神舟 & 火星 ? Chinese and Russians land on the Red Planet

[Jack MacKelly]

CHINA plans a joint mission with Russia to explore Mars in 2009, Ye Peijian, the chief expert of China's deep space exploration, said in a conference yesterday, China News Service reported.

Russia will launch an explorer Phobos-Grunt carrying a China Mars exploration device to explore the planet and Phobos, the Mars' moon.

China's future deep space exploration will mainly focus on five aspects, Ye added.

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/art/2006/08/24/289947/Russia__China_set_on_joint_Mars_mission.htm

These exploration projects include launching a moon orbit satellite next year and further moon missions to accumulate experience and support the country's future deep space exploration endeavors.

Additionally, space goals include development of interplanetary flight technologies, autonomous navigation systems and controllers and deep space telecommunications for implementing multi-targeted and multi-mission space explorations step by step.

China, Russia plan joint mission to Mars

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=049671E28A386427E432B3370A22AAE4

[hughitt1]

Yea, Discover magazine recently had a special feature on the the U.S.'s goals for the coming years and the feasibility of actually getting to Mars any time soon. Seems like we are just about geared up to have a second space race, but this time with China (well Russia too i guess).I think i'm gonna have to put my money on China for Mars

Keith

[gamerfu]

U.S. has already landed on Mars in 2004.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3365371.stm

[Jack MacKelly]

Yes, I watched some of those NASA/JPL missions to Mars they were great

but the un-manned/robotic stuff is kind of over-done and it gets less public attention when compared to what Neil Armstrong and Buzz did.

unmmaned mission are common - the Chinese have been launching un-manned satellites since the 70s

United States sent stuff to Jupiter, robots to Mars, and to Saturn

Japanese have launched comet probes

Europeans ( German, British, French under ESA ) have sent unmanned mission to Mars and the Moon

Russians have explored Venus and the Moon with robotic Rovers.

The next big race might be putting people on Mars, to set up a future colony.

There could be a race to go there such as the getting the stars n' stripes first before the Chinese astronauts/taikonauts start sticking a red flag in the planet to claim it as their own.

The real superpower nation of this century might very well be the one who turns Mars into a 51st state or another red Province of Motherland China

[hughitt1]

Yes sorry- i meant putting people on the red planet

[gamerfu]

lol, no problem!

I could see that being a HOT topic!

[Jack MacKelly]

Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) has won a five-year, $3.9 billion contract to design and build a capsule-like U.S. spacecraft called Orion to take humans back to the Moon and beyond, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said on Thursday.

todayreuters

Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed, the Pentagon's No. 1 supplier, beat a team made up of Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Boeing Co. (BA.N: Quote, Profile, Research) to replace the aging space shuttle fleet as NASA's vehicle for human space exploration.

A consortium led by Lockheed Martin will build the next spaceship to take humans to the Moon.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5304086.stm

Nasa has awarded a multi-billion-dollar contract to the group to develop the Orion vehicle, which will replace the space shuttle when it retires in 2010.

[Taibei]

U.S. has already landed on Mars in 2004.

The U.S. first landed probes on Mars in 1976 and had the first successful flyby in 1964.

[atitarev]

Onto Mars! (Mapc - 火星)

http://www.newmars.com/forums/

Terraforming:

http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=11

[Jack MacKelly]

NASA Chief Prepares for China Visit

http://www.space.com/news/060822_griffin_china.html

NASA’s Mike Griffin is set for his own personal space travel trek next month, flying overseas to Russia, Japan, and China.

Last April, during the visit of China’s President Hu Jintao to the United States, the Chinese extended an invitation to Griffin to tour their space facilities. “President Bush accepted that invitation, so the plan is that I will go. I’m looking forward to it,” he told SPACE.com.

As far as hopes and expectations of the meeting, Griffin said: “I’m not really setting expectations. It’s a get acquainted visit. There are no pre-conditions on either side. There are no demands being placed. It’s a get acquainted visit to see where we might go and in forging cooperative ties with China.”

[ocpaul20]

Just to stir the pot with a big wooden spoon....

All this is assuming of course that the moon landing was not all a big hoax. Could an Atari 64 have navigated its way (with human help) to the moon, I wonder. (Consipacy theorists unite!)

[Jack MacKelly]

What it boils down to is rocketry, today NASA haven't got any rocket that can compare to the monsterous Saturn-V and that's why they can't go to the Moon ( end of conspiracy )

Even the United States military hasn't built a new ICBM in decades. The Shuttle as nice as it looked in its young days was never designed to fly to the Moon so it spent all of its time stuck in low orbits around the Earth, also Shuttle is somewhat unsafe after the least accident and they won't be able to fly it forever so a new rocket will be needed.

The Apollo Saturn compared to other Rockets

http://files.turbosquid.com/Preview/Content_on_4_1_2002_16_18_25/rockets1.jpg199CB9CC-47FB-4CCC-B4514F3E80962FF2.jpgLarge.jpg

There are only a few big rockets out there and none of their lift power compares to the old Saturn-V ( the Saturn rocket was also very expensive )

Boeing's Delta, the French/European Ariane rocket, China's LongMarch Launch Vehicles and the Russian Proton may all be good rockets and able to launch 10 tonnes into space

But do they have the power to launch an entire Spacestaion in one go ( Skylab )

No they don't !!!

Right now nobody has the ability to go to the Moon unless somebody builds a new Saturn-V sized rokcet

Does anyone know a good link where I can view some of China's Long-March rockets ( 长征系列运载火箭 and I think they are named 长征二号C火箭, 长征三号B火箭, 長征系列運載火箭, 長征系列運載火箭 ?

[Jack MacKelly]

I found some here

http://big5.xinhuanet.com/gate/big5/news.xinhuanet.com/mil/2005-10/11/content_3603877.htm

I wonder what kind of rocket China would use if Chinese want to go build a base on the Moon, perhaps the Shenzhou craft could go because it already looks like Apollo crew ship.

Apollo capsule ready for splash down

http://perso.orange.fr/max.q/apollo/Missions/images/as15_csm_splashdown.jpg

Could Shenzhou be used for the Moon ?

http://www.spacenews.be/flash/shenzhou/shenzrecup.html

[ocpaul20]

the re-entry module looks like an old boiler but I suppose the IBM computer has been using old and tried components for decades and they still seem to keep selling, so perhaps there is sense in it all. I wish I could read (more) french and some chinese to see what the articles are talking about. The pictures look interesting though.

Now... what about that Atari computer in the lunar module....??? That was the state of computing in those early days and a more powerful computer would have needed to be the size of a mainframe (and they were pretty big) to process all those commands/communications/sensors/engines etc. Plus the fact that I cannot imagine the Apollo astronauts saying "hang on a moment Houston ....I just have to go and change a tape" (or a disk platter).

[Jack MacKelly]

There has been a lot of news this week about planets outside our own solar system.

New space telescopes like the Hubble have been launched, some built in Europe, and NASA plans to launch a new mission soon.

These space telescopes are now searching for new planets beyond our solar system

http://news.sina.com.cn/o/2007-04-17/063011654198s.shtml

COROT是迄今为止第一颗专门用于探索太阳系外行星的卫星，也是最便宜的搜寻太阳系外行星的卫星——造价仅为1.75亿美元。据悉，美国宇航局第一个探索地外行星的任务——“开普勒”(Kepler)太空望远镜预计将于2009年发射升空。此外，美宇航局和欧洲航天局还提出在未来二十年实施更为先进的探测任务。时报综合报道 据媒体报道，欧洲航天局发射的COROT卫星是迄今为止最先进的类地行星搜寻任务，可能在2010年前发现目标

They may have found a second Earth

http://tupian.zjol.com.cn/05tupian/system/2007/04/25/008367478.shtml

and are talking about the possibility of finding alien life on it

欧洲发现太阳系外首颗适合人类居住行星

这颗行星质量约为地球五倍，距离地球20光年，围绕一颗名为“Gliese 581”的红矮星运转，因此被命名为“Gliese 581c”。到目前为止，在已经发现的约200颗太阳系以外行星中，Gliese 581c是最小的一颗。此外，它的运转轨道处于“可居住区”之内，如果其它条件合适，就有可能存在地表水和生命。

HK site

http://failforum.net/forum/redirect.php?tid=522651&goto=lastpost

天文學家首次發現，在太陽系以外有一個與地球非常相似的行星，不排除上面會有生命。

[新地球]命名為Gliese 581c,是一顆繞行位於天秤座Gliese 581紅矮星的太陽系外行星，距離地球約20.5光年，

其運行軌道與其太陽之間的距離剛好屬於適合生存帶，所以其表面溫度估計約攝氏0至40度，因此可能存在液態水。

由於液態水是生命存在的必要因素，所以Gliese 581 c有可能有生命存在

[ocpaul20]

Sorry to keep on, but it still baffles me thinking the moon landing was all done with the computing power of the day. I was computering in the 70's and although it was not quite valves and tubes still, it was all fairly Heath-Robinson even then.

So, after all that, I am sure some of the boffins can come up with a reasonable, believable, and logical way the Americans could have aimed at the moon and found it, then turned around, aimed at the earth, and returned safely.

I think it unlikely technology was at a stage that could have supported such a mission - even if they were using the computing power of a Cray they needed it to be water-cooled.