Mars rover Curiosity lands on surface of Red Planet

[Lorizael]

You mean the one that crashed?

Let's try to remember that we have the most embarrassing Mars crash.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

[regexcellent]

Every single Mars landing has been American.
I blame our awesome university system

[kentonio]

Shame your science education is being wildly eclipsed by the Chinese now. Looks like we have a red future ahead of us in space.

[regexcellent]

Chinese students come to my second-rate university all the time. I know no Americans who have gone to China for an education

[Hauldren Collider]

Shame your science education is being wildly eclipsed by the Chinese now. Looks like we have a red future ahead of us in space.

[kentonio]

Chinese students come to my second-rate university all the time. I know no Americans who have gone to China for an education

You definitely just proved that American education is superior to the Chinese system, well done.

Oh btw, here's a 2011 BBC article about how China's scientific output was due to overtake America in two years.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12885271

China is on course to overtake the US in scientific output possibly as soon as 2013 - far earlier than expected.

That is the conclusion of a major new study by the Royal Society, the UK's national science academy.

The country that invented the compass, gunpowder, paper and printing is set for a globally important comeback.

An analysis of published research - one of the key measures of scientific effort - reveals an "especially striking" rise by Chinese science.

The study, Knowledge, Networks and Nations, charts the challenge to the traditional dominance of the United States, Europe and Japan.

The figures are based on the papers published in recognised international journals listed by the Scopus service of the publishers Elsevier.

In 1996, the first year of the analysis, the US published 292,513 papers - more than 10 times China's 25,474.

By 2008, the US total had increased very slightly to 316,317 while China's had surged more than seven-fold to 184,080.

Previous estimates for the rate of expansion of Chinese science had suggested that China might overtake the US sometime after 2020.

But this study shows that China, after displacing the UK as the world's second leading producer of research, could go on to overtake America in as little as two years' time.

[regexcellent]

Come back when the Chinese successfully land half a dozen rovers on Mars.

[Hauldren Collider]

SMBC covered that one, Kentonio.

[Proteus_MST]

Curiosity killed the cat

[MOBIUS]

Nah. The Euros would have never put anything like this out. We could have put something like this out by ourselves, but it's vogue to treat space as a realm for international cooperation.

Hands up who's responsible for putting more than half of the commercial satellites currently in orbit now?

Sorry who? Oh yes, the French!

Even the land of Borat is ahead on launches compared to the good ol' US of A...

Way to prove a point!

The US space agency (in fact, your entire country!) has been in a decaying orbit for years now, but your average USA! tub-thumper is too fcuking braindead to realise that...

[kentonio]

SMBC covered that one, Kentonio.

Except that cartoon appears to not really make any sense. Firstly the 'What's actually happening' would be pretty much exactly what the article said was happening. The Chinese research massively increasing on a line that over time will exceed the US one. The cartoon then appears to be saying 'yah boo sucks, it doesn't mean anything anyway!' when it clearly does mean quite a lot.

The point was though that the Chinese are fast catching up education wise with the US, and as Mobius pointed out Europe also continues to be a strong force in scientific endeavours. If you guys want to be world leaders then now is exactly the time when you need to be pumping huge amounts of money into education and science, because otherwise you are going to be left behind. I don't understand why you guys don't get this.

[Hauldren Collider]

Except that cartoon appears to not really make any sense. Firstly the 'What's actually happening' would be pretty much exactly what the article said was happening. The Chinese research massively increasing on a line that over time will exceed the US one. The cartoon then appears to be saying 'yah boo sucks, it doesn't mean anything anyway!' when it clearly does mean quite a lot.

The point was though that the Chinese are fast catching up education wise with the US, and as Mobius pointed out Europe also continues to be a strong force in scientific endeavours. If you guys want to be world leaders then now is exactly the time when you need to be pumping huge amounts of money into education and science, because otherwise you are going to be left behind. I don't understand why you guys don't get this.

The point that the comic was making was that the "total output" is a completely meaningless measure of scientific achievement. You can pump out as many papers as you like, but if none of them are actually breakthroughs, who gives a ****?

There is only one country whose research could ever hope to rival the United States, and that's Japan.

Chinese education is also ****. There's a reason rich Chinese people move in droves to the United States. Don't be fooled by the one or two good high schools in Shanghai or some ****. The US education system far outstrips China, where most of the country is still incredibly poor and rural.

[Lorizael]

Except that cartoon appears to not really make any sense. Firstly the 'What's actually happening' would be pretty much exactly what the article said was happening. The Chinese research massively increasing on a line that over time will exceed the US one. The cartoon then appears to be saying 'yah boo sucks, it doesn't mean anything anyway!' when it clearly does mean quite a lot.

The point was though that the Chinese are fast catching up education wise with the US, and as Mobius pointed out Europe also continues to be a strong force in scientific endeavours. If you guys want to be world leaders then now is exactly the time when you need to be pumping huge amounts of money into education and science, because otherwise you are going to be left behind. I don't understand why you guys don't get this.

China has something like four times the population of the United States. Until their scientific productivity is more than that, you can't really make any claims about the quality of their science education compared to ours.

[Hauldren Collider]

Also launching commercial satellites is not a scientific endeavor, it's free riding on America continually pushing out the state of the art. America leads, Europe follows.

While France and Russia have been launching satellites, the US has been sending out deep-space probes and building space stations.

[Lorizael]

Also launching commercial satellites is not a scientific endeavor, it's free riding on America continually pushing out the state of the art. America leads, Europe follows.

While France and Russia have been launching satellites, the US has been sending out deep-space probes and building space stations.

Uh... Mir, ISS, and Salyut...?

Edit: And Venera