China Is Heading Back to the Moon
China’s Chang’e-3 Heads For The Moon (with video), SpaceRef
“China’s Chang’e-3 lunar rover Yutu (“Jade rabbit”) left Earth today aboard a Long March IIIB rocket today. Liftoff occurred at 12:30 pm EST from Xichang launch facility in in China’s Sichuan province. Chang’e-3 will take approximately four days to reach the Moon and will enter orbit on or around 6 December. A week or so later Change’e-3’s large landing stage will deliver the Yutu rover to a landing site in Sinus Iridum – The Bay of Rainbows. The current expected landing date is 14 December.”
– Were You Wondering About China’s Long-Term Moon Goals?
– China/U.S. Collaboration on LADEE/Chang’e 3? Not Likely
Jack Rabbit ?? Maybe a Jackalope ?
It’s Jade Rabbit
Godspeed, Yutu.
Its “JADE” rabbit.
That’ll just have kids wondering if the Chinese are sending a GREEN bunny to the moon. (Well, Bugs got there first, and he did it back in ’48.)
Good to see WE are going back to the moon!!
Funny I have been thinking about the Tortoise and the Hare all day!
Kinda thought that picture of Jade rabbit looked a little like the underside of a turtle shell.
DTAR:
I wish more folks had the ‘collective we’ attitude that you have. China is really getting into this space exploration thing, something more Americans should feel… but don’t anymore.
It seems Americans have bought into that ‘been there, done that’ meme NASA proclaimed a couple of years ago. Keep that up and it won’t matter if it’s the Tortoise or Hare that ‘wins’, America will be on the sidelines watching the race, not participating in it.
Sad, but unfortunately true!
tinker
Nooo!!!! We are building the biggest rocket ever to EXPLORE!!! billions!!!!
Fantasy Space lolol 🙁
“It seems Americans have bought into that ‘been there, done that’ meme NASA proclaimed a couple of years ago.”
While your overall point remains valid, it wasn’t NASA that made that proclamation…
Well put. We are going back to the moon.
Good point, that’s what the astronauts all heard when they toured the world after landing on the moon – “we did it”.
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, (Opps Wrong camp, (LOL))!
Would be kinda neat if they strolled up to the Apollo 11 landing sight and snapped some pictures.
Tinker doesn’t long march’s upper stage use the same fuel that Spacex’s Draco’s use??
DTARS:
Long March 3b uses a cryogenic upper stage H2/LOX. The closest analog would be the Centaur stage used on the Atlas 5. The boosters, stage 1 and 2 use hypergolic fuel (Draco fuel).
China’s Long March 5 (when it flies) will use RP-1 (kerosine) and LOX in it’s booster stages. I’m not sure what the upper stage will burn but going cryogenics would give them the best performance.
China fully intends to mass produce these boosters. They’ll be happy to put 60 tonnes into orbit a week while America wastes money on SLS/Orion.
I still find it hard to believe that the only thing holding back America from being the vanguard in space colonization is laws!
What’s wrong with this picture?
tinker
John,
The answer to your law question is that unlike China, we protect intellectual property rights. Also note that China is a paper tiger that requires economic Lebensraum and this system is now backfiring on a scale that the world has never seen before. I am not a big fan of Elon Musk’s Ego but Space X is the animal to watch, not political headline grabbing stunts from the east. China is about to find out that Buck Rodgers needs Real Bucks and they do not have it despite what the world thinks.
Possibly you should consult the CIA World Factbook on China:
https://www.cia.gov/library…
Given the extraordinary US national debt and China’s surplus, you may wish to reconsider who has the real bucks.
Not to get to far of the original posted subject, (LOL). You should visit china as I have. You would see first hand the unrest that major layoffs and inflation have made. The entire country is a powder keg. The biggest portion of their perceived wealth is in mining and mineral concessions around the world. They have bartered for them with tech and labour contracts instead of hard currency. They have lost over 60% of those in just the last (2) years. I know this personally from having cleaned up (2) housing debacles they left behind in Angola and Bolivia. Our media and intelligence folks are way behind the eight ball or are not reporting the truth. Either way the Dragon in the East is a Paper Tiger and ready to have another boxer rebellion. All this being said I know what I am talking about and We are light years beyond the orbital acrobatics that they are playing out above us now. The main focus of the U.S. and Europe should be the moon and LEO infrastructure with a careful eye on the Russians reawakening of Heavy Lift capability. As a side note I am very impressed with the Indian Governments baby step approach to off world exploration and wish them luck. If you want to fear economic power plays it will be India in the long run along with the Germans and Russians.
I agree, doesn’t China still have the “Special Economic Zones” that run under capitalism and other parts still being run under crony communism? The disparity is overwhelming is my understanding.
Yes and many here stateside do not understand that the often touted uber wealth
of china is B.S.. They have undervalued their currency to allow a
systematic deconstruction of the industrial west. this is no economic
miricle. It is in fact a war. A war which they will not win due to the
lack of innovation and a vertically intergrated command and control
policy. China is the walking dead. America needs to become a confederacy
to unburden its debt load and decentralize restrictive manufacturing,
defense, and trade controls. As I stated before The Germans, India, and
Russians will be our real economic sparing partners in the near future,
(If we get our act together as a confederacy).
I wonder what the average cost is for the per ton cost of chinese space hardware, so we could get a cost for 60 tons of space hardware, and then get a cost of 3120 tons of space hardware being launched per year.
Watch this closely. A clear danger to US leadership.