Good article this, and the first time someone this senior in the Chinese space programme has openly spoken to foreign journalists. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/25141597 All sounds pretty good to me. Lets just hope China's current belligerent foreign relations chill out a bit over the next half century or so.
People harp about Helium-3 mining on the moon. But the lunar soil has only Helium-3 in amounts of one parts per million. Which means you would have to process one million tons of lunar soil to obtain one ton of Helium-3. Nothing on Earth has ever been mined in such a low concentration. If the use of Helium-3 ever takes off in fusion reactors on Earth, it most certainly will be "mined" from the upper atmospheres of Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune using large unmanned processing facilities.
Microwave transmission to some big ass antennas on the ground. There's some power loss, of course, and you wouldn't want to spend too much time in the area (months or years would be dangerous), but its proven technology. The problem is, however, unless you've got a strip of solar panels circling the Moon, you're going to have long periods where the panels are in darkness, thus useless. A much better solution would be to have the panels in geosynchronous orbit around the Earth, because then you'd get far more power out of them.
Surprise! The Chinese stole the idea from a Japanese company! One company wants to send Spiderbot 3D printers into space to build orbiting solar panels. More at both the links.
Yep. Just getting panels to the moon, then safely on the moon would be too much of a hassle. Just better to go into space.
They're going to convert it into petroleum. Presumably, the energy would be transmitted by microwaves.
On that sort of scale you aren't lifting the materials up from Earth, you're acquiring them there. So it becomes a choice between mining on the moon versus capturing and mining asteroids.
They made it. Its the first time in almost 40 years that a man made object has landed (as opposed to crashed) on the Moon.
I'm looking forward to that day a few years from now when I'll be able to look at the moon and know there are people walking on it.
You don't remember any of the Apollo landings? I can remember Apollo 14 (barely) and forward. Never thought I would have to wait, and wait, and wait, and wait to see it again
Even though men walked on the Moon in my lifetime, I certainly don't remember it, as I was barely two when Apollo 17 launched. I suspect few who post here are old enough to remember the Moon landings. What a stupid thing to say, Dayton.
We had one of our Chinese friends over last night, and I said "Congratulations on landing on the moon!" She looked at me and said, "Really?" I was surprised and said, "Yes?" She replied, "Thank you. Oh my goodnesses, I did not know!" She's a researcher at St. Jude's who gets very absorbed in her work and doesn't really follow the news. I replied, "I'm proud of China for following in our footsteps. Once you guys land a person, you will have mastered the ancient arts." My wife then punched me.
The double entendre! No worries, Apostle, I know what you meant, but that's just hilarious! Also, I didn't realize you were married to ...
I remember the first walk on the moon like it was last week. Were it not for the governments constantly quibbling about this or that it would be much better though, just think if we could all see them as just mankind, not Chinese or American.
Had I paid attention to such things, it could've been possible for me to remember Apollo 17. ALL the moon landings happened in my lifetime, but only just: I was born a little more than a month before Apollo 11.
It is ironic. Though my mom used to go on about how the space program was a "waste of money" EVERY televised space mission she was glued to the television. I remember the Apollo-Soyuz "handshake in space" as well. Hell, I remember my mom, my sisters, and myself glued to the television watching the first free glide of the space shuttle orbiter prototype Enterprise. But then again, my family was always fascinated by aircraft. I can remember well up into the late 1980s we would run out and watch A-10s, A-7s, F-4s, C-130s, F-15s, F-16s, F-14s, and twice B-52s fly over the house. Plus helicopters
As much as people romanticize the 1960s space program, it's easy to forget it was just another theater of the Cold War.
And, its probably dead. There's lots to the article, but I'll cut to the chase and quote the last thing the rover "said."
Hopefully they build it better than their lunar rover because that thing broke like a cheap happy meal toy.
