from Hacker News

Why China is fixated on the Moon

by poissonpie on 11/29/13, 4:08 PM with 60 comments

• by tokenadult on 11/29/13, 6:10 PM

  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.

• by ams6110 on 11/29/13, 5:18 PM

  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.

• by cygwin98 on 11/29/13, 7:11 PM

  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.

• by ChuckMcM on 11/29/13, 8:07 PM

  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.

• by jds375 on 11/29/13, 6:49 PM

  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.

• by walid on 11/29/13, 5:42 PM

  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.

• by girvo on 11/29/13, 5:15 PM

  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...)

• by znowi on 11/29/13, 7:58 PM

  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.

• by marincounty on 11/29/13, 6:54 PM

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