China is awesome!

[Asher]

Originally posted by DaShi
God, why must every China thread turn into a discussion about Alberta?

Half of China is moving to Alberta. Fact.

<---- Minority as a white man in school

[Colon™]

Alberta gave us the Albertosaurus

[Asher]

Alberta is very famous for the dinosaur fossils there. It's actually really cool, infinitely cooler than Belgian chocolate factories.

[Colon™]

Expertise in making chocolate rates above expertise in digging up stuff though.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Colon™
Expertise in making chocolate rates above expertise in digging up stuff though.

But expertise in reassembling dinosaur bones rates above expertise in making chocolate.

[Naked Gents Rut]

But expertise in assembling chocolate dinosaur bones rates about expertise in reassembling normal dinosaur bones.

[Asher]

I am bested.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Back to the actual issue at hand, this Space walk is obviously significant not because spacewalks are in themselves so great but because it demonstrates clearly the momentum and confidence of the Chinese space program, no one can doubt they will achieve their own moon landing in a reasonable time frame. I'd guess less then a decade from now. They might also pursue their own space station as the Russians did after losing the original space race, Russia's MIR space station was the real pioneering effort in the field of space stations and the ISS is very much a watered down repeat so a third remake by China seems unlikely. Some participation in ISS missions seems the more likely scenario but I don't think China will really relish this activity, rather it will see the ISS as a steeping stone to something it can be first at.

All the easy first have been done already by the Americans and Russians so it will be some time before China performs a significant first of its own. Possibilities include a Lunar Base, a manned Asteroid landing or a Mars landing. The lunar base is the official near term US goal so it would seem that direct competition their is unlikely as the US has a lead their. The only way I could see China winning that is either A) US abandons the goal or B) China's whole moon landing program is merged with the base program so their first landing becomes the seed of a base. The former is more likely and the later is very challenging so If I was China I would try the Asteroid landing. I think they could accomplish that in the same time frame as a moon landing as the challenges of an Asteroid landing are mostly longterm life support and cosmic ray protection both of which can be solved by throwing more mass at the problem.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Btw, this thread should have been called "China is teh awesome"

[Alinestra Covelia]

Yay! It's a good step. It's not necessarily a huge step, but it's an important one for this nation. And the more interest we show in space exploration, the better for everybody.

Hopefully in the not-too-distant future we can see China and the US collaborating on this. The two nations are already intimately joined economically. The sooner they can drop the sabers and start sharing info, the better.

[Patroklos]

What will the reinvent next!

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Patroklos
Did you ever notice that it is easier to research a tech in Civ after someone else has done it?

Do you think the engineering challenges of getting into orbit today are anything even approaching the difficulty of doing it in the 50s/60s?

You do realize the US was the second nation in space right?

[Alinestra Covelia]

I heard there's this thing that the US has, called a "Missile Shield". Maybe they could do that?

Actually that would be a logical step for them, because although they have a very large arsenal of short-range missiles, the Chinese have intentionally kept their stockpile of long-range missiles low. Whereas the US and former USSR have thousands of ICBMs, China has no more than 20 and possibly as low as 6 capable of hitting the US. It is also a subscriber to the "no first strike" policy concerning nukes (probably more because it saw how ruinously expensive an arms race was for the USSR). So in the absence of interest in accumulating a volume-based deterrence, it seems fitting that they might want the Civ2 equivalent of an SDI Defence.

[Heraclitus]

Re: Re: China is awesome!

Originally posted by The Emperor Fabulous
Stagnate? We're the only nation with vehicles studying Mars. Three of them. Two which have lasted almost 1000% longer than expected

Not detracting from the Chinese accomplishments, but they have a ways to go.

You do realize that other nations have sent probes to Mars in the past as well? You do also realize that ESA, who doesn't even do manned space flight has had comparable achievements with Probes to NASA. The fact that you are the only nation to be doing it right now, makes little difference.

The only exception to this is the Voyager probes program, that was impressive, but like most impressive space acheivments of the US its more than 20 years in the past (thought they still work mind you).

Originally posted by The Emperor Fabulous
Two which have lasted almost 1000% longer than expected

This happens to space probes some times, they are very complex and so the chance of something failing is relatively high. People so invest a lot to make sure they work.

If they are lucky and there are no unforeseen consequences the probe outlives its projected "life span" by a huge margin, since the projected one includes unknown unkonws.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Arrian


With regard to manned spaceflight, it's certainly been greatly reduced. They've done good work in unmanned projects, though. In fact, come to think of it, go for the manned stuff, China! They can work on that for a while, and we can do long range probes for a while. Division of labor.

-Arrian

The problem is that Europe has been focusing on probes far longer.


This means:

global divison of "space labour":

Europe - probes
China - manned flight
USA - ?
Russia - ?, space vodka exports and space tourism