China's burgeoning space program plans to place astronauts on the moon before 2030 and expand the country's orbiting space station, officials said Monday.
China will beat the USA back to the moon, but 2030 is a little ambitious.
Earth has limited resources of most of the really fun elements, and mining those resources is, even in the least impactful ways possible, really destructive and toxifying. Capitalism wants to expand into space to gain more resources to exploit, communism wants to expand into space to avoid exploiting earthly resources.
The moon is an interesting place to establish a forward operating base for acquiring the resources of the solar system. It has gravity, so humans can theoretically live there without their bones dissolving, but the gravity is much weaker than Earth so spacecraft can come and go more easily. No atmosphere helps a lot there too. There's water on the moon and helium, both of which are very useful if you want to do rocketry.
Also, landing humans on the moon is an achievement that everyone on the planet will understand and admire. It's a testament to the engineering and science efforts of tens of thousands of people. Big morale gains made when you livestream an astronaut hitting a golf ball over the horizon.
I think there's another angle here to consider too.
The owner of the first moon base is a deeply powerful strategic position to be in if the move into further space activity is truly genuine, especially if the capitalists are intent on doing it through private companies.
Once one base is there, they won't build a new one they are much more likely to try and make deals to use China's facilities or to make additional wings to those facilities run by themselves. China can get a lot out of that, especially if various companies come to rely on it as a staging post for further operations.
Earth has limited resources of most of the really fun elements, and mining those resources is, even in the least impactful ways possible, really destructive and toxifying. Capitalism wants to expand into space to gain more resources to exploit, communism wants to expand into space to avoid exploiting earthly resources.
The moon is an interesting place to establish a forward operating base for acquiring the resources of the solar system. It has gravity, so humans can theoretically live there without their bones dissolving, but the gravity is much weaker than Earth so spacecraft can come and go more easily. No atmosphere helps a lot there too. There's water on the moon and helium, both of which are very useful if you want to do rocketry.
Also, landing humans on the moon is an achievement that everyone on the planet will understand and admire. It's a testament to the engineering and science efforts of tens of thousands of people. Big morale gains made when you livestream an astronaut hitting a golf ball over the horizon.
I think there's another angle here to consider too.
The owner of the first moon base is a deeply powerful strategic position to be in if the move into further space activity is truly genuine, especially if the capitalists are intent on doing it through private companies.
Once one base is there, they won't build a new one they are much more likely to try and make deals to use China's facilities or to make additional wings to those facilities run by themselves. China can get a lot out of that, especially if various companies come to rely on it as a staging post for further operations.
:deng-smile: :curry-space: