the two goals achieved: 1. One civilization/nation conquered/destroyed all others 2. One civilization/nation managed to assembly a spaceship and launched it to fly to the closest Solaris -- Alpha Centauri The first goal seems easy and tempting to follow, but turns out very difficult. In the end, to win the wars over those nations that often have huge cities (20plus) and perfectly armed with numerous tanks and battleships, you often resort to nukes to take them over. In more difficult levels such as deity level, it's very likely your populous cities get nuked. After a short while, I started focusing on building spaceships instead and had a few wins and felt better that way. In retrospect, it may reflect the believing of the designer Sid Mier's, whom I totally agree with and respect for. Following the same spirit, we as human beings might as well put our inner conflicts aside and target the space instead.

znowi 13y ago

I'm glad the Chinese go for it, for whatever reasons. It's a net gain for everyone, technology or socially-wise. I'd rather see funding for the moon program or new exciting probes rather than dozens of useless companies like Buffer.

ChuckMcM 13y ago

It is pretty clear that any country that has their own access to space is stronger than a country that does not. It provides a strategic advantage if you can freely put satellites up, it provides a military advantage if you can freely put people and satellites up. If you are competing with someone who can freely access earth orbit, then you can only have the upper hand if you can freely access the moon. Stations on the moon can take out anything in earth orbit, and they can take out places on the Earth by just throwing large rocks at them. A lunar rock attack can be as devastating to a city as a nuclear attack, with no fallout and no long term radiation risk. And you have a nearly infinite supply of rocks on the Moon. Thus any nation that can establish and maintain a permanent presence on the Moon, and build the facilities for throwing chunks of the moon at any particular point on Earth, Will have overwhelming military superiority over any nation that cannot do that. Up to this point, the US has been the only country with the economic strength and technology to pull that off. That we did not do that, reflected more on the fact that we did not need to, rather than we could not. If you are a foreign policy wonk, China getting a permanent moon base with manufacturing capability makes Iran developing a nuclear weapon seem insignificant. There are many nations in the 'nuclear' club, there are none in the 'moon' club.

chj 13y ago
Interesting, but ridiculous. Why build such a moon base when you could easily fly in a spaceship and destroy it without the effort of actually landing and building on moon?
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  Ok, follow that line of reasoning for a bit. In order to destroy a Moon base, you have to get to it to destroy it. That takes time, up to several days if you don't have a favorable launch window from your launch pad. Next you need a pre-text. I'm going to assert that it is a reasonable assumption that the Moon base is presenting as either entirely docile (scientific research etc) or entirely hostile (sending rocks at the planet). If its the latter taking out the handful of launch facilities is pretty straight forward which prevents any future attack from that vector. If its the former, well your attacking country needs to come up with a reason why they are flying what is no doubt a nuclear warhead, in the guise of a satellite toward the Moon. Then there is terminal control (targeting at the site). So you may know in general what facilities are on the Moon from an initial landing point, but if the base has existed there for any length of time all bets are off. Also making the initial establishment on the dark side would force an adversary to first orbit the moon trying to identify your base, and then de-orbit into an attack orbit. During its orbit your attack device will be vulnerable to orbiting defensive satellites which probably also play the role of communications relay which justifies them in lunar orbit in the first place. My point is that mounting an attack on the Moon from the Earth is much more difficult and expensive than mounting an attack on the Earth from the Moon. Because the moon has a much shallower gravity well and the Earth has a much wider variety of targets which are more easily threatened. The US and Soviets understood this although the technology to implement it was so expensive neither could afford to carry through. The cost of the technology has come way way down and once again there is another country putting its hat in the ring as 'superpower.' In a weird way, that means someone is going to the Moon, to create a permanent installation. My thought is that the US is like the hare in the story of the tortoise an the hare, confident in its ability to make that happen if it becomes necessary.