China lands Jade Rabbit robot rover on Moon

wildespace
Here's the video of the rover rolling out:

awesome. Thanks for posting this.

I used to not want to get involved in these space exploration threads, but I have one question and I am sure it has been posed.

All the things that we have as a nation as well as the other capable space exploring nations accomplished with our space programs, that are always looking to expand and unfortunately exploit in some cases natural resources, rare resources, the moon, that untouched frontier until the 1960's as it stands was left virtually untouched, WHY????

Now suddenly you have the Chinese 40 plus odd years later finally landing something on the moon, looking for ways to mine, as though this is truly a new frontier and there is something left untouched by the great pioneers and explorers that we as Americans usually follow up completely on until there is nothing left to find or discover.

I am not all into the conspiracies of whether or not we landed on the moon and why we have not been back, is there something wrong with the picture here ? I mean you would think if groundbreaking with bootprints, hoopla , dancing, carrying on with golf clubs etc, making all these grand one liners, by the astronauts so many years ago, seemed to be the beginning of something huge , but despite all of the landings by human beings on the surface nothing has materialized as far as we are being told that wouldn't amount to much of anything to gain for us here on the planet.

Now here are the Chinese with a rover ? looking for ways to mine ?

Either they did not get the memo, that there is nothing to find here, go away or there is a room full of individuals quaking in their boots about what the Chinese may actually find...

I dunno, this does not make a lot of sense, at least to me, excuse me for pondering out loud in the thread, but at any length, at least, good luck to the Chinese on finding something that the other two super powers could not in all these years that we might be able to actually benefit from, especially after all of the money spent to get there.

reply to post by scotsdavy1


Good for China. Congrats.

reply to post by phinubian


Good points . Thanks. Even if there is nothing to find up there, I still think going to the moon has more value for mankind than skipping it and starting with mars instead. Think about it. They can practically run their rovers in real time up there with just some minor delays in transmission time. Thus they can test out all their new generations of rovers and even future tech there, like robots and stuff like that. It just takes days to deploy them.

Instead of ignoring the moon all these years, the Americans could actually have had a manned moon base up there already, thus allowing them to be light years ahead of other nations building telescopes, listening stations , solar power plants and launch sites or whatever . They could also have gotten valuable knowhow in how to terra form other planets as they could have used the moon for testing and experiments. Instead they chose to build some silly space station orbiting Earth , which practically has no value to anybody at all. I can’t quite figure out this ignoring of the moon thing. It doesn’t make any sense. I am trying to see future space exploration from many points of view. However. It all boils down to one thing, and that is that the most logical thing is to start with the moon.

I am aware everything has a price though, but it seems to me that the technology that always arise in the aftermath of these kind of projects, always seems to make up for it. Now we see the Chinese there instead. It sends mixed signals. I can’t help feeling that the Americans are doing a great mistake by ignoring the moon. Within a few decades we could see a Chinese moon base. I don’t think everyone would actually like that taught.

phinubian
... the moon, that untouched frontier until the 1960's as it stands was left virtually untouched, WHY????

Now suddenly you have the Chinese 40 plus odd years later finally landing something on the moon,

Your story that the place was abandonded until "suddenly" the Chinese came back today is simply not true.
Looking through the lists of missions since people left the moon in 1972 there have been (at a rough count, depending on how you define them)
19 orbiters
6 landers
1 rovers
And that includes 3 sample return missions.
5 different countries.
There are currently 4 different missions in orbit around the moon (LRO,2xARTEMIS,LADEE ), not counting (Chang'e 3).

...and then "suddenly" the Chinese came back today.

Western indolence and Cold War mentality is allowing the Chinese to catch up, fast.

reply to post by iLemming

Um...no.
Not really. The US landed men on the Moon in 1969 (according to my calcs, 44 years ago). And brought them back.

phinubian
or there is a room full of individuals quaking in their boots about what the Chinese may actually find...

An analyst echoed these very sentiments just today. That the idea of the Chinese peering down on everyone is not something that will sit easy with the U.S. top brass.

Phage
reply to post by iLemming

 

Um...no.
Not really. The US landed men on the Moon in 1969 (according to my calcs, 44 years ago). And brought them back.

And for what, ultimately? Just so some tin foil fedora wearing conspirators can undermine the achievement with Kubrick related 'fake moon landing' theories?

The only reason the U.S. went there was because they were forced to by the Russians. The Russians had laid claim to so many 'space race' checkpoints that if the U.S. had not have set foot on the Moon, we might be living in a very different (read: communist) world today.

The U.S. did it for propaganda purposes only. The Chinese seem to be doing it as an investment into the[ir] future. The propaganda coup that comes inherent with this can be clearly seen in discussions like the one we're having here. Such news is far more effective at building solidarity (and nationalism) among a people than any military parade could ever be.

Win-win, for them.

reply to post by scotsdavy1


Thanks Scots!

Congratulations to China, it was a great achievement.

reply to post by iLemming

Ok. So the Chinese did it for profit not politics. That's cool.


Where, when's the profit?

Where is the "fast" catch up?

Phage
Ok. So the Chinese did it for profit not politics. That's cool.


Where, when's the profit?

Read my previous post and just give the tangible benefits some time to flow through. After all, they haven't landed anyone there, yet...

After all, they haven't landed anyone there, yet...

reply to post by iLemming


Yup.
Big difference between putting people up there and bringing them back and putting a robot up there.
After all, there is the lunar x-prize. Right? Do you think a nationalistic "enterprise" has more merit than a capitalistic one?

Not implying that the Chinese have a capitalistic motive, of course.

Phage -

Where, when's the profit?

So you dont realise that learning to be a doctor is an investment in your future and that riches come ONLY after you have learned to be a doctor and the experience gained along the way? So it is with the Chinese I guess. They have identified the skills which the US has (or had and now lost due to inuse) have been instrumental in their success in other areas such as space technology and military technology.

For a country there are lots of reasons why they choose or choose not to go to the Moon some political and some economic, so we will see shortly if the Chinese get the same aversion to the Moon's surface as the USA has.

IF we humans have been sternly warned off, then the Chinese are going to start a big fight which we may not be able to stop without much bloodshed.

The fast catchup is the Chinese space station, space walks, and the Lunar landing program

reply to post by phinubian

The answer lies in economics. Back when the US landed on the moon raw materials were cheap, today we are running out of some of the rare earths that are used in electronics. Mining on the moon has become considerably more viable both economically and technologically.

Right now you can bet that the US and Russian military are getting very nervous about the chinese achievements. As far as they are concerned their paranoia will convince them that a chinese missile base is going to be built on the moon. How that paranoia pans out will be very interesting over the next 10 to 15 years.

reply to post by Swills


I am worried that the Chinese will sencor pictures too, but at least i hope that the chinese takes the ultimate photo that everybody here on Earth are longing to finally see. A high resolution photo showing the entire Earth as seen from the Moon.

That is the Picture the American astronauts never took even though they were six times there.

I'm just waiting for some photos of the blast crater under the lander

reply to post by alfa1


When I say abandoned let me add to what I mean, you can have all of the floating around in space and nice count downs in rockets leaving the planet and returning safely and wasted missions you want, but after 40 years don't you even think we would even have a base there or something the size of an outhouse ? forward observatory ? Telescope ? Moon Cam even???


On the other hand if we really do have some tangible assets there, and it is being kept as a state secret, what is the huge secret? that is something to share, think about it, out of that list you provided I say kudos, however , they all pretty much were doing the same thing over and over, add in a few different mission objectives, ask me if you were truly trailblazing and exploring that new frontier on our closest object resembling a planet, the closest natural satellite.

The only thing out of character that took a lot of man hours was the mysterious bombing of the moon, any real explanation that makes any sense for that ?

The first cornerstone of the exploration as a prime candidate at least to me would seem to possibly be the moon, so we could build structures or subterranean bases, not some floating space station, I don't know but maybe I am asking a little much, it just seems either we were underachievers as far as the objective of the moon being the next natural extension of the the space program .

helius
reply to post by Swills

 

I am worried that the Chinese will sencor pictures too, but at least i hope that the chinese takes the ultimate photo that everybody here on Earth are longing to finally see. A high resolution photo showing the entire Earth as seen from the Moon.

That is the Picture the American astronauts never took even though they were six times there.

edit on 15-12-2013 by helius because: (no reason given)

I don't think they will censor them, I just think they will not be very generous with them which would be a great pity.

As for US astronauts not having taken a picture of the whole Earth from the Moon, it depends on what you mean.

If you mean a full Earth, as in the entire disk being visible, this is not going to happen. The Earth's phases as seen from the moon mirror those of the moon as seen from Earth. The Apollo missions always landed at lunar 'dawn', ie it was just getting light in the area they landed. For areas in centre of the lunar disk this means it was a half moon, and therefore a half Earth. If it was a 3/4 moon, it was a quarter Earth. For it to be a full Earth, it would have been a completely dark moon.

If, on the other hand, you mean "they never took photos of Earth from the moon", this is completely wrong. There are several, and you can include live TV footage there too. The resolution is good enough on many of them to identify weather patterns and these weather patterns are matched by weather satellite images taken from Earth orbit at the same time.

If you're not happy with the resolution, well, sorry but the moon and Earth are a long way apart.

If you check out the TV news station from China in English CCTV , sounds like my outside security cameras
They have regular updates on this most of the time. Channel CCTV Freesat 211, on Sky TV as well as others....

helius
reply to post by Swills

 

I am worried that the Chinese will sencor pictures too, but at least i hope that the chinese takes the ultimate photo that everybody here on Earth are longing to finally see. A high resolution photo showing the entire Earth as seen from the Moon.

That is the Picture the American astronauts never took even though they were six times there.

edit on 15-12-2013 by helius because: (no reason given)

That would be a good picture, the full earth. This rover should be able to get that pic when we are seeing a "new moon" the completely dark moon, or for a complete picture, for the next solar eclipse where it would be interesting to see the shadow of the moon on the earth.