Posted on 03/17/2007 11:43:10 AM PDT by Names Ash Housewares
The first people to be marooned on the moon will be Chinese.Even though they may have learned how to launch rockets,it takes more than that to survive a round trip to the moon.
What, did the ChiComs invent a time machine? Because we got there in the 60s when they were still purging their population of dissent.
Can you imagine if this was actually the first race to the moon, today? The diversity police would be all over it. The only person they could send to be "first" to walk on the moon would be Tiger Woods after a sex-change operation.
And their entire budget is probably 1/3 of the NASA budget. Same deal for military spending. It is dangerous and deceptive to underestimate their capabilities because the official numbers don't really give you an idea of the "reach" they are acquiring...
Yeah, but our people plan to come back...
Right, there is one implied element of your argument that is characteristically American....the assumption that America should be in front...always.
That whatever is going on in the world, America should do whatever it takes to be in the driver's seat.
Having been in far-flung over the globe in school and work, I learned an important cultural diversity element.....HARDLY ANYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD THINKS LIKE THIS!
Culturally, the Chinese (and by Chinese, I mean ROC and PRC together....they both think of themselves as Chinese first, chicoms or Taiwanese 3rd or 5th...) Chinese believe that they already are racially, culturally, historical superior---nuff said.
It is why, if you ask them about a unique or creative invention of their culture -they too- will spout "gunpowder." That's all they have to think of....cuz it's enough! "See! We won already! And our culture is very old. So there again, we have already won!"
That culture is what informs your assertion #1. Theirs is a culture based heavily on respect for elders and superiors and ancestors.
That kind of culture is strictly incompatible with radical innovation. If you have a business process improvement over your boss, or if you have designed/identified a better or cheaper circuit than what your boss approved, - then a chinese keeps his head down and waits until it is his turn to implement his idea.
In America, every high-school kid with a basement computer thinks he's going to be the next millionaire by totally coding from scratch. No one hesitates to risk jumping up in the meeting and stabbing their boss in the back if they've got a better idea....and taking credit for it or failure. It's organic to being American.
There is no Steve Jobs Chen, or at least not an eastern cultured one. Even the 1st and 2nd generation kids over here that I grew up with and went to school with, when they go back to the mothership, there is a whole different attitude. Frankly, it's freaky! Living over there for a while, you feel like you're in the Borg!
So while I rag on you for freaking out over them, implied is that I agree we should beat the confuscious crap out of them over time.
What may separate us, tho, is that I think the best way to keep America on top of the innovation dogpile is to (1) fight multi-culturalism in favor of "e pluribus unum" and (2) fight socialism and its inherent borg-isation of our society. Out of that, if the market's wisdom makes it so, then a Steve Jobs private moonshot may very well get us there first---again.
Worrying about a NASA bureaucrat whose motivation is more gravy train funding is not my top priority.
Read #68 if you want to try to carry on a meaningful discourse. If you're only good for content-free one liners then your quip is sufficient.
I tell you what. Part of it is the aggressive deforestation of moonbats from this forum.
Ivan (the real one from the Cold War...) kept us on our toes. He was like us. He was european. He innovated the shiite out of stuff.
Likewise, the hard lefties on this site used to keep a pretty good scare in people on here such that they realized who their friends are and who the enemy was.
Now we've got a bunch of slops that think Rudy is the 2nd coming of satan and that we'd all be better off to learn a thing or two from Hillary for 4 to 8 years, and that will teach the GOP to get its act together and bring a Reagan II out of nowhere.
Makes the echo chamber work better around here. All you have to do is sign-on and type "I hate Walmart. The Chicoms are winning. America manufactures nothing. We're all doomed."
Then a couple of high-fives, type some smilies, say something about bots,... you're done for the day.
When Kublai Khan had trading colonies from Alaska to Peru he didn't try to make everybody there Chinese. He was content to have trading partners. Perhaps the modern Chinese will be content to have good trading partners rather than make the entire world over into their superior selves.
As far as private industry getting anything out of the moon or any other celestial body, the Treaty precludes that and the courts just today used the Treaty to shoot down Lunar Embassy and their lunar land sale. There will be no private acquisition of celestial resources, nor any national requisition, especially by China as long as the Treaty stands. The Modern American Corporation can and would run rings around whatever else the world has to offer in commerce, but the Corporation will not be allowed in outer space.
I actually don't have time for a full reply, but i will say two things:
1. Your ability and willingness to write a long missive is not evidence that you are the arbiter of meaningful discourse.
2. On the actual issue at hand, it IS sufficient to say that the fact that we have been to the Moon nearly forty years ago is not enough to keep it a free celestial body for a free humanity. China is a communist country, all business activity to the contrary. Control of the Moon in communist hands? Not a good idea.
I'm sure that Boeing and Lockheed will be shocked to hear that. Do they need to bring down all their junk?
The Fedgov doesn't make anything. They subcontract it to private companies.
Let me also hasten to say, I don't think you are stupid, or entirely wrong with what you have been saying. It is just this attitude of "the Chinese are plodders" is dangerous and immaterial to whether they achieve a Moon land and manage to stay there.
They have a cheap workforce and plentiful numbers to do the work with, and if the State wants it, it will get it. The State will grind dissenters into the dust to do so, if need be.
I'll give you a hint, SOCIAL PROGRAMS! They will be the ruin of us!
I thought that they eat them! At least they used to.
That's a good angle for picking cotton or building pyramids. I reject the notion that throwing bodies at bad engineering projects makes better engineering results.
Engineering in the 50's required lots of slide-rules, and lots of engineers to run them. Throwing a huge mass of numb-nutz at an engineering problem today creates a bigger engineering problem.
They will have success, and failures. No matter what they accomplish, they will splat a few brave souls on the inside of their pressure suits, and if there is any resulting face lost....will claim victory and move on to something else.
But will they learn quickly and be able to fix those problems? That's a whole different ball of wax.
There's three levels of engineering quality/constraints. Consumer (TVs etc.) Automotive. and Aerospace.
The Chinese can design and mfg TVs. Automotive requires a lot more thought on thermal environment and humidity and added cost into simple things like connectors, etc. The normal run temperature of an ECM in July is higher than the hottest internal temp of of a TV in a vented case. You have to be careful about failure modes, too. If a component in a TV fails, you don't really care what happens next. In a car, if the ABS fails in mode 1, 2 or 17, does it lock the wheels and send you in a spin, or do the basic brakes still work?? You can't even spell MTBF in Mandarin!!! =)
Consumer to automotive is a huge leap. And it also breaks down a lot of the advantages of "cheap." In fact, lessons learned in TVs and Computers will ruin anything you do in Automotive and give additional headaches. Throwing a bunch of cheap labor doesn't help you develop a better connector with good water seals and retention.
Then when you go to aerospace, something wierd happens in electronics. You have to start designing components that move. Suddenly, your stationary circuit board is not all moving at the same accelerations across the board. Certain micro encapsulations for components that are fine in a TV bend and move and stretch during "normal" hi-g force operation envelope. Whoops. Suddenly a perfectly good circuit board has failed....so assuming your cheap, plentiful aerospace workers dig the failed rocket out of the ground, and assuming it didn't catch on fire, and break into 40,000,000 pieces....and assuming you can put it back together....can you figure out what broke? And can you figure out how to fix it? And can you figure out WTF it takes to manufacture such an aerospace quality component?
This is why, when people say "Oh gosh, we been sittin on our asses in aerospace for 40 years" don't know wtf they're talking about. There's a pantload of obscure little stuff that keeps things like Columbia from happening. And I think it's only reasonable to say that the casualty rate of Chinese space travel is going to be a lot more dangerous and unreliable than the old clunker shuttle.
Having lived there, I can say for a fact that there is more individual liberty and freedom for the little guy in China than in America.
If someone wants to start a "cleaners" or open a car repair business, you just do it. There are no permits. There are no EPA rules. No OSHA demands. NO TAXES....UNTIL and unless you get noticed.
In China, the graft and corruption only takes hold once you become a successful business owner. Then, perhaps when you make it Bill Gates-like big, the govt will come in and nationalize it.
On the contrary, in 21st century America, Bill Gates can do and say whatever he wants, and George Soros can arrange his accounts to avoid taxes etc.
If you're a little guy in America, you got to have county permits, you have to grease the city council to approve your building, you have to have liability insurance, you have to comply with all sorts of Federal nonsense.
And if you fail to pay your property taxes or a disgruntled employee sues you for a hostile/unsafe work environment, you lose everything b4 you start.
Did I want to stay there? Hell no. But to assume that they're anything like Stalin would've wanted is just wrong.
Politically, as Ann Coulter and Trent Lott and the 6 imams have proved, there's really not as much "freedom of thought" as we'd like to believe either.
I've never said it wasn't far superior to any CURRENT program. But there are things on the horizon that will cause the American space program to drop from it's current number one position. There have been many great things achieved by NASA in the last 60 years. Many of them aided by Canadian engineers (read my profile to see why THAT is significant). To say that in its current state with no budget increase (even an increase indexed to inflation) the program will remain superior to all is not only ignorant, but blatantly wrong at its core.
What you and most others don't understand is that the shuttle is becoming a museum piece at the end of 2010 or at ISS Core Complete whichever comes last. This era (which achieved none of its original goals) is coming to an end very quickly. And without enough money to replace it, we will give space to the Russians and the Chinese who just plain want it more.
"Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish." - Euripides
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