China is kicking our butt in space

I care deeply about humanity's exploration in space. I'm just happy someone is doing it. I hope it lights a fire in the hearts of every child who dreams of exploring the Solar System and beyond.
--- merged: Nov 18, 2011 8:08 PM ---
What does this mean for you?

- It means people may actually get excited. A new "space race" to Mars maybe? One that the USA will lose most likely, which might not be a bad thing for the world.

Does the average joe even care?

- Probably not, I always get blank stares and smirks when I talk about space exploration. "No guys, honestly, the Cassini-Huygens mission is one of the coolest things to happen in my lifetime!"

Do you think commercial spaceflight can compete with China?

- No. Flat out. They have billions of dollars invested, they have caught up shockingly fast. They will surge ahead if they keep it up.

How might this motivate a change in space policy for the US, EU, and Russia?

- I really don't know. The USA has its head so far up its own ass these days it must be hard to see/smell anything but shit.

Why is China setting off on their own rather than joining the rest of the world with the ISS?

Because they can, and they want their achievements to be for the glory of their country. Plus, the ISS is rather... unambitions. There, I said it. It's an unambitious half-measure that doesn't achieve an awful lot besides seeing how people respond to zero gravity in near Earth orbit. Even the Russians are planning for the next station, an extra-planetary construction yard for deep-space missions.

What countries do you think will align themselves with China's space efforts?

I dunno if they want/need any allies.

 

What does this mean for you?
Not a damn thing. I don't think the technology exists yet to make any money from space exploration/colonization. once it does then i'll be worried. until then i maintain that the space program is a giant money vacuum

Does the average joe even care?
nope

Do you think commercial spaceflight can compete with China?
absolutely SpaceX is breaking necks and cashing checks. also considering the historical quality of chinese satellites breaking up in space, i think our quality of products has more value than their quantity

How might this motivate a change in space policy for the US, EU, and Russia?
i dont think it will.

Why is China setting off on their own rather than joining the rest of the world with the ISS?
all racism aside, i think they have tiny penis syndrome. they need to prove to the world that they're capable of doing just as much cool stuff as the US is.

What countries do you think will align themselves with China's space efforts?
None. nobody's got the spare cash to throw at rockets and space veggies

 

I really don't know how to say this in a nice way, but I despise people like you for your myopic worldview.

Even a short Google would bring you to TONS of profitable commercial goods resulting directly from space exploration. Here's another. Here's another news story profiling the benefits of the space program.

 

What does this mean for you?
I will echo Ace, it is good to see SOMEONE has an ambitious eye on space.

Does the average joe even care?
I don't think anyone will care until someone figures out how to cover longer distances in space.

Do you think commercial spaceflight can compete with China?
No

How might this motivate a change in space policy for the US, EU, and Russia?
Again, until we can get "out of the neighborhood of Earth", I don't think it will motivate anyone.

Why is China setting off on their own rather than joining the rest of the world with the ISS?
National pride I would assume. Being able to say they are just as/even more advanced than the rest of the world.

What countries do you think will align themselves with China's space efforts?

If they make some great new breakthrough in matter/anti-matter, everyone will be lining up to join up with them.

 

first, i'm going to go with the nice way express what you're thinking is: "i disagree", but if you really do despise me then i suppose i can't stop you

those are products that were invented to get to space, they weren't discovered because we were in space. wanting to be there gave us all these neat ideas as to what people would need to be up there. once we start mining asteroids, discovering new fuel sources, or finding other planets to live on, then i'll be psyched, but until then, we're stuck with small projects like satellites that only orbit our planet or an ISS whose lab experiments involve growing beans and antfarms in freefall (not to be confused with zero G) environments. please name me one thing that we've brought back from outer space that has actually netted a profit compared to the money it cost to get up there. if you're going to talk about all the inventions that got us there, RTFpost where it says exploration/colonization.

 

I don't despise you, I despise how you and people like you think about space. I'm sure you're an otherwise lovely person who just has shockingly misguided views about space exploration. [edit] - You're kinda like my racist cousin, I still like you, but we just disagree on certain issues.

I'm going to stop you right there if you can't see the fucking brilliance in man-made sattelites orbiting our planet just so you can listen to the radio or find your way to Starbucks. The continued investment in solar exploration has stalled due to the very mindset you present... Namely, "What have you done for me lately?" Nobody wants to invest the money it will take to do something truly ambitious in space, and that's sad. It's also the reason countries like China will get there first.

 

forgive me if i think that we have satellites orbiting one planet isn't that big of a deal. i have faith that once we develop the technology we'll be able to do so much more than send hunks of metal flying around basically just being a larger antennae. i have faith we can do so much more than that and that we can learn alot more than we have from whatever else is out in space that we haven't discovered yet. for the record i can't listen to the radio or go to starbucks. is what we have now cool? i guess... but whatever else is out there is going to make satellites and all that jazz look like small fucking potatoes, but until we actually find away to travel further and survive longer, we're just children with tools and materials, but without the maturity/imagination to use them yet

 

Oh the privileged times we live in. In all the millenia of human history, we've only been able to do this for ~50-60 years. How fast it becomes old news, passée to the masses who don't want to fund the initiatives it will take to further the science.

 

*facepalm* did you even read the rest of my post?

 

You seem to be able to separate the "where we are now" from the "where we need to go" - They are fundamentally connected. Your original post lamented how we can't make money from space exploration, I showed you how we can. Your follow up posts pointed out that it hasn't done anything new or interesting, and until we can find a way to colonize other planets, it won't interest you. But you're not interested in funding those intiatives. I'm the one facepalming at your myopia, as I've been saying all along. There's not going to be one major breakthrough that gets us to Mars. It will be a concerted, decade-long (or even multi decade-long) quest that builds on successive innovations. Yet, no, let's just wait until we have some fucking miracle that gets us there. Give me a break... You sound like the product of our instant-gratification culture. Nobody wants to work for the hard goals any more.

 

why should i be interested in funding those initiatives with the ever scarcer American dollar when the Chinese yuon is doing the job just fine? also, why the personal attacks? i thought we were debating space exploration here, not my brainwashed, immature, insta-grat, entitlement, sociopathically violent, logically flawed, scientifically backwards, and oversexed mind...

also, you showed me how we've made money getting to space, not anything about money anyone has made from space.

 

These are disconnected in your mind?

 

yes. the fact that we can come up with those technologies on earth means that we shouldn't worry about building multi billion dollar rockets. until we find a giant gold asteroid or other resource somewhere in space, we won't be benefiting from the products of outer space for a long time. plenty of people have benefited from the research leading to space exploration, but the exploration itself has yielded very little compared to how much people have put into it

 

But these technologies wouldn't exist if not for the rockets, so how do you reconcile that in your mind? Or if you think they would have existed, there's no way to know that for sure. We owe the space exploration program for these technologies.

 

chicken v egg

 

Essentially, but you'd rather we have neither chicken nor egg.

There's a great quote I saved from a while ago that I just managed to find, I'll reproduce it here in its entirety:

"If you don't think it is worth it for us to explore space, you must not think it was worth it for humans to have travelled north into an extremely hostile environment, east west and south across the oceans, an even more inhospitable and dangerous place.

You must not think it was worth it to give up hunting and gathering to practice the much more brutal existence of agriculture.

That's the thing about new frontiers. You don't know what there really is waiting for you, sometimes for millennia after someone starts out. That we dream of the future enough to take that insane risk makes us great, and it makes us human. It is inevitable that we get there, or go extinct trying. Only question is how long it takes, and whether we have the strength to go there."

 

I have to side with Ace on this. Not a chicken v egg at all, though, in my mind. I think technological breakthroughs are driven by having a focused goal. Then adaptations are developed to commercialize the technologies. I don't think the things we have would exist without the drive of the space race. Health care, communications, transportation... direct beneficiaries of space science.

Josh Whedon was rather prophetic... all of the slang and cussing in Firefly were Chinese.

 

those technologies weren't invented in space. lets move away from technology for a bit. what resources in terms material/energy have we collected since we've been to space?

 

This is pretty much what I had in mind when I first read this thread. I could say I "don't care" that China's all "yay, space," but what I really mean is I don't mind. I'm glad someone is saying, "yay, space," even if it's not us.

Joss. But, yes. And that made me giggle