
Why China is fixated on the Moon - poissonpie
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/25141597
======
tokenadult
This fixation on the moon in a country with stark poverty for most of its
rural majority is a sign of China's tyrannical government. The government is
seeking glory for the ruling party rather improvement of the daily lives of
the common people. (Yes, I do read Chinese and I have been to China more than
once and I have been studying China's national policies since the 1970s.) I
wish there were a higher percentage of participants on Hacker News who have
both thorough knowledge of the language and culture and regular access to the
Chinese press and mass media to comment on stories submitted here about China.
I especially wish that more of those participants were old enough to have
direct personal memories of the Cultural Revolution period and personal travel
to both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

The article kindly submitted here reports the thoughts of a British space
scientist (not a Sinologist): "He believes China could have astronauts on the
lunar surface by 2025." I will make a testable prediction here, which I hope
all of us live to see confirmed or disconfirmed. China will not have
astronauts (the Chinese term is "taikonauts") on the lunar surface as part of
a Chinese national space mission by 2025. (By contrast, I think it is barely
possible, but not particularly likely, that an international space mission
with a crew from several countries may return astronauts to the lunar surface
by that year.) As China democratizes, which is something I fully expect to
happen between now and then, China will readjust its national policy
priorities. The big priority for China in the next decade will be opening up
the political system to more dissent and more effective participation by the
masses, especially the rural masses who make up the majority of the
population, and avoiding the "middle-income trap" of economic growth
stagnating while China is still a relatively poor country on a per-capita
basis. China has a lot of issues to work on that are a lot more important than
putting taikonauts on the moon as part of a Chinese national space mission.

~~~
nabla9
>country with stark poverty for most of its rural majority is a sign of
China's tyrannical government

China lifted more than 600 million people out of poverty between 1981 and
2004. The ongoing Chinese urbanization effort is massive. From 2010 to 2025,
300 million Chinese (little less than US population) now living in rural areas
will move into cities.

China has tyrannical government, but it's not incompetent like it was during
the Mao era. They know that they can keep the power only as long as they keep
making things better for majority of people. If they fuck up, no security
apparatus can keep people from toppling them.

China must ensure that China has the energy needed to reduce poverty and
increase living standards. The great sucking noise in Africa is part of that,
so is the conflict in the China Sea. If they look for the Moon for resources,
that's not surprising.

~~~
wisty
How many of those 300 million rural Chinese who are going to migrate to cities
are already migrant workers? About 50% of rural Chinese (i.e. most working age
rural Chinese) already spend 2-12 months working in cities.

~~~
rdtsc
It still stands that they are lifted out of poverty. Note, those people are
not sent by force, they are not arrested and send to labor camps. The way the
economic structure is set up, rewards them to do that. It would have been
worse if they had shitty conditions in the country side _and_ no possibility
to move to a city to work.

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ams6110
Getting to the moon is not a technology challenge (we've shown it can be done
with 1960's era technology) it's a financial one. It's hugely expensive. I'm
not sure how you "exploit" the resources of the moon when it's entirely cost-
prohibitive just to get there and return.

~~~
loceng
We should not touch our moon. We shouldn't extract anything from it, and we
should add very little to it. Earth's weather depends on it, so unless we're
trying to manage our weather and its gravitational pull, etc.. then we
shouldn't touch it.. and we shouldn't be trying to play with our Earth's moon
unless we need to for some unexpected solar event.

~~~
UnFleshedOne
What exactly could we do to it that would affect its mass significantly? Ship
a significant mass back to earth? If things come to that scale, it can be
easily corrected by dropping asteroids on it to balance the mass loss.

This sounds like a "we shouldn't have any fusion or fission in space!"
argument.

~~~
loceng
That might be a possibility.

------
cygwin98
This scene somehow reminds me of one of my favorite old DOS games --
Civilization I. Ａ lot of you may share the same good memory. In the game a
number (up to six) of civilizations/nations compete, you control one while the
computer AI takes care of the rest. The game would end should one of the two
goals achieved:

1\. One civilization/nation conquered/destroyed all others

2\. One civilization/nation managed to assembly a spaceship and launched it to
fly to the closest Solaris -- Alpha Centauri

The first goal seems easy and tempting to follow, but turns out very
difficult. In the end, to win the wars over those nations that often have huge
cities (20plus) and perfectly armed with numerous tanks and battleships, you
often resort to nukes to take them over. In more difficult levels such as
deity level, it's very likely your populous cities get nuked. After a short
while, I started focusing on building spaceships instead and had a few wins
and felt better that way.

In retrospect, it may reflect the believing of the designer Sid Mier's, whom I
totally agree with and respect for. Following the same spirit, we as human
beings might as well put our inner conflicts aside and target the space
instead.

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ChuckMcM
It is pretty clear that any country that has their own access to space is
stronger than a country that does not. It provides a strategic advantage if
you can freely put satellites up, it provides a military advantage if you can
freely put people and satellites up. If you are competing with someone who can
freely access earth orbit, then you can only have the upper hand if you can
freely access the moon. Stations on the moon can take out anything in earth
orbit, and they can take out places on the Earth by just throwing large rocks
at them. A lunar rock attack can be as devastating to a city as a nuclear
attack, with no fallout and no long term radiation risk. And you have a nearly
infinite supply of rocks on the Moon.

Thus any nation that can establish and maintain a permanent presence on the
Moon, and build the facilities for throwing chunks of the moon at any
particular point on Earth, Will have overwhelming military superiority over
any nation that cannot do that. Up to this point, the US has been the only
country with the economic strength and technology to pull that off. That we
did not do that, reflected more on the fact that we did not need to, rather
than we could not.

If you are a foreign policy wonk, China getting a permanent moon base with
manufacturing capability makes Iran developing a nuclear weapon seem
insignificant. There are many nations in the 'nuclear' club, there are none in
the 'moon' club.

~~~
chj
Interesting, but ridiculous. Why build such a moon base when you could easily
fly in a spaceship and destroy it without the effort of actually landing and
building on moon?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Ok, follow that line of reasoning for a bit.

In order to destroy a Moon base, you have to get to it to destroy it. That
takes time, up to several days if you don't have a favorable launch window
from your launch pad.

Next you need a pre-text. I'm going to assert that it is a reasonable
assumption that the Moon base is presenting as either entirely docile
(scientific research etc) or entirely hostile (sending rocks at the planet).
If its the latter taking out the handful of launch facilities is pretty
straight forward which prevents any future attack from that vector. If its the
former, well your attacking country needs to come up with a reason why they
are flying what is no doubt a nuclear warhead, in the guise of a satellite
toward the Moon.

Then there is terminal control (targeting at the site). So you may know in
general what facilities are on the Moon from an initial landing point, but if
the base has existed there for any length of time all bets are off. Also
making the initial establishment on the dark side would force an adversary to
first orbit the moon trying to identify your base, and then de-orbit into an
attack orbit.

During its orbit your attack device will be vulnerable to orbiting defensive
satellites which probably also play the role of communications relay which
justifies them in lunar orbit in the first place.

My point is that mounting an attack on the Moon from the Earth is much more
difficult and expensive than mounting an attack on the Earth from the Moon.
Because the moon has a much shallower gravity well and the Earth has a much
wider variety of targets which are more easily threatened.

The US and Soviets understood this although the technology to implement it was
so expensive neither could afford to carry through. The cost of the technology
has come way way down and once again there is another country putting its hat
in the ring as 'superpower.' In a weird way, that means someone is going to
the Moon, to create a permanent installation. My thought is that the US is
like the hare in the story of the tortoise an the hare, confident in its
ability to make that happen if it becomes necessary.

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jds375
While China certainly has other things it should be working on (poverty,
hunger, pollution, etc.), I think that the Chinese view this as a "coming-of-
age". As China works to build its image as a superpower, it needs to be
capable of other great feats beside economic prowess. Space exploration has
always been one of the ways nations do this (read: space race). Sure, China is
a bit late to the game... But better late than never.

------
walid
So is it time to start taking photos of the moon before the image seen from
earth completely changes. Every time I read about the moon and mars I think
about how humans are going to change the environment after living there for a
while. The moon also happens to affect nocturnal life on earth, which means it
will end up being an environmental issue too.

~~~
jerf
"Every time I read about the moon and mars I think about how humans are going
to change the environment after living there for a while."

There _is_ no environment on the Moon. Can't 100% guarantee that for Mars but
it's still the smart bet.

Repeat that as often as it takes to understand it. In the way most people mean
the term, there is _NO_ environment on the Moon. There is _NO_ environment on
the Moon. There is not a SINGLE LIVING THING on the Moon. If you want to be a
Moon environmentalist, then you should be in _support_ of Human growth onto
it, because until that happens, there is _no_ environment on the Moon to even
become "changed".

Unless you really are in favor of some right for literal _rocks_ , utterly
lifeless, sterile, dead, unconscious rocks with absolutely 0 probability of
any of that changing to remain "undisturbed", there is no current
environmental concern for the Moon.

~~~
walid
You mean there is no ecology or atmosphere on the moon. The environment is
whatever there is around. On the moon it will be a terrain of grey and white
matter that reflects a lot of light when there is a full moon to the point
that you can see around you here on earth. This is what I'm pondering since
moon cycles affect nocturnal creatures here on earth. I'm not worried about
plants and animals becoming extinct on the moon because there aren't any.

Btw, there is an atmosphere on Mars but I believe it is only CO2 and very
thin. Mars missions have recorded Martian winds blowing sand on the tiny
rover.

~~~
jerf
"You mean there is no ecology or atmosphere on the moon."

I believe I said: " _In the way most people mean the term,_ there is NO
environment on the Moon..."

I stand by that.

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girvo
Who "owns" our Luna? Seriously, if China did decide it was economically
feasible to mine it, are the resources theirs for the taking, or do we have
international treaties defining things, similar to Antarctica (although that's
also up for debate...)

~~~
jamesbritt
Well, there's this:
[http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/SpaceLaw/moon.html](http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/SpaceLaw/moon.html)

Enforcement is another thing.

~~~
andyjohnson0
From
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Treaty#Ratification](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Treaty#Ratification)
-

 _" As of 2013, only 15 states (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Chile,
Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Pakistan, Peru,
Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Uruguay) have ratified it. France,
Guatemala, India and Romania have signed but not ratified it."_

The only country in the list with a current space capability is India.

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znowi
I'm glad the Chinese go for it, for whatever reasons. It's a net gain for
everyone, technology or socially-wise. I'd rather see funding for the moon
program or new exciting probes rather than dozens of useless companies like
Buffer.

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marincounty
I hope we have spies in place. They never play by the rules. NQ mobile is a
perfect example.

