241–250 of 359 posts
I love how they announced it to the world on Twitter, while regular Chinese citizen has no access to the Twitter (not the normal way at least)
Don’t worry they announced on WeChat as well. Kind of how NASA post stuff on WeChat even though most Americans don’t use it... wasn’t it also banned under trump?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not that I know of, Venus is kinda crazy. 90 ATM pressure, -1 pH acid rain, about 700 K temperatures at night, it's pretty absurd. Unless you want to make a probe out of solid Tungsten, you're probably out of luck. And good luck getting that out of low earth orbit, that would be stupidly heavy.
What if you designed a probe like a medicine capsule, with an outer shell that's designed to melt, but a smaller rover inside that can survive the heat/acid/pressure?
It's impressive how far China has come in just 2 decades. How significant is this achievement space technology wise? I still remember the first rover on Mars and it was a really big deal in my eyes back then.
Assuming the Zhurong Mars rover can be successfully released in the next few days, China will become the second country in the world with a working rover on Mars.
Honestly, I didn't even know about this mission until now. Good for China. I like "monuments" that countries engage in. They're not new. This is what Apollo was too. Better this than an F-35.
If bananas have taught us anything, it's that monocultures are bad (reinforced by the various COVID vaccines I might add). If SpaceX and all the "me toos" have taught us anything is that space (engineering) is hard.
The longevity of the NASA rovers is almost legendary at this point. They too were originally designed for 90 day missions. It'll be interesting to see how long this Chinese rover lasts.
If it's much shorter, which is what I suspect, I hope the lesson people take is just what an accomplishment the NASA rovers are rather than just cheap nationalistic shots at the Chinese space agency.
I'm curious, their landing vehicle seems to have less moving parts than the respective US rovers that use a complex sky-crane. Is there a particular benefit to using the sky-crane?
For example the helicopter was slung underneath the latest NASA lander, and though it had a protective shell, you still don't want a rock to whack that
Arguably, though sky-crane is cool and clever, it isn't so much more complex than a system in which the rover must drive off a landing platform after it is safely down. That also has a lot of moving parts and opportunities for failure
But if a sky-crane lander lands successfully, at least you can be sure it isn't already covered in grit and dust
I'm a Chinese guy and I don't like this at all. Here's some Chinese perspective: 1. The CNSA is severely underfunded in recent years, to the extent that a considerable amount of space tech graduates went directly into other more "lucrative" fields such as the IT industry. 2. This landing operation was not announced beforehand. This is a bit unusual, when compared to the past operations, e. g. the first manned space f…
Source?
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You probably should have read Dang's pinned comment at the top.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being part of the "western" aerospace industry and collaborating with NASA, I do consider it our homework, yes.
How did they copy it? Which parts did they copy? Given it arrived at Mars at around the same time as perseverance... (it left in the same transfer window right?)
I'm a Chinese guy and I don't like this at all. Here's some Chinese perspective: 1. The CNSA is severely underfunded in recent years, to the extent that a considerable amount of space tech graduates went directly into other more "lucrative" fields such as the IT industry. 2. This landing operation was not announced beforehand. This is a bit unusual, when compared to the past operations, e. g. the first manned space f…
What? Here’s CNSA’s official Weibo account announcing yesterday that the rover will land in Utopia Planitia between May 15 and May 19, depending on local landing conditions.[1] A brief Google News search turned up reports from before the landing, e.g. [2] quoting a speech delivered on the 13th by a Chinese Academy of Sciences professor at Beijing Institute of Technology mentioning that the rover will land on the 15th.
[1] https://m.weibo.cn/7480894382/4636823021945182
[2] https://ezone.ulifestyle.com.hk/article/2957353/中國祝融號火星車將於本周...
Edit: And here’s People’s Daily posting the same CNSA announcement yesterday: https://m.weibo.cn/2803301701/4636812058297556 A search of “天问” there turns up regular updates too, pretty conclusively debunking the “nobody even know” claim.
Given that your first piece of evidence isn’t sourced (yet) and I can’t find anything on it (maybe the space tech graduates flocking to IT part is true, but few sectors pay better to begin with, so that’s not a good indication of underfunding; it’s not like NASA pays anywhere close to FAANG), your second piece of evidence is easy to check and doesn’t stand, and your third piece of evidence is circumferential and akin to Kremlinology, it’s hard to take your conclusions seriously.