Are we prepared for Chinese preeminence on the moon and Mars? (op-ed)

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The U.S. could lose its decades-old leadership in space exploration and technology to China.

Are we prepared for Chinese preeminence on the moon and Mars? (op-ed) : Read more

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I note that it has been quite a while since Space.com has even provided an update article on the SpaceX StarShip development program. With Musk saying he wants to launch the 4th test flight in early May, it seems strangely silent here on Space.com.

And, then there is the FAA announcement that it now will require a reentry license before liftoff for anything that has a planned reentry. So far, that only includes Varda and SpaceX Dragon capsules.

So, is this going to be yet another bureaucratic hang-up for SpaceX StarShip test flights? And, how about those long-delayed Boeing Starliner test flights?

While I am not opposed to the FAA needing to approve reentry plans, I am a bit concerned that some of the anti-Musk crowd may try to use this as a 'catch-22" to say that something is not a proven reentry vehicle unless it has been demonstrated to be successful at reentry, which it cannot do without at test flight, of course.

 

[TheCoolBrit]

If you exclude SpaceX as your article did, there have been 6 US launches in 2024, 4 were Rocketlab Electrons.

 

[orsobubu]

It is exactly the "chance to prevail" on each other that will bring mankind to its ruin, and people allow themselves to be divided between nations, just for the benefit of a few, what colossal stupidity and cowardice

 

[Atlan0001]

As an American history and frontier advocate for Mankind's breakout into the universe I cannot shed a single tear or word of detestation over China's competitiveness, and its will, to go for it for its people while Western governments put everyone's feet in cement and want containment of the human species to the Earth for some impossible Utopian good of Mankind (that will always end in an Orwellian Dystopian now and future, the decline of dynamic Civilization (aka decline of 'Frontier' Civilization)).

 

[billslugg]

"Sir, I have a Mr. Orwell on line 1, he just got woken up, wants to know why. Should I just tell him ignorance is strength?"

 

[Atlan0001]

Behind an Iron Curtain in a closed world system bubble of countless negatively entropic iron curtain invulnerable bubbles without frontier, you can only do so much ever-increasing, growing, borrowing energies and wealth from the future . . . energies and wealth that would be yours without borrowing with an opening frontier system of space, time, energies and, thus, wealth.

 

[Atlan0001]

"Sir, I have a Mr. Orwell on line 1, he just got woken up, wants to know why. Should I just tell him ignorance is strength?"

Bill, I would give you a like if you weren't potentially quoting him right back to him! Err, to his ghost calling on line 1!

 

[billslugg]

Bill is not here right now, he has broken out into the Universe and we can't get ahold of him. His cell phone plan only goes as far as Jupiter, Saturn after 7 Eastern and all day on weekends and holidays. Goldstone tracking station data plan rates go way up on week days. Plus it takes two days to get an answer from that far. Plus he takes lots of naps.

 

[Atlan0001]

Bill, I just had to give it to you, anyway. Couldn't help myself. It was that right . . . a hit dead center on the nail!

 

[m4n8tpr8]

I have great doubts about the US effort, chiefly because of the Moon lander. Elon Musk just let it slip that the current model of Starship is underperforming, both in terms of its thrust rating and especially in its lifting capacity, and announced that a "Starship 2" and a "Raptor 3" have to be developed to meet the original goals. Thus we are far away from meeting any of NASA's benchmarks (orbital flight, ship-to-ship refuelling, Moon orbit, Moon landing).

I have great doubts about the landing capability of the basic design: high centre of gravity, descent/ascent for astronauts. I have even greater doubts about the flight back to orbit: the rocks & regolith kicked up by these - relative to Apollo's LEM - giant engines are likely to damage those same engines. And even if Blue Origin's lunar lander gets to the Moon first, although it is much smaller, it too uses the same unprotected engines for landing & ascent, so it could have the same problem.

 

[m4n8tpr8]

As an American history and frontier advocate for Mankind's breakout into the universe I cannot shed a single tear or word of detestation over China's competitiveness, and its will, to go for it for its people while Western governments put everyone's feet in cement and want containment of the human species to the Earth for some impossible Utopian good of Mankind (that will always end in an Orwellian Dystopian now and future, the decline of dynamic Civilization (aka decline of 'Frontier' Civilization)).

Huh!? I'm not aware of any info proving that Western governments want what you claim, much less for utopian reasons. The only utopians here are people who think we are anywhere close to space colonisation, or that space colonies could not end up as Orwellian or other dystopias much faster than Earth.

 

[m4n8tpr8]

I note that it has been quite a while since Space.com has even provided an update article on the SpaceX StarShip development program. With Musk saying he wants to launch the 4th test flight in early May, it seems strangely silent here on Space.com.

And, then there is the FAA announcement that it now will require a reentry license before liftoff for anything that has a planned reentry. So far, that only includes Varda and SpaceX Dragon capsules.

So, is this going to be yet another bureaucratic hang-up for SpaceX StarShip test flights? And, how about those long-delayed Boeing Starliner test flights?

While I am not opposed to the FAA needing to approve reentry plans, I am a bit concerned that some of the anti-Musk crowd may try to use this as a 'catch-22" to say that something is not a proven reentry vehicle unless it has been demonstrated to be successful at reentry, which it cannot do without at test flight, of course.

You have strange concerns. Through NASA, the US government has bet on Starship's success by giving it the Moon lander contract (although now Blue Origin also got one, but even with SpaceX's delays, they are years behind), and FAA has proved itself as more than lenient in rubber-stamping SpaceX's self-reporting out of Boca Chika, so there is no reason to expect any artificial obstacles from the government.

You speak of an "anti-Musk crowd", but the only partisan crowd I see here are SpaceX superfans who refuse to see any problems and always want to blame outside factors. But Musk just made that speech on Starship's future, in which he inadvertently let it slip that the current Starship & Superheavy have less thrust than the nameplate given on the website & much less carrying capacity, thus it's back to the drawing board to produce Raptor 3 & Starship 2. Let's face it, Starship is years behind schedule, didn't yet meet any of the NASA benchmarks, and needs further development, and none of those can be blamed on outside factors.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I don't think we have actually seen either lunar lander design, yet. We are just seeing "artists' conceptions" drawn to provide eye candy to stories in the popular media.

And, the improvements to the Raptor engines and StarShip designs are not needed to do some of the other development tasks such as developing orbital refueling devices and methods.

It will make more sense for the lunar landing craft to be left in lunar orbit, and use other craft to transfer to low Earth orbit, and perhaps even other craft to reenter the atmosphere from low Earth orbit. With docking and refueling capabilities, the optimization logic changes from the current paradigm of "take everything with you at launch that you will need to get back, and throw away all the parts you don't need any more as soon as you are finished with them." The shift will probably be more toward reusing parts in places where they can be left, and not requiring them to have things like heat shields if they are not intended to ever reenter Earth's atmosphere. Fuel savings will probably dominate the optimization processes.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Speaking of Orwellian conditions, I think Starlink's satellite to unmodified cell phone capabilities will provide the tool to prevent any "ignorance is strength" or "ignorance is bliss" thinking on the part of citizens of some future authoritarian systems.

And, I say "systems" in the plural, because I don't see any one system achieving total control of the planet. So, there will probably be other groups working to get information (alternate perspectives) into any closed society.

And, that is probably the best we can hope for, because having multiple competing systems of governance provides a redundancy to the overall planetary society, preventing one leader from becoming the single failure. At least until some leader gets nukes and is crazy enough to start a war with them.

 

[Atlan0001]

Some folks don't know how negative entropy closed systematic bubble physics in world class large, or the cosmology that is history and histories ("history always repeats in large aspect, though rarely, if ever, in small detail." -- Will Durant), works. The malforming of a mass life ready and due for a necessary birth to outside frontiers kept overlong, far too long, in the womb. Its growing structural and infrastructural formation complexity, reaches, chaos, energies' needs and wants that can no longer be fulfilled in whole, thus even in part, by its nest of a world where it is, no matter what . . . as famous physicists Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku, famous historians Will Durant and Newt Gingrich, among many noted others not on this forum but sharing the realization, have seen and foretold)!

 

[orsobubu]

I have great doubts about the US effort, chiefly because of the Moon lander. Elon Musk just let it slip that the current model of Starship is underperforming, both in terms of its thrust rating and especially in its lifting capacity, and announced that a "Starship 2" and a "Raptor 3" have to be developed to meet the original goals. Thus we are far away from meeting any of NASA's benchmarks (orbital flight, ship-to-ship refuelling, Moon orbit, Moon landing).

I have great doubts about the landing capability of the basic design: high centre of gravity, descent/ascent for astronauts. I have even greater doubts about the flight back to orbit: the rocks & regolith kicked up by these - relative to Apollo's LEM - giant engines are likely to damage those same engines. And even if Blue Origin's lunar lander gets to the Moon first, although it is much smaller, it too uses the same unprotected engines for landing & ascent, so it could have the same problem.

In an older thread i posted similar issues, but you did it a lot better than me:

"no way they will launch men on the moon in 2026, a date already postponed many times. Nasa still have to demonstrate the permanence in orbit, the refilling (15 starships launched as a minimum to accomplish only one moon landing!), the recovery of the first stage, the functionality of the starship capture mechanism upon re-entry, plus countless other critical issues... and 2025 is indicated as the year in which a few solutions will be carried out for the first time. Nasa also declares that it intends to see *many* missions completed successfully before starting artemis 3 (which is still a bit strange, given the vaunted success at the first attempts of many key apollo technologies on the moon, moreover 55 years ago), and this adds a whole series of problems of validating mind-boggling new systems in such a hostile environment. Nasa itself has postponed other much more limited goals countless times in view of artemis 3, such as the suits, the insertion of orion and starliner into orbit, etc. In two years, after the apollo 1 disaster, they redesigned entirely the spacecraft and landed (highly suspicious speed), and now they are supposed to go again in two years, but: they succesfully launched the rocket 20 times before apollo 11, today, zero; also, the financial, geostrategic, political and public support for the mission is hugely lower today; US empire is declining and full with financial and political menaces looming at the horizon, both at home and abroad, comparing with a total economic expansion and world dominance in the sixties; mission systems are way more complex today; also the lunar lander configuration is almost totally unknown today, while back then it was on the making since 1963 at least. Artemis 1 has been 6 years late since 2016, making it easy the landing time itself will be extend beyond 6 years. The mere fact that space-x is involved as an essential piece of the mission makes a further delay almost a certainty for me, because Elon Musk's entire character is built largely on cheating in my opinion."

 

[Atlan0001]

Ad#16:
We on closed system Earth today, our world of ever shrinking distances between everything negative you can think of today are engaged in what the Chinese have called a "war of a thousand (million, billion, trillion) little cuts." Only those thousand (million, billion, trillion) little cuts bleeding the world to death are also known as "the law of unintended consequences" to the hilt and passed . . . "Murphy's law" to the hilt and passed!

 

[Atlan0001]

Ad#16 and #18:
UK is not alone! I'm reading of many, many, others! With no frontier, no frontier civilization, no dynamic energizing civilization, billions of lives too dulled, too stupid (negatively entropic). Mass human genius declining, dropping, across the boards, when and where there is no war! Frontier is very much the far more benign mass equivalent of war (another kind . . . the other, better, kind even if tomorrow rather than today, as long as today is seen to be the frontier opening up to hundreds on the way to billions and more possible).

Endemic misery is pushing the UK towards a civilisational catastrophe

The young are struggling to adapt to a chaotic and competitive world they haven’t been prepared for

www.telegraph.co.uk

 

[Surak]

Let's not make the mistake of the 1960's all over again. Then, space exploration was framed as a race with the Soviet Union. Once the United States won that race, the political will to use Apollo technology to the fullest to explore the moon vanished. We didn't go back to the moon for decades. Going back to the moon and on to Mars is worthwhile no matter what China does. It is valuable in its own right because we will gain new scientific knowledge and foster the development of valuable new technologies. If China is also going, we would be better off cooperating with them to maximize scientific returns and astronaut and taikonaut safety, and to minimize costs. An equitably prosperous China is something the world should want. An equitably prosperous China is a China whose people value their lives and won't want war. It is also, necessarily, a China connected to the rest of the world via the internet, and thus less likely to fall too heavily under a dictator's spell.

 

[Atlan0001]

If we are stupid enough to try to colonize the Moon and/or Mars before colonizing the orbit of L4 and/or L5, and China goes for colonizing them first, China will have control and rule of the high ground, and the high seas, of SPACE. China, besides its Moon mining concerns in support of in-space colonization, will have the higher, greater, more rounded dimensionality of reaches in the Solar System, energies, manufacturing, shipbuilding and shipping-lanes and we who will have forgotten history will be left with junk superficiality in flat tires at the bottom of just three gravity wells (including the Earth).

Try to understand the future SPACE equivalent of Alfred Thayer Mahan's 'The Influence of Sea Power Upon History'. He who controlled the seas controlled the real power and wealth of the world throughout history. He who controls the high orbits of L4 and L5 by occupation in colonizing them controls the dimensionality and, thus, will possess the real power and wealth of SPACE.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Surak, Your hope for a cooperative China does not look like a good bet, considering the same approach was tried with Russia and did not work out like you hope. With China still intent of taking control of Taiwan and a lot of the local seas and their surrounding islands, there is likely to be military strife in the future that would make cooperation a strategic mistake on the part of the U.S.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Atlan0001, are you talking about the L4 and L5 points in the Moon's orbit around the Earth, or in the Earth's orbit around the Sun?

 

[Atlan0001]

Atlan0001, are you talking about the L4 and L5 points in the Moon's orbit around the Earth, or in the Earth's orbit around the Sun?

It's three body resultant geometry and physics and well you know it! L4 and L5 are the most stable points of all capable of being orbited. I've been well aware of them since the 1970s and Gerard K. O'Neill's book, 'The High Frontier'. I was a member of the 'L5 Society' at one time, and since, until some years ago due to politics, the 'National Space Society'.

Lagrange point - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Enough said.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Atlan0001, there are L4 and L5 orbits for different 3 body problems. One is for the Earth and the Moon with a light-weight object in roughly the Moon's orbit around the Earth, leading and trailing by 60 degrees. There is another 3 body problem that involves the Earth and the Sun with a 3rd, light weight satellite. Those L4 and L5 points are roughly in Earth's orbit around the Sun, leading and tailing the Earth by 60 degrees. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point .

My question to you is WHICH set of L4 and L5 points are you proposing to colonize?