China Manned Lunar Landing 2017

China plans to beat the U.S.back to the Moon, at least according
to the following report.

"http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2005-11-04T111450Z_01_YUE440395_RTRIDST_0_SCIENCE-ENERGY-SPACE-CHINA-DC.XML"

China has plans for a 25 tonne to LEO launcher, but no plans
that I've heard of for a 100 tonne vehicle. Perhaps the lunar
effort will be fully EOR?

There was a report earlier this week that Shenzhou 8,9,and 10
would be launched in rapid succession and dock together to form
a kind of space station.

- Ed Kyle

Ed Kyle,
They only need to efficiently coast something into the ME-L1/EM-L2
sweet spot and then manage to hold onto that position, as that's a
better claim than landing upon the moon and, being 60,000 some odd km
away from the highly reactive moon is certainly a whole lot safer.

A purely robotic station-keeping platform of any sort that's taking up
the one and only mutual gravity-well position for establishing the
LSE-CM/ISS is a good thing to be doing for Earth-science as well as
moon-science. Too bad we're not smart enough to have accomplished this
as of four decades ago.
~

Kurt Vonnegut would have to agree; WAR is WAR, thus "in war there are
no rules" - In fact, war has been the very reason of having to deal
with the likes of others that haven't been playing by whatever rules,
such as GW Bush.
Life upon Venus, a township w/Bridge & ET/UFO Park-n-Ride Tarmac:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
The Russian/China LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Venus ETs, plus the updated sub-topics; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm

In article . com,
"Ed Kyle" wrote:

China plans to beat the U.S.back to the Moon, at least according
to the following report.

"http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=200
5-11-04T111450Z_01_YUE440395_RTRIDST_0_SCIENCE-ENERGY-SPACE-CHINA-DC.XML"

Hey, that's pretty interesting news. China does not have as much a
record for announcing and then cancelling projects as, say, Japan or
Russia (though this could be because they don't have as much of a record
in space at all). They've also shown a fairly practical approach to
developing their space capability. And I do believe that they desire
the respect that being the second country to the Moon would bring.

Even if we are unwilling or unable to engage in another Moon race, I
wonder whether Russia or Japan might do so. Japan in particular has a
very deep rivalry with China, and has recently elected a very strong,
popular leader -- a situation very analogous to the U.S. under JFK.
They also have a long (though only moderately successful) history of
space ambitions. I could imagine the shame of China beating them to the
Moon being unacceptable to the public, enabling them to pour a large
fraction of their GNP into trying to get there first.

China has plans for a 25 tonne to LEO launcher, but no plans
that I've heard of for a 100 tonne vehicle. Perhaps the lunar
effort will be fully EOR?

That'd be a sensible way to do it.

There was a report earlier this week that Shenzhou 8,9,and 10
would be launched in rapid succession and dock together to form
a kind of space station.

Good practice for the sort of EOR that might be needed for a lunar
mission.

I also dig the lunar telescope which they're already planning to deploy.
I hope they put it on the far side, with relay satellites or towers for
communication -- we'd be looking at some actual lunar infrastructure
then. I'm not a huge fan of science as a driver for space development,
but I wonder how things might change here when China is delivering
important cosmological observations that our own scientists can't match?

Best,
- Joe

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Interesting article there. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

I wonder though if China has the political will to follow through on
this plan. For example, witness the secrecy that surrounded their first
manned launch. How much would Chinese space launch have been set back
if that mission had failed due just to the political face saving? I
have no real concerns about the technical feasibility of the Chinese
effort. But will the political leaders stand by it when something
politically embarrassing occurs (eg, a very public fatality in space
or a rival gets a key goal first)?

Remember the USSR also had similar ambitions on the Moon. Ultimately,
they backed out despite their supposedly greater acceptance of risk
than the US equivalent. And NASA is the master of diminishing
expectations in space.


Karl Hallowell

Try this:

Google the newspaper name,
and the quoted expert,
and see if the picture gets any
clearer.

I'll share my own findings in a day
or two, I've had to keep my media
advisory private for a short while.

JimO

On Fri, 04 Nov 2005 20:33:23 GMT, "Jim Oberg"
wrote, in part:

Google the newspaper name,
and the quoted expert,
and see if the picture gets any
clearer.

The quoted expert appears to be a real Chinese rocket expert.

And the newspaper is a real one in China, so we don't have to worry
about a reporter from there whipping off his glasses, and then
correcting Einstein's algebra or detecting ancient Egyptian forgeries,
or doing other super-human deeds...

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
http://www.quadibloc.com/index.html
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In article ,
Joe Strout wrote:
Hey, that's pretty interesting news. China does not have as much a
record for announcing and then cancelling projects as...

They haven't announced this one. The guy quoted is a lunar scientist, not
a spacecraft engineer and *not* a politician; his last pronouncement,
three years ago, was that China would have a space station by 2005. This
*isn't* an official government announcement.

And what you're reading is a translation of a press report. Heaven knows
what he actually said. Note, in particular, that the Western media have
*repeatedly* confused Chinese announcements of plans for *unmanned* lunar
missions with manned ones. The specific goals he mentions -- a telescope
and measurements of soil thickness and He-3 content -- are not at all
unreasonable for an unmanned lander.

Wishful thinking in the West about Chinese intentions and capabilities in
space has reached truly amazing heights in the last few years.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

So far I had understood the plan for the Moon in China was two have an
orbiter, then a lander and then a sample return mission, the third one
being before 2020. So I am confused.

Now a human mission in 2017. Isn't there a possibility of bad
transmission of information or translation and 2017 would be the date
for the robotic sample mission ?

Otherwise I will only believe in such information when I see
construction starting for a Saturn/N-1/Energia class launch pad...

In article ,
John Savard wrote:
Google the newspaper name, and the quoted expert...

The quoted expert appears to be a real Chinese rocket expert.

No, he's a Chinese lunar scientist. There's a big difference.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

In article ,
(Henry Spencer) wrote:

In article ,
Joe Strout wrote:
Hey, that's pretty interesting news. China does not have as much a
record for announcing and then cancelling projects as...

They haven't announced this one. The guy quoted is a lunar scientist, not
a spacecraft engineer and *not* a politician; his last pronouncement,
three years ago, was that China would have a space station by 2005. This
*isn't* an official government announcement.

Doh! I didn't get that from the article. Thanks for the clarification.
I see that the sensitivity on my B.S. detector needs an adjustment.

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