China to the moon?

[Neo]

China will one day set foot on the Moon and when they do what will happen in the following hours? What if China brings their national flag and sticks it into the surface and takes the US flag? What would happen in the following days and long-term? Would the US halt trade with China? Would it start an International war? What if?

[bthomas]

We'd have no choice but to burn the moon down.

[monsoon]

We all need to start learning Mandarin. The Communists will end up winning after all.

[TennBear]

China will one day set foot on the Moon and when they do what will happen in the following hours? What if China brings their national flag and sticks it into the surface and takes the US flag? What would happen in the following days and long-term? Would the US halt trade with China? Would it start an International war? What if?

With how good they are at hitting what they are aiming at with their current missiles, they would miss the US landing site by at least 250 miles. Besides, they wouldn't want to photograph the thing. LOL

[peaceloveunderstanding]

Are they planning to go to the moon right now? Having the Chinese flying around in space would certainly not please the proponents of the American space defense system.

I find it fascinating that they are 40 years behind the United States.

[Neo]

I find it fascinating that they are 40 years behind the United States.

Well, not so fast on that thought. At lease the Chinese are going into space. I find it fascinating we can't even get off the ground.

[peaceloveunderstanding]

I find it fascinating we can't even get off the ground.

They just finished their 2nd manned space mission.

The Space Shuttles alone have had over 114.

The Mars Rovers, while not manned, were nevertheless impressive.

A next generation of US spacecraft is proposed. There are some concerns to whether or not it will be built. I am confident it will be built as control of space is critical to national security, and effective control of the world (a somewhat scary thought).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_Exploration_Vehicle

NASA hopes to land on the moon again by 2018.

While we could do better, the disaster of Columbia has put a damper on things.

[monsoon]

I seriously doubt the USA could run another space program such as the one in the 60's that placed men on the moon. The biggest reason for my doubt it the country has first been bankrupted by the idiot President running things now. These absolutely huge deficits are going to kill a lot of things for a long while. There is no money left for such a luxury as manned space travel. And I seriously doubt we are going to see much more from the shuttle. As usual he made a speach promising great deeds, then turned his back on it when the cameras quit running. Meanwhile Iraq goes on.

The second reason, is I don't think the USA has the technical ability to do it again. The present generation has little interest in science, mathematics, physics, and other disciplines that it will take to do it again. There are no incentives to go and do the hard work to get an education in these fields as all the jobs have been sent overseas. On top of that much of the science of deep space rocket travel will have to be re-learned from scratch as all of the old space scientists are in retirement or have passed on and did not get a chance to pass on their knowledge.

Don't think that China is 40 years behind us as we are not exactly in the position to build another moon rocket either. And China graduates 500,000 engineers/year while we barely scrape by at 50K now. (but we have plenty of lawyers) Building a moon rocket and the space craft that can fly, land and return from the moon is hugely difficult and a quantum leap more diffucult than flying around a 35 year old shuttle. I will point out that it has been that long since the USA has designed a new spacecraft.

[ironchapman]

^Oh I think we will make it back into space. There's plenty of this generation out there now

Which countries' flags are on the moon I really could care less about (we still made it up there first anyways), so long as ours is left undisturbed. It's more of the fact that they will have the ability and technology to get up there into space that worries me more for security reasons.

[monsoon]

^Oh I think we will make it back into space. There's plenty of this generation out there now

Get back to me when you see them building factories to construct moon rockets and space ships.

[smeagolsfree]

Here is a good article from NASA outlining the return to the Moon.

http://www.nasa.gov/missions/solarsystem/cev.html

If we don't blow ourselves up we will eventually work together with China, Japan, Russia, India, and the Europeans for the exploration of space. Its too exspensive for any one country to do it alone these days. The Chinese have their own reasons for going to the moon, but you have to remember the technology we gained form the 60's moon project. That momentum is what the Chinese want.

[dpbaker]

Technology and knowhow we have but we lack the will as a collective. The people of this country have become more and more ununified (is that a word?) since that time. I think there is too much "what can I get out of this country?" rather than "how can I contribute to keep this nation great?". Too many people can't look to the future; they're only interested in what benefits them now, screw the rest. Kennedy was the man. We need another president like him.