It's full of raging wierdos and you don't seem to be able to actually sign up without requesting via email (probably just as well), but it actually does seem to be pretty quick off the mark with headlines.
It's nice to see progress in space exploration. I saw the landing footage and is beautiful. Congratulations for a nice achievement to the people working on this project
Sadly to me this success isn't so much indicative of progress in space exploration (this effort isn't part of a coordinated international project), but rather a reminder that soon we'll hear about US politicians talking about how to fight the Chinese on the moon.
I've already head national "security" experts talk of "hostile Chinese action on the moon" (without specifying further) and "Chinese efforts to control cislunar space" (again without clarifying what that would involve).
Further, citing the need to counter China the US has announced plans to send military satellites to "patrol" the Earth-Moon L2 point (a surveillance satellite as well as an ASAT capable satellite).
In other words, the US is well on its way to bring war to the Moon.
> isn't part of a coordinated international project
Maybe not "coordinated" but they do have some collaboration with Italian, French, Swedish and Pakistani teams on this one.
Chang'e 7 has Egyptian/Bahraini, Italian, Swiss, Thai, Russian and an international lunar group's payloads.
The Wolf Amendment makes it impossible for NASA to cooperate with China at all, so a competitive stance is really the best we can hope for (the worse alternative bring an outright adversarial one), unless the ESA can wiggle a stabilising middle path between the two sides.
> Without clarifying what that would involve
I imagine ASAT weapons around L2 would fit that bill!
> I imagine ASAT weapons around L2 would fit that bill!
Sure, but so far it is only American weapons going there, which doesn't really explain what Chinese actions the weapons are supposed to "defend" against.
Like, once someone else has sent a weapon to L2 it is easy to motivate sending your own, but the US is currently bootstrapping itself into sending the first one basically by pretending someone else already beat them to it.
Sure, that's exactly what I mean... They're putting it they're to "defend" against what they themselves are putting there.
Their own justification almost entirely is based on "what if" someone is doing exactly what they are trying to do. It's not even particularly subtle, even if you dress it up as debris removal. Which makes no sense in itself.
I'm always blown away by these missions. So much has to go so right, in extreme conditions and almost entirely autonomously, with every fault path considered and accounted for as best as possible.
And no-one to give the drill a bit of a wiggle if it's stuck.
I'd kill for a fully detailed machined metal scale model (but I know I couldn't afford it: edit: actually, 500 yuan ish from Taobao, perhaps not fully detailed, but I'm tempted).
Drilling 2 meters down for samples on the moon is pretty impressive. I believe there are also some samples lying around Mars ready for pickup and return in a few years. I'm far less excited and more worried about Artemis, it's so clearly the wrong approach smh
Yep. And bringing back samples of different cheese^Wregolith might provide additional insights as to its formation (although 2 meters might not seem very impressive, it might span millions of years of undisturbed “soil” deposition)
I dunno, 2 metres sounds pretty impressive to me. That's just over 1 MJ (Michael Jordan). Remotely, in vacuum, in stony electrostically evil regolith which might also be big solid bits and no takebacksies on the drilling site.
Apollo 17 was three metres deep, but they had a meatbag-in-a-bag to feed in drill segments and keep things under control. Which has its own tricky technicalities to keep the meat fresh and moving, to be sure. But it does simplify the other mechanisms.
It’s not on the front page of the NYTimes (I’ve checked on mobile) as I’m writing this, the search for “China” only gave me an article about some small island being afraid of said China (which is par for the course for one of West’s paper of record)
Nothing on the BBC’s front page either, only something about China accusing the MI6 of something (?!).
One of the upcoming Nova-C flights to the moon is scheduled to carry CADRE, a small "swarm" of networked rovers. If you are registered to vote in the USA, perhaps consider asking your members of Congress to not cut funding to the project.
The thing is being reported on space.com. According to their owner's bio: "We're home to the world's top specialist media brands, reaching 1 in 3 adults online in the us and the uk"
I didn't see the BBC one on the front page at all, and it's currently well below the fold of the Science & Health section, despite being two days more recent than "plant with biggest genome found" (most of the rest is health science and generic "health content" like TV shows). There's even an article about SAR radar satellites above it, so it's not even the top space story today.
It's certainly false to say that it's not in the mainstream media, but I think it's also fair to say it's not exactly top of the bill.
For comparison, Chandrayaan-3 was below only Prigozhin's death last August (https://web.archive.org/web/20230823204015/https://www.bbc.c...) and the Chandrayaan programme has its own subcategory. To be fair that was the first Indian landing of any kind, so yes, a bit different.
Not sure Chandrayaan-3 made CCTV top bill either, though! (It was reported, under the Chinese translated name 月船3号, just I don't know how high up it was on the day).
It really depends how it compare to Trump’s conviction. The news is politically dominated these days by that and Gaza. CCTV 7PM news cast will always spend half the news cast detailing what Xi did that day, so it crowds out all the room for science topics. It’s a side story in China daily, and a top story on global times, which is about what I would expect.
Not the top. At least not in US. At the time of Apollo program Americans became bored by news of Moon landings and new footprints in the Moon dust. One more Chinese probe is not big enough news. China already did that, nothings really new.
It is the first ever far-side sample-return mission ever (and I think only the second far-side landing at all, the first being Chang'e 4 in 2019), so there's certainly some non-trivial element of "doing something no one has done before".
And the far side is somewhat geologically (selenologically?) different to make that a useful scientific thing rather than solely for bragging rights, not that those aren't in the calculus with these things.
Chang'e 7 will be pretty interesting as it's going to Shackleton crater, which is a hypothetised water source (though evidence of surface ice is pretty weak) and has never been explored other than orbitally and an impactor from Chandrayaan-1.
Yes, but look at how few comments there are on those articles, suggesting the story got very little engagement. This is generally a sign of low initial placement. Unfortunately since we've handed a lot of editorial decisions over to algorithmic curation, relevant stories (eg to a 'science' section) often fail to get the attention they deserve at the time of publication.
Off course China has been a global superpower for at least 4~5 years now, doesn't mean the US isn't a global super power anymore. The US is still the biggest super power in culture and science. But its not relative big enough anymore in military compared to say Russia and China's size that it can dictate the world what will and what wont happen.
Russia are definitely not the military super power the west thought they were. Ukraine's "3 day long" special military operation that's now 800+ days of brutal war has shown that. The tatics they use consist of human meat waves, hardly scalable to a world context.
Media outlets like the New York Post, Business Insider, and CNN, along with experts, consistently describe Russian advances using terms like "meatwave" and "human wave" tactics. Despite the prevalence of combat footage, there is a noticeable lack of video evidence showing these so-called "meatwave" assaults. The term "human wave attack" has been used historically, particularly during the Korean War and Iran-Iraq War, often as propaganda rather than accurate military descriptions. Russian tactics, including their use of mechanized units and night assaults, do not fit the traditional definition of human wave attacks, which involve unprotected, concentrated infantry assaults. The term "human wave" is more of a propaganda tool to depict the enemy as unsophisticated and inferior. Footage and descriptions of Ukrainian forces using similar tactics are not labeled as "human waves," indicating a bias in reporting. The term "human wave attack" is misapplied to Russian tactics in Ukraine, serving more as a derogatory label than an accurate military term.
They are inferior. No training, no ammunition, no morale, drafting in mercinaries or violent criminals with even less experience or preparation.
The only reason there have been advances have been down to this attrition.
Do you know how many were russians were lost in taking Avdiivka? All for Putin to have something to celebrate on the run up to his sham election.
"...there have been advances..." Despite the group's supposed severe deficiencies, they have still made advances. This implies some level of effectiveness or success, which contradicts the earlier claim of their complete inadequacy. Attrition usually leads to depletion and loss, not advances. Claiming that advances have been due to attrition is contradictory because attrition implies weakening rather than successful forward movement. Recruiting individuals who are described as having even less experience and preparation than an already inferior force would logically not lead to any improvement in capability or effectiveness. The claim that they have contributed to advances contradicts the assessment of their capabilities. It is not clear how an inferior and ill-prepared force would cause significant attrition to a presumably stronger adversary.
Not at all, you can have attrition of your forces whilst making meaningless advances. Attrition doesn't mean stalemate.
They've made these advances of a few square km, at the expense of tens of thousands of lives. This is the meatwave tactic and is not sustainable. At that rate they'd need the entire polulation of Russia to make any advance on Kyiv.
What you are describing is a war of attrition, not unsustainable meatwave tactics.
To call Russian tactics "meatwave," large numbers of soldiers or militia would have to charge at enemy positions in waves, often with minimal support from armored or mechanized units. This is simply not what is happening.
It very much is. Batallions are being sent on foot with very light APC backing, or in cheap chinese off-road gold buggies with no protection. Maybe an occasional T62 or something archaic for support.
GDPs were never the same, soviet union had between 1/3 to 2/3 of US one. It waged absolutely destructive WWII on its land compared to US, and that had massive consequences in economy and demographics for decades.
Only their richness in natural resources kept them above, although it became typical undeveloped country resource curse over time with dictators taking all power and terrorizing population, a tradition well preserved to this day.
Having to fight the Germans on their own land wasn't the only thing that had massive negative consequences: their own actions after the war (such as Stalin's purges) probably had bigger consequences.
China has rather deftly avoided the dumb "global" conflicts the US has needlessly boondoggled itself in over the past 3 decades. I think they've mostly sidestepped this question. For now.
> China has rather deftly avoided the dumb "global" conflicts the US has needlessly boondoggled itself in over the past 3 decades.
China hasn’t really avoided these, they have rather gotten involved in completely different ones. The good news is that their last border skirmish with Russia was around 25 years ago.
Everybody gets somehow 'involved' - its called politics, just look at Ukraine. Its not the same as blasting 100 billion USD into failed invasions that kills a million civilians and cripples many more, achieve absolutely 0 positive but massively destabilize whole region for generations to come. Syria wouldn't be such a mess without Iraq invasion for example, and whole arab spring movement would be much saner if it would actually happen. Palestine wouldn't be witnessing current events without many veterans of Syria conflict. And so on. Conflicts feed next conflicts.
But sure, military-industrial complex gets very happy, you can't sell many weapons if nobody is fighting and people settle their differences by talking, can you.
This has been a huge benefit to the USA though, bringing alot Asian countries into an orbit with USA as they hope it will counter Chinese aggression. I never thought I would see an alliance between Vietnam and the USA in my lifetime, but all it took was for China to grab a few islands.
None. Which is kind of the point. Unlike US, Chinese government doesn't even pretend to be about anything else than it's own benefit.
When US took over Afghanistan, it tried to set up local government modeled on western democracies. That totally failed.
I don't know what China would have done. But I'm pretty sure they wouldn't try to build anything of the sort.
Their most recent conflict is a nice counter point. Spratly Islands in South Chinese sea. It's an obvious land grab in an area that is vital for commercial shipping, important for food production and very good starting point if you needed to pressure Vietnam, Philippines or Taiwan. The only justification is some old map. International arbitration has ruled against them, and they don't really care.
In the meantime they are ramming foreign fishing boats, building military facilities (airports, depots, etc.) and generally acting like they own the area.
In summary, their approach is pragmatic, with obvious material benefit and no pretense of lofty goals. Also very low on casualties, at least for now. It is, in many ways, call back to days of gunboat diplomacy.
China isn't the global military hegemon. They see themselves as inheritors of the position, but they're not it currently and they are the beneficiaries of the fact the US is - i.e. the US Navy is the size it is because that provides guarantees against piracy, which is an expense the Chinese have not had to pay to enjoy the trade boone a shipping economy to the US benefits from.
It's a mistake to compare the US and China's decisions like-for-like, because they're two countries with very different strategic situations and thus opportunities (i.e. China benefits from the US's middle east involvement via a number of means, namely though that stable oil prices are of a huge benefit because oil is a fungible commodity - there's no such thing as "having your own supply" unless you're literally at war and under a command economy - and at that point you're paying for that in a large number of other ways).
> It's a mistake to compare the US and China's decisions like-for-like, because they're two countries with very different strategic situations and thus opportunities
China is making a huge push into EVs because they don't want to be subject to the whims of Middle Eastern instability (and do not produce any significant amount of oil on their own). America, in contrast, has much more interest in oil since they produce a lot of it on their own, and their EV uptake is slower, with lots of resistance from conservatives (who want to see oil persevere as a strategic commodity due to financial self interest).
China could really be in a much better place a decade or two from now given their constraints. We still have a lot of advantages, but they are quickly eroding due to pigheaded politics.
They really don’t have a choice but to control the South China Sea. Taiwan, Japan, Korea, otherwise block them from open ocean access. If a war occurred, they are easily blockaded, a disaster for them economically, except maybe if they can control the South China Sea.
Afghanistan and Iraq were stupid quagmires that the USA shouldn’t have involved themselves in, but 9-11 happened and somehow this was the way to deal with it? China’s national security problems are really 100% internal, so they need to garrison the PLA all throughout the country ready to act on say Beijing rather than Kabul. They have an impressive body count, just not of foreigners.
China still seems to be mostly in a catching up and copying phase.
Not to say their accomplishments are anything but impressive. But look at the space station they’re building. Impressive achievement, but a fairly conservative design. Meanwhile the US has worked on inflatable space station modules, and it seems like that USA will make commercial space stations well before China.
For what I’ve seen USA has far more innovate designs in the works for rocket engines, rockets, spacecraft, space planes, space stations, satellites, etc.
There are impressive innovations from China too, in the space of quad copters, solar power, robot vacuums, EVs, etc. But all-in-all it feels to me that their advanced innovations from all of China isn’t much beyond what we see from much smaller countries like Korea, Japan, Taiwan, etc. Not that amazing considering their population size.
Their population is now shrinking, the economy is getting worse, they have an insane level of debt (especially when including shadow banking), they don’t do real immigration, they’re getting more hostile to expats, they have some brain drain, ... I suspect we’re seeing peak China.
Being in denial and bitching about what isn't denied, instead of taking steps to stay on top and specifically ahead of China, is a great way to lose and lose harder when the US (and the west at large) still has (soon to be had) a chance.
Unless you're a politician running for office, you don't win by arguing your opponent is shit and debilitated and losing and then proceed to do nothing.
A lot of steps are being taken to "stay ahead" though. Consider something like the CHIPS act, I actually got offered a research grant for the summer from it. This is the first time I felt such direct influence and urgency from the politicians
I agree we are finally doing something, which is far better than the nothing we've been doing until the past few years, but in my opinion it's nowhere near enough yet to make up. China is on the third roll out of their equivalent of our CHIPS Act[1], where is ours?
We need more financial incentives, more trade restrictions, harder and heavier diplomacy, and indeed even exercising our military might where necessary if we want to stay the preeminent superpower and continue Pax Americana.
China is a very motivated and ambitious country, they have every reason to kick the US and by extension the west off the pedestal. We are at the point we can't just sit and go "Made In China means Crap" anymore, we need to take them seriously and act like it or we will lose our era.
Why does this read like a child defending his dad before other children? Propaganda and nationalist ideology really makes people sound like children. Liberals prediction of china's economic collapse is especially funny, you have predicted china's imminent collapse for decades, at some point you should realize that western "economics" is a faith-based cult that can't predict anything.
I’m looking at the amount of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.
When China has that much projected power across the globe, we’ll talk. For the moment, they’d still end up in a Ukraine-sized boondoggle if they invaded Taiwan.
They’ve (the Americans) have been losing it for 7 or 8 years or so, if news about the Houthis being able to have hit USS Eisenhower turns out to be true (which would be a first hit on an US carrier since 1945) then things would be even more obvious to the general population.
The US and the rest of the West are not prepared for guerilla warfare deployed by nation states. We've been reorganising our military to face advanced armies equipped with state-of-the-art technology whereas our enemies are not quite advanced. So we find ourselves in a situation where we can deploy a few dozen AT-STs against millions of drunken Ewoks with AK-47s. It's a tricky situation, because we developed weapons and strategies that prioritise surgical hits that minimise civilian losses while the enemies treat people as disposable assets and killing civilians is not a consideration for them. I wouldn't be so cocky if I was Chinese, Russian, Iranian, or Houthi. If the western military switches gears into kill'em all mode all the little shits who want rule the world by terror will find themselves with bigger problems.
> If the western military switches gears into kill'em all mode all the little shits who want rule the world by terror will find themselves with bigger problems.
Ye the potential resurgence of open genicidial colonial policies is a concern.
The good thing about the usual suspects pretending to bomb people for their own good is that there is like a limit on how many weddings they can blow up before they are forced to pull out by other political forces.
Hitting an aircraft carrier in a busy traffic area with close shores is not impossible and a great morale boost. But have they sunk it? Taken it of action? Damaged it in any way?
And after this I try to find news on lcoal media and where I normally get news from, but it's obviously not on any front page or things like that.
It is fun.