China to the Moon in a decade...permanently

They won't eclipse us, but they will have an upperhand in developing the resourses on the Moon (if they make it). I think we really made a mistake by not establishing some sort of permanent presence on the Moon beyond a flag, some LEMs, and a rover. I hope China makes it for the simple fact that it will be really cool to watch people walk on the Moon again, and this time it will be in color.

We are hardly falling behind in military operations though:

Space-Enabled Warfare Fuels Satellite Makers

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Iraq war proved how essential weather, communications and targeting satellites are to the U.S. military, and that is good news for a U.S. space industry still reeling from a devastating slump in the commercial market, analysts and defense officials said. Over the next decade, top satellite makers like Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. will vie for multibillion dollar orders as the U.S. military upgrades or replaces nearly all its satellites. Satellite launchers could also see a lift, given strong military demand and a modest recovery in commercial demand expected in two to three years, the analysts said. "Space is not on the margins of fighting wars anymore," Maj. Gen. Robert Dickman, Air Force deputy secretary for space, told satellite and aerospace executives on Tuesday at a conference sponsored by U.S.-based Inmarsat Ltd. Dickman said the Pentagon (news - web sites) would continue to build its own satellites for national security and economic reasons, but 80 percent of its capacity during the Iraq war was provided by commercial satellite operators, and that trend would continue.
The White House's new remote sensing policy also emphasized its commitment to rely increasingly on high-resolution satellite imagery from commercial companies, he added. Air Force Undersecretary Peter Teets, who also heads the National Reconnaissance Office, said the Iraqi war would be seen as "the most integrated and precise military engagement in history," largely due to a greater use of space-based equipment. This included satellites used to gather intelligence, transmit encrypted messages, identify targets and give early warning of sand storms, he said in a telephone interview. The April 7 bombing of a Baghdad bunker was a key example, Teets said, noting Global Positioning System (news - web sites) (GPS) targeting coordinates were sent via a secure communications satellite to a B-1B bomber just 12 minutes after receiving intelligence that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and top Iraqi officials were at the bunker. Teets said the U.S. military was continuing to develop more sophisticated technologies to expand "space-enabled warfare" in the future, including efforts to improve "blue force tracking," which allows commanders to "see" troops on the battlefield.

GROWING DEMAND
"It really was the first space-enabled war," said Loren Thompson, director of the Virginia-based Lexington Institute. "The reason we were able to network the force so effectively was because the command central and the major military units all had uplinks to communications satellites."
All five major types of satellites -- navigational, weather reconnaissance, communications, intelligence and those which track missile launches -- performed well, and that should fuel demand for space-based assets in coming years, he said. "For the big three satellite makers -- Boeing, Lockheed and Northrop -- the growing role of space portends really substantial profit increases in the coming decades," he said. "Not only is space going to be more important to the military, the Pentagon is going to be replacing every constellation of satellites and adding more," he said, spelling a "bonanza" for firms in the $60 billion per year global market. Marco Caceres, space analyst with the Virginia-based Teal Group, said many big satellite orders expected in coming years had already been in the works long before the Iraq war. But he acknowledged the performance of the satellites during the war would help ensure congressional support to continue funding programs like the $7 billion Future Imagery Architecture (FIA) program, a secret spy satellite system being developed by Boeing that has been plagued by cost overruns. "It'll help when they go back for more money on FIA," Caceres said. "They'll say it's over budget, but we need it."

SOLID MARGINS IN MILITARY MARKET
Lockheed, which sees military and commercial space sales expanding up to $7.7 billion in 2003 and 2004 from $7.4 billion in 2002, said the government space market was "alive and well," and its margins in that sector were "very solid."
But a meaningful upturn in the commercial space area, hammered hard by the demise of the technology sector beginning in 2000, was not yet in sight, said Lockheed spokesman Tom Jurkowsky.
Jurkowsky noted one Lockheed-built satellite, the Milstar secure communications satellite, played a key role in the rescue of Army Pvt. Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital.
Lockheed this week completed all 49 initial design reviews of the next-generation Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite, which will boost Milstar's capability tenfold.

 

I'm sure they wouldn't want China to have H3, that would allow faster progress in creating a Fusion reactor which is clean without any bad nuclear waste like a Fission reactor. And we know Bush loves his polluting energy sources...

 

H3 deals with real fusion projects not "cold fusion" which I think has been throughly disproved at this point. Here is an interesting article on a new type of fusion reactor:

Alternative fusion machine limbers up
By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor
Scientists have taken another stride forward in the quest to develop fusion power - the energy source that powers the Sun and other stars. The Z machine pulses with energy
Fusion promises relatively cheap energy - the fuel is seawater - with far fewer pollution problems compared with conventional nuclear power.
The Z machine
To generate fusion power, atoms, usually light atoms like deuterium and tritium - isotopes of hydrogen - have to be forced to combine. This releases vast amounts of energy.
The problem is that forcing these atoms to fuse requires the use of superhot gasses, called plasmas, confined by intense magnetic fields. So far, success has been encouraging but limited.
An alternative method is to compress a pellet by firing powerful laser beams at it from all directions in the hope of forcing its atoms to fuse. Again, there has been encouraging but limited success.
Instead, it uses huge pulses of electricity applied with careful timing. The pulses create intense magnetic fields that crush tungsten wires into a foam cylinder to produce X-rays.
The action takes place within a small container, called a hohlraum, the size of a pencil eraser, positioned at the centre of the Z machine, itself 36 metres (120 feet) across.
The X-ray energy, striking the surface of a target capsule embedded in the foam cylinder, produces a shock wave that compresses deuterium within the capsule, fusing enough deuterium to produce neutrons - the signature of fusion.
They envisage a much bigger machine than the Z that could achieve so-called high-yield fusion, which means that more energy is given out from the process than it takes to initiate it.
"That is, we can deliver a lot of energy, but it wasn't clear we could concentrate it on a small enough area to create fusion. Now it seems clear we can do that."
Measurements indicated that the Z machine can produce 10 billion neutrons from a compressed deuterium target, in line with predictions.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2928435.stm

 

This is why H3 is important:

3H (Tritium): Radioactive. Decays to Helium-3 by proton emission with a half-life of 12.5 years. Consisting of one proton, two neutrons, and an electron, Tritium's natural abundance is negligible -- it has to be "manufactured" by a variety of possible routes.

Researchers and space enthusiasts see helium 3 as the perfect fuel source: extremely potent, nonpolluting, with virtually no radioactive by-product. Proponents claim it’s the fuel of the 21st century. The trouble is, hardly any of it is found on Earth. But there is plenty of it on the moon.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/helium3_000630.html

 

Beyond all the tit for tat military and prestige issues, the Moon is a stepping stone, both for journeys to Mars and eventually much farther. Isn't the view of an Earthrise something we would all enjoy seeing again?

KC

 

I was hoping to get some input from our BBS members from China on how they feel about this program...is it a positive--a waste of time and resources, etc. The general opinion of the Chinese Space program from our Chinese BBS posters.


wouldabeen23 do a search on the Apollo astronauts and the code phrase, "yes there is a Santa Claus" if your in the mood for some alien conspiracy.

 

I was being serious about that search so go Rendezvous with Rama and look it up...

 

I DO NOT TAKE THIS STUFF SERIOUSLY ITS JUST FOR FUN...

Now that I have got my disclaimer out of the way here is your link:
http://www.anomalous-images.com/astroufo.html

There really are a million sites with this stuff, you aren't being lazy now are you?

 

First my disclaimer:
I DO NOT TAKE THIS STUFF SERIOUSLY ITS JUST FOR FUN...

Since the first space shots people with Ham radios have been recording some very strange conversation between ground control and the mission astronauts.
Gordon Cooper is the most outspoken, but sometimes he just sounds crazy to me: