Chicken Chow-Moon

Shoot the shit.
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gulliver
Posts: 1114
Joined: 04 Aug 2006 22:24
Location: Dublin, Ireland.

Chicken Chow-Moon

Post by gulliver » 26 Oct 2011 03:05

Will China take over the Moon?
By Alan Boyle

Is China on course to surpass the United States as the world's space superpower and stake a claim on the moon in the next 15 years? Billionaire space executive Robert Bigelow is deeply worried about that scenario — and he says Americans need a "kick in the ass" to respond to the challenge.

Bigelow delivered that kick today at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in Las Cruces, N.M. — but the general consensus among experts on China policy is that it's a bit too early to start rattling the sabers.

The founder of the Budget Suites hotel chain and Bigelow Aerospace promised to "cause a stimulation" with his remarks at the ISPCS conference, and delivered on that promise by laying out an argument for China's growing space dominance. He said the trend could conceivably lead to a lunar takeover in the 2022-2026 time frame.

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Bigelow characterized China as "the new gunslinger in Dodge" when it came to space exploration.

The way he sees it, China is progressing along a slow, steady path toward space proficiency. The steps in that path include follow-ups to the Shenzhou 8 spacewalk mission in 2008, the unmanned Chang'e lunar missions and last month's Tiangong 1 space lab launch. In the coming years, China will have plenty of cash for great leaps forward in space, while the United States will be hamstrung by higher debt and tighter budgets.

Why the moon?
Why would China want to lay claim to the moon? Bigelow referred to some of the long-discussed potential benefits, including the moon's abundance of helium-3, which could someday be used as fuel for nuclear fusion (although that idea has been oversold in the past). The moon's raw material could also be turned into the water, oxygen, building materials and rocket fuel needed for human exploration. But Bigelow said the biggest payoff would come in the form of international prestige, just as it did for the United States after the moon landings.

Bigelow Aerospace's Robert Bigelow worries that China will lay claim to the moon in the 2020s.

"This would endure for a very long time," he said. "It’s priceless. ... Nothing else that China could possibly do in the next 15 years could produce as great a benefit."

Bigelow speculated that China could conduct detailed surface-based surveys of the lunar surface in the mid-2020s, setting the stage for the country to withdraw from the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and formally claim possession of the moon. China could then conceivably insist on being paid for lunar concessions, Bigelow said.

He said the Chinese challenge could serve as a "fear factor" to energize the efforts of NASA and its space partners. "It's the best kick in the ass that you can have," he told reporters after his talk. He also doubted that the Chinese would be content with taking on the status of a partner in the U.S.-led space "family," even if they were invited to join. "They want to have their own family," he said.

Bigelow proposed diverting 10 percent of the U.S. defense budget to the space effort, which he said would provide an annual boost of $60 billion. It may turn out to be "too late" for a space race to the moon, he said; Bigelow suggested that a U.S.-led consortium should target Mars instead.

What do the experts say?
Bigelow said his analysis was based on two years of observing the space policy landscape, rather than personal discussions with the Chinese. Generally speaking, experts on Chinese space policy say that it's too early to judge the nation's long-term intentions.

"I think it is a little bit of a stretch to think about whether the Chinese will be laying claim to the moon," Dean Cheng, a research fellow at the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation, told me today. "I would be very surprised if they had any plans one way or the other."

Cheng said the Chinese were clearly interested in lunar exploration. "They will have all the pieces in place in the 2021-2025 time period to think about putting a man on the moon," he said. But he doubted that China would try to do anything inflammatory — for example, rolling up the American flag at Tranquility Base and putting a Chinese flag in its place. "Incendiary stuff, not likely," Cheng said.

It's more likely that China would want to see an international body such as the United Nations in charge of lunar exploration and exploitation, Cheng said. He pointed to the example of the Law of the Sea Convention, which governs the use of marine resources but has not yet been ratified by the U.S. Senate.

Cheng said the Chinese would prefer to see lunar resources controlled by an intergovernmental body rather than private-sector entities. He said they'd definitely oppose an arrangement in which non-governmental entities are in charge, such as the system set up by ICANN, the Internet's governing body.

"The prospect of the Chinese having to deal with the space equivalent of ICANN is their worst nightmare," he told me.

UncleMao
Posts: 251
Joined: 18 Aug 2006 11:24

Re: Chicken Chow-Moon

Post by UncleMao » 01 Nov 2011 08:07

If they came up with an instant noodle version of Tang, I'd so be on that shit.

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