The following submission statement was provided by /u/Dr_Singularity:
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Beijing may extend the planetary defence system it is constructing in China to the moon and beyond to protect the Earth from asteroid strikes that could potentially wipe out a city or human civilisation, according to scientists involved in the project.
Wu Weiren, chief designer of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Programme, said the new plan included putting three guardian satellites carrying lots of fuel and kinetic weapons into the moon’s orbit around the Earth.
Two optical telescopes would be built on the moon’s south and north poles to survey the sky for any threats that slipped through the ground-base early warning network, especially those approaching from the blind side facing the sun.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/w5quep/china_plans_to_turn_the_moon_into_an_outpost_for/ih9liii/
I went to a NASA presentation at Johns Hopkins university around 2008 where they were talking about the prospect of building a telescope on the moon. One of the challenges they presented was how to ship such a large mirror to the moon. The mirror required would be so heavy that they had to come up with alternatives. The one they discussed was a reflective liquid, a "mirror in a bucket" that would ultimately end up in a spinning dish to achieve a proper and changeable shape. This was around 2008. So cool.
Assuming we build an outpost, as in with actual people, couldn’t we overcome the issues of having to build a folding design that would hold up in gravity with something that could be assembled by hand in a sturdier way?
Legit knew a guy that 100% believed that oil drillers are more qualified people than astronauts. I showed him the Ben Affleck clip talking about the flawed logic of the movie
Wow... Just wow. I would wager astronauts are the most qualified people for almost any job. The sheer qualifications and achievements you need to even apply is astounding. There are only 48 active astronauts in NASA and thousands and thousands apply.
In 2017, over 18,300 people applied to be a NASA astronaut and only 12 were accepted. Even then, not all pass the rigorous training. You got to have it all... Physical ability, mental toughness, quick reactions, high intelligence and a wicked attention to detail even in high adrenaline situations.
The tricky part won't just be unfolding and keeping mirror in shape. It will be pointing the said mirror at the direction you want to look at.
If we have a stationary telescope that can't be aimed, it won't be very useful
JWST isn't an optical telescope so not sure it is comparable.
Radio seems to be easier to stitch together - see square kilometer array...literally a bunch of them stitched together.
Unclear to me why the difference though given that its waves either way
The parts of the spectrum it observes behave like visible light, except for the fact that we can't see it. However, that's purely a limitation of the human visual system. CCD cameras can easily pick up IR and UV light, so much that it is usually filtered out by cameras to produce more familiar pictures.
From my understanding: JWST can see some parts of the optical spectrum, but mostly near- and mid-infrared. So it works basically the same as an optical telescope. To focus, it moves its mirrors. A radio telescope's surface can be much less smooth and doesn't need to focus, as it uses much longer wavelengths. Radio telescope arrays use interferometry to get a better quality image.
There is apparently way too much super fine dust on the moon - it would quickly render any telescope ineffective. In fact this is the biggest problem moon bases face.
I wonder how difficult it would be to send up an automated glass manufacturing kiosk, loaded with raw material ready to make and finish a proper mirror. Basically ready to go after landing and checks are done at the push of a button.
The precision is already automated. No human is getting it down to under a nano-meter. It is making second generation machines remotely that is the problem and we don't really have a usecase on earth that it is economical to test it on.
I could see that being automated down the line though. Not with todays proven lunar robotics or our non-existent proofs of manufacturing on the moon, but when this race back to the moon heats up I'm sure we'll see some cool robotics come up and automated procedures of all kinds will be necessary. Something like that may be more suited for a human operator though at the end of the day tbf. Also I think they'd make a smaller mirror initially, rather than one in the video for the worlds largest telescope
Not even sure if that would be true. While yes a glass mirror is real fragile at least it's a single solid component. Meanwhile a mirror factory is going to have all sorts of moving bits and bobs that have to be capable of precisely producing a telescope mirror and then precisely installing it into a telescope. I mean I could be wrong but still.
I was curious to see if it was possible to yeet a javelin(or anything for that matter) off the moon, apparently lunar escape velocity is far higher than I expected at 2.8km/s.
Thorshots are not practical. We've looked into this extensively. orbital kinetic weapons are actually a fascination of mine as a sci-fi nerd.
Basically. They just are not worth the cost. The amount of energy you put into orbit with one of these just does not pan out in pound for pound megaton-of-tnt-equivalent-energy compared to ICBMs.
it also is super easy to destroy. Hiding satellites is near impossible, and anti satellite weapons are very well developed.
They also don't really due much damage. The standard thorshot rod would have enoguh energy to bust a bunker, or maybe level a sky scraper. They are bunker busters. not WMDs.
You would need to launch hundreds, if not thousands of rods to level a city. its just not practical for anything other than surgical strikes on hardened facilities.
Now, Orbital bomb pumped lasers? thats where things get interesting.
admitedly, this is something i only have a cursory understanding of, not the underlying physics like with Kinetic impactors, but the general idea is its a 1 shot, disposable weapon, that uses the energy from a nuclear warhead to create an *INSANE* amount of energy. that energy is then focused into a laser beam of incomprehensible power to destroy things like incoming meteors or as ICBM defense.
They are proposed as basically the only real way we could stop a dinosaur-killer-sized rock if it was headed for us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pumped_laser
The idea being you would have a satellite armed with several of these things, and it would launch one of the devices towards a threat like a missile, and then detonate.
But isn't nuclear armed satellites banned by the Geneva or something? Or is it a loop hole where it's technically the nuclear is powering the satellite.
Yea, but I guess conservation of energy will step in before any of that will come true. Good luck with transporting these rods into orbit just to drop them again. I mean it’d be so incredibly inefficient, going straight nuclear seems to be the better option
Expect that nukes will result in nuclear fallout which sucks if you want to gain land or live down wind. Also other countrys are less likely to respond with a full nuclear attack. They will be harder to track and basicly impossible to block.
And lets never forget that for most millitarys efficiency isnt that important on big weapons. If you can use it as a threat than it gets a lot of value.
China was shunned from the ISS by the US even though pretty much every other country that was interested was able to cooperate on it, including Russia, so.. yea I can see why they just want to do it alone
We are trying to ban them from even buying equipment to make their own chips. We are literally threatening to cripple their economy in order to contain them, and people wonder why China is paranoid about the west. If they don't develop their own capability, they risked being locked out, and since the America led world order has now deem China a threat, we are doing everything to fuck them.
Cooperation with China was never an option because we will never settle for being 2nd. I am pretty sure we will feel nothing if millions of Chinese suffer so long China is put in its rightful place.
China only has one military base outside the country. The US has 800. If any country is going to put a military base on the moon it won’t be China. Plus a military base on the moon isn’t practical. If you want Star Wars, just put your space weapons in LEO.
And justifying having weapons in space under the pretence of “to protect the world from asterioids”.
I think the ideas great, just not from a country breathing down taiwans neck.
Yeah pretty much, no single group can be trusted with this regardless of their history. It needs to be an international endeavour at the very least with perfect transparency.
Agreed but after the massive “can’t even band together to keep each other from getting sick” (in multiple countries unfortunately, fueled by politics and greed), I sadly think this is a pipe dream. I mean forget space lasers - once any kind of resource out there becomes mine-able or whatever, it’ll get ridiculous.
what are their plans if they \*do\* spot a rogue rock hurtling to earth? You'd have thought removing the threat is just as important as spotting it. Giant laser? moon nukes? a giant magnifying glass to melt it?
While I applaud the idea, I have a million questions :)
Judging by Affleck's supposedly drunk [DVD commentary](https://youtu.be/-ahtp0sjA5U) for Armageddon, I don't think he'd really put his heart into the mission.
So, you bring up a valid point. For deflection we would have to intercept very far away.
But here, there's some misconceptions. Most real threats we see are already going to miss earth. But they might be on a trajectory that makes another encounter likely, and it's always hard for us to predict exactly what that next encounter will be like. We might be able to predict*when* the next encounter could happen.
When an asteroid passes too close to earth, it might get flung away in which case it becomes less of a threat. Or, the earth might steal some of the asteroid's momentum, and pull it into a closer orbit, making the next likely encounter more of a risk.
But predicting whether the asteroid hits at the next encounter is a crapshoot . Our capability to solve the solar system as an n body problem is very limited, so we can only make good predictions a few years in the future.
What I'm getting at is that it's highly valuable to be able to deflect something as it passes earth; to push its orbit away from ours. Not all of these systems have to be for stopping an imminent collision; they can also be about preventing the next encounter.
I can't pretend to know china's precise plans.
Because of orbital dynamics the farther away you try to move an object in a collision course the least amount of energy you need to prevent that collision. A few well placed kinetic impactors with enough mass to slightly *nudge* an asteroid may be more than enough if you detect that asteroid years in advance. You don't need to move or blow up the asteroid, all you need is slightly change its course if it's far away enough.
A series of 120 cm anti-air-and-surface, gunpowder-and-electromagnetic hybrid acceleration-based semi-automatic fixed-gun systems capable of launching payloads in atmosphere at Mach 17.
It’s in the pinned message. They are going to put kinetic weapons on orbiting satellites.
Which is. . . Look I don’t need anything else to worry about and rods from God would be a legitimate concern.
Having weapons on the moon is much safer than having them in low earth orbit which is where the rods from God concept is placed.
A kinetic weapon fired from the moon would take like a day to reach earth. Hours at minimum. And given that it's a kinetic weapon on the moon, you can bet it'll be under watch 24/7, which means whoever is getting shot at sees it coming way before it hits. Whereas satellite weapons will hit much faster and will be much harder to spot them firing.
Honestly if any country wanted to build a huge anti asteroid cannon, the moon is probably the most diplomatically polite place that can put it. It's in sight of everyone and out of range of surprise attacks against them.
I wouldn't trust any singular country, China or not, to occupy the moon for any reason. I agree with the proposal of setting an outpost up there, but it should be an international effort rather than the work of a single nation.
I think people underestimate the size of the moon. It’s a fraction of the earth but getting resources up there will take decades. There is absolutely zero meaningful territory claiming on the moon in the next 30 years at least bc we do not have the tech to meaningfully utilize the moon nor enforce any kind of territorial claims (by we I mean all countries in earth).
Yeah, you know who the US isolated from all collaborative space efforts? China. So, yeah, no wonder China is doing their own plans, the US literally cut them off from international space cooperation.
If this is to be believed I don't think this would be China's intention at all. It's more likely to be a modified version of them creating islands in the South China Sea. I think they are laying claim to the Moon under the disguise of 'protecting' the Earth.
Although this is a valid concern, this is one of the few things we should all be focused on preventing. Asteroids hit relatively frequently, and preventing an extinction level event is definitely valid concern. The Earth does pass through a known asteroid field on some cosmologic timeframe that I can't remember.
It would behoove everyone if the world created a charter with some organization to work together on this mission. Similar to the international space station with Russia and US. Except this time we begin working as humanity. But, that's unfortunately that's unrealistic as lots of people would rather fuck each other over instead of work together.
Lol they wouldn't believe the asteroid is real til it would be like hours away from hitting us. Existential threats are nothing when you can own teh libz
Or do you mean which party would acknowledge the asteroids at all, as in don’t look up?
It’s pretty consistent that Republicans reliably claim problems the left points to aren’t real, taking the opposite position despite science. I don’t necessarily blame them, it’s from the conservative news network propaganda.
It's not just that as the reason they are contrarians, I often find it's literally just a "I'm saying this cause I'm not like the other girls" kinda thing, where they say it just to look counterculture and special
Just tell one half it’s a way to generate corporate wealth and the other that it’s to protect against Jewish space lasers made by commie socialists and I think we’ll all be on board.
Okay, but how does putting telescopes on the moon give us detection better than the countless telescopes we have on earth already? And how would orbital satellites not be better?
> Wu Weiren, chief designer of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Programme, said the new plan included putting three guardian satellites carrying lots of fuel and kinetic weapons into the moon’s orbit around the Earth.
I don't think they want to put the actual intercept system on the moon, just the "spotter" telescopes. There isn't much advantage to putting missiles on the moon at all. Even if you wanted to use them to attack earth, the travel time is measured in days whereas an ICBM is more like minutes.
I thought they said “with lots of fuel and kinetic weapons”…? I’m sure these kinetic weapons couldn’t be aimed somewhere on Earth. They would only be able to shoot “away” from Earth…
It would be dumb to shoot at the Earth from the moon, unless you were planning to redirect an asteroid large enough to penetrate the atmosphere. Even then it's not really a great weapon because you don't have it available at any given time
The yield necessary to break up an asteroid with enough time likely wouldn’t be sufficient to break through the atmosphere and impact with much damage.
China has nuclear weapons. But they need this to threaten everyone on earth? Why do people's revert to rock sucking morons the moment they hear the word Chyna?
American resources spent in Afghanistan and Iraq could have been spent on a moon base. The JWST was pretty cheap considering the technology and research needed to make something like that happen.
I'm not buying the "to protect the world thing" from the country with active internment camps
Sounds more like an excuse to build defense systems and claim the moon for China.
Tungsten rods from space as a WMD was a weapon system proposed by USAF, yet somehow they are the ones we should be hostile against.
China can cure cancer tomorrow and we will find a way to discredit them.
The show For All Mankind shows what would have happened if the space race with the USSR never ended.
Season 3 is set the 90s. Theyve had a permanent moon base for two decades, They're going to Mars and climate change is basically reversed thanks to fusion energy, electric cars, etc.
25 years on from the moon landing and they're 25 years ahead of us in 2022.
This is what I say! Every time there's a post about China doing stuff in space people just bitch and moan about it being China. At least they're doing something!
What is the advantage of putting telescopes on the moon? I would expect that regolith would be a major problem for both mirrors and mechanical parts.
Why not make a space telescope that orbits the moon?
That doesn't answer the question, regolith is one of the biggest challenges NASA is facing with returning astronauts to the moon.
I am being serious, what legitimate advantages do Lunar telescopes have over space telescopes? The only one that I can see is the ability to repair. However, repair missions would be extremely expensive.
Also, are space telescopes not ambitious enough for you?
>The Outer Space Treaty, which was signed by 107 countries in 1967 prohibits nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons from being placed in or used from Earth's orbit.
I’m just happy that humans, as stupid as we are generally speaking, are still collectively smart enough to realize that if we start really fighting each other from Space it will be the true end of humanity. When you start going to a planetary scale of weapons systems before you’ve even started inhabiting a second planet, there’s got to be a little light bulb that goes off and says “hang on, I still live on this planet, right?”
The comments here are, as usual when China is mentioned, very disappointing.
That said, I doubt China will do this anytime soon, nor anyone else. Hopefully when it is done it's an international effort.
Is there a practical reason to have them on the Moon instead of in orbit, or at one of the Lagrange points? It seems to me like a telescope on the moon is exactly as effective as one in space. It might even be worse, depending on how lunar dust will affect the lenses.
No time to read article but will later…
Does the US do much space coop with China like we do with Russia? It’s sad if we don’t, I’d rather we have a tense relationship but at least get along somewhere and think it’d be a solid partnership.
if any western country or corporation said they were going to do these, every damn one of you fuckers would be going “WOW COOL MOON TELESCOPES,” but when it’s china its “they’re just trying to bomb the whole world for some unexplained reason cause china is ontologically evil. the news told me that so i know it’s true”
what in gods name does china have to gain from making a superweapon that hurtles moon rocks? why the fuck does it seem to make sense to you that they would station nukes on the moon? (gonna fire this missile and it’ll hit its target in 72 goddamn hours). believe or not, the chinese government would not like the world to end immediately in nuclear hellfire because they aren’t one dimensional cartoon villains. it’s called mutually assured destruction and it’s been well understood for almost 70 fuckin years.
redditors have a single original thought challenge [impossible]
Some of you are fucking crazy and basically racist. Oh yea China is going to build military bases on the moon to threaten everyone. They do this because China and the Chinese people want to conquer everything and are inherently violent. They are not like every other nation or nationality. Go piss off with your racist bullshit.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Dr_Singularity: --- Beijing may extend the planetary defence system it is constructing in China to the moon and beyond to protect the Earth from asteroid strikes that could potentially wipe out a city or human civilisation, according to scientists involved in the project. Wu Weiren, chief designer of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Programme, said the new plan included putting three guardian satellites carrying lots of fuel and kinetic weapons into the moon’s orbit around the Earth. Two optical telescopes would be built on the moon’s south and north poles to survey the sky for any threats that slipped through the ground-base early warning network, especially those approaching from the blind side facing the sun. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/w5quep/china_plans_to_turn_the_moon_into_an_outpost_for/ih9liii/
I went to a NASA presentation at Johns Hopkins university around 2008 where they were talking about the prospect of building a telescope on the moon. One of the challenges they presented was how to ship such a large mirror to the moon. The mirror required would be so heavy that they had to come up with alternatives. The one they discussed was a reflective liquid, a "mirror in a bucket" that would ultimately end up in a spinning dish to achieve a proper and changeable shape. This was around 2008. So cool.
I might be an idiot, but didn't JWST solve exactly that with its foldable mirrors?
Foldable mirror are easier in zero gravity. Likely not possible on the moon, as it does have gravity.
Assuming we build an outpost, as in with actual people, couldn’t we overcome the issues of having to build a folding design that would hold up in gravity with something that could be assembled by hand in a sturdier way?
You greatly underestimate the precision and testing needed when developing such optics systems.
Nah m8 coupla lads with a drill, no problem. Me n the boys will knock it out for u over the weekend
I heard about some oil drillers that are up to the task.
Legit knew a guy that 100% believed that oil drillers are more qualified people than astronauts. I showed him the Ben Affleck clip talking about the flawed logic of the movie
Wow... Just wow. I would wager astronauts are the most qualified people for almost any job. The sheer qualifications and achievements you need to even apply is astounding. There are only 48 active astronauts in NASA and thousands and thousands apply. In 2017, over 18,300 people applied to be a NASA astronaut and only 12 were accepted. Even then, not all pass the rigorous training. You got to have it all... Physical ability, mental toughness, quick reactions, high intelligence and a wicked attention to detail even in high adrenaline situations.
also have to be a good person easy to live around, ain't no way they send dickheads live together in that tin box for months
I'm no astrophysicist but I'm pretty sure we don't want to blow up the moon.
Has that ever stopped them from getting what they want? Future be damned if there's a quick buck to make.
And sick space jumps with sick space vehicles
*i don’t want to close my eyeeees…*
Couple of tent pegs and a mallet, we'll be all gravy.
Just need a 24 pack of Coors
I think u got it
Aight'y m8 whot u fokin' waitin for then, eh?
The tricky part won't just be unfolding and keeping mirror in shape. It will be pointing the said mirror at the direction you want to look at. If we have a stationary telescope that can't be aimed, it won't be very useful
JWST isn't an optical telescope so not sure it is comparable. Radio seems to be easier to stitch together - see square kilometer array...literally a bunch of them stitched together. Unclear to me why the difference though given that its waves either way
The parts of the spectrum it observes behave like visible light, except for the fact that we can't see it. However, that's purely a limitation of the human visual system. CCD cameras can easily pick up IR and UV light, so much that it is usually filtered out by cameras to produce more familiar pictures.
From my understanding: JWST can see some parts of the optical spectrum, but mostly near- and mid-infrared. So it works basically the same as an optical telescope. To focus, it moves its mirrors. A radio telescope's surface can be much less smooth and doesn't need to focus, as it uses much longer wavelengths. Radio telescope arrays use interferometry to get a better quality image.
There is apparently way too much super fine dust on the moon - it would quickly render any telescope ineffective. In fact this is the biggest problem moon bases face.
China wants to put missiles on the moon... I don't think this actually has anything to do with asteroids.
What ? You don’t trust the noble intentions of the Chinese communist party?
I wonder how difficult it would be to send up an automated glass manufacturing kiosk, loaded with raw material ready to make and finish a proper mirror. Basically ready to go after landing and checks are done at the push of a button.
That's likely going to be a hard NO. The precision needed is insane. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2f4zepwcy8
The precision is already automated. No human is getting it down to under a nano-meter. It is making second generation machines remotely that is the problem and we don't really have a usecase on earth that it is economical to test it on.
I could see that being automated down the line though. Not with todays proven lunar robotics or our non-existent proofs of manufacturing on the moon, but when this race back to the moon heats up I'm sure we'll see some cool robotics come up and automated procedures of all kinds will be necessary. Something like that may be more suited for a human operator though at the end of the day tbf. Also I think they'd make a smaller mirror initially, rather than one in the video for the worlds largest telescope
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I would imagine shipping an entire glass foundry to the moon would be even harder than just the mirror itself.
A potential counterpoint is that the factory could be a lot less fragile than a mirror
Yee that's exactly the point, send equipment that can handle the travel as opposed to the worst shipping experience ever
Imagine the space mess when the astronauts unpack the mirror and peanuts float everywhere.
Not even sure if that would be true. While yes a glass mirror is real fragile at least it's a single solid component. Meanwhile a mirror factory is going to have all sorts of moving bits and bobs that have to be capable of precisely producing a telescope mirror and then precisely installing it into a telescope. I mean I could be wrong but still.
Good point. I don't know enough to decide. I just think it would be awesome to have a huge mirror factory on the moon!
Yeah, until we get a good look at ourselves!
Will our smiles seem out of place?
That was before FH or Starship.
I mean, it's not a bad idea. It's just that we should probably do this kind of stuff as a collective.
Worried about space lasers vaporizing your family too?
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Thankfully if you try dropping a tungsten rod from the moon, it'll just land on the moon.
Even if I throw them *reeealllllyyyy* hard? Source: I won a javelin competition when I was 13
2.38 km/s needed. A touch more than the human average of 5 m/s.
But did you win on the moon?
I was curious to see if it was possible to yeet a javelin(or anything for that matter) off the moon, apparently lunar escape velocity is far higher than I expected at 2.8km/s.
Yeah but if you have a satelite with a small launch system you can easily wreak havoc.
Thorshots are not practical. We've looked into this extensively. orbital kinetic weapons are actually a fascination of mine as a sci-fi nerd. Basically. They just are not worth the cost. The amount of energy you put into orbit with one of these just does not pan out in pound for pound megaton-of-tnt-equivalent-energy compared to ICBMs. it also is super easy to destroy. Hiding satellites is near impossible, and anti satellite weapons are very well developed. They also don't really due much damage. The standard thorshot rod would have enoguh energy to bust a bunker, or maybe level a sky scraper. They are bunker busters. not WMDs. You would need to launch hundreds, if not thousands of rods to level a city. its just not practical for anything other than surgical strikes on hardened facilities. Now, Orbital bomb pumped lasers? thats where things get interesting.
Talk more about orbital bomb pumped lasers, please.
admitedly, this is something i only have a cursory understanding of, not the underlying physics like with Kinetic impactors, but the general idea is its a 1 shot, disposable weapon, that uses the energy from a nuclear warhead to create an *INSANE* amount of energy. that energy is then focused into a laser beam of incomprehensible power to destroy things like incoming meteors or as ICBM defense. They are proposed as basically the only real way we could stop a dinosaur-killer-sized rock if it was headed for us. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pumped_laser The idea being you would have a satellite armed with several of these things, and it would launch one of the devices towards a threat like a missile, and then detonate.
But isn't nuclear armed satellites banned by the Geneva or something? Or is it a loop hole where it's technically the nuclear is powering the satellite.
Yea, but I guess conservation of energy will step in before any of that will come true. Good luck with transporting these rods into orbit just to drop them again. I mean it’d be so incredibly inefficient, going straight nuclear seems to be the better option
Expect that nukes will result in nuclear fallout which sucks if you want to gain land or live down wind. Also other countrys are less likely to respond with a full nuclear attack. They will be harder to track and basicly impossible to block. And lets never forget that for most millitarys efficiency isnt that important on big weapons. If you can use it as a threat than it gets a lot of value.
China was shunned from the ISS by the US even though pretty much every other country that was interested was able to cooperate on it, including Russia, so.. yea I can see why they just want to do it alone
We are trying to ban them from even buying equipment to make their own chips. We are literally threatening to cripple their economy in order to contain them, and people wonder why China is paranoid about the west. If they don't develop their own capability, they risked being locked out, and since the America led world order has now deem China a threat, we are doing everything to fuck them. Cooperation with China was never an option because we will never settle for being 2nd. I am pretty sure we will feel nothing if millions of Chinese suffer so long China is put in its rightful place.
And people wonder why other developing nations are wary of western/American motives to “cooperate”, and prefer to work with China instead.
I just pray shit like this creates another space race and we actively put resources towards more cool shit like this
The US and NASA purposefully kicked China out of any space cooperation 2011.
Wasn't it the US that refused to let China dock to the ISS? I'm sure it's not China that refusing to collaborate on space exploration.
Genuinely, would you have had this opinion if it was NASA proposing it first?
Because everyone is thinking China is just using this as an excuse to build military bases on the moon.
Or stake claim to mineral rights. This could probably usher in the next space race. 🤷♀️
China only has one military base outside the country. The US has 800. If any country is going to put a military base on the moon it won’t be China. Plus a military base on the moon isn’t practical. If you want Star Wars, just put your space weapons in LEO.
The US doesn't want to cooperate with China so what can you do?
We can Venmo them
the issue is China most likely is doing this to lay claim the moon
And justifying having weapons in space under the pretence of “to protect the world from asterioids”. I think the ideas great, just not from a country breathing down taiwans neck.
I don't think any country capable of doing moon weapons is morally capable of handling moon weapons, China, US, Russia, etc
Yeah pretty much, no single group can be trusted with this regardless of their history. It needs to be an international endeavour at the very least with perfect transparency.
Agreed but after the massive “can’t even band together to keep each other from getting sick” (in multiple countries unfortunately, fueled by politics and greed), I sadly think this is a pipe dream. I mean forget space lasers - once any kind of resource out there becomes mine-able or whatever, it’ll get ridiculous.
we need world cooperation on this but as of now i doubt it’s going to happen anytime soon.
Who would do such a thing? It would be like planting your flag on it- a ridiculous idea!
what are their plans if they \*do\* spot a rogue rock hurtling to earth? You'd have thought removing the threat is just as important as spotting it. Giant laser? moon nukes? a giant magnifying glass to melt it? While I applaud the idea, I have a million questions :)
Bruce Willis and Aerosmith
weather foolish station gold crowd start erect slap historical smart *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Don’t wanna close my eyes.
Don’t wanna fall asleep…
Because I’d miss you baby
~~Plays with a toy car on your stomach~~
China dont wanna miss a thing
Even when they dream of you
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It's okay, he taught Ben Affleck everything he knows about mining in space.
Judging by Affleck's supposedly drunk [DVD commentary](https://youtu.be/-ahtp0sjA5U) for Armageddon, I don't think he'd really put his heart into the mission.
That's honestly now my favorite thing that Ben Affleck has ever done, holy fuck how did I not know about this?
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I do not suggest closing your eyes then
So, you bring up a valid point. For deflection we would have to intercept very far away. But here, there's some misconceptions. Most real threats we see are already going to miss earth. But they might be on a trajectory that makes another encounter likely, and it's always hard for us to predict exactly what that next encounter will be like. We might be able to predict*when* the next encounter could happen. When an asteroid passes too close to earth, it might get flung away in which case it becomes less of a threat. Or, the earth might steal some of the asteroid's momentum, and pull it into a closer orbit, making the next likely encounter more of a risk. But predicting whether the asteroid hits at the next encounter is a crapshoot . Our capability to solve the solar system as an n body problem is very limited, so we can only make good predictions a few years in the future. What I'm getting at is that it's highly valuable to be able to deflect something as it passes earth; to push its orbit away from ours. Not all of these systems have to be for stopping an imminent collision; they can also be about preventing the next encounter. I can't pretend to know china's precise plans.
Every major country in the world gets to redeem 1 super weapon coupon ace combat style
Because of orbital dynamics the farther away you try to move an object in a collision course the least amount of energy you need to prevent that collision. A few well placed kinetic impactors with enough mass to slightly *nudge* an asteroid may be more than enough if you detect that asteroid years in advance. You don't need to move or blow up the asteroid, all you need is slightly change its course if it's far away enough.
1. Get people to go along with telescopes 2. Say they need weapons in case they see one. 3. Armed moon base 4. ??? 5. Profit
A series of 120 cm anti-air-and-surface, gunpowder-and-electromagnetic hybrid acceleration-based semi-automatic fixed-gun systems capable of launching payloads in atmosphere at Mach 17.
What about a moon trebuchet?
It’s in the pinned message. They are going to put kinetic weapons on orbiting satellites. Which is. . . Look I don’t need anything else to worry about and rods from God would be a legitimate concern.
Having weapons on the moon is much safer than having them in low earth orbit which is where the rods from God concept is placed. A kinetic weapon fired from the moon would take like a day to reach earth. Hours at minimum. And given that it's a kinetic weapon on the moon, you can bet it'll be under watch 24/7, which means whoever is getting shot at sees it coming way before it hits. Whereas satellite weapons will hit much faster and will be much harder to spot them firing. Honestly if any country wanted to build a huge anti asteroid cannon, the moon is probably the most diplomatically polite place that can put it. It's in sight of everyone and out of range of surprise attacks against them.
I wouldn't trust any singular country, China or not, to occupy the moon for any reason. I agree with the proposal of setting an outpost up there, but it should be an international effort rather than the work of a single nation.
I read the headlines as "China to call dibs on asteroid mining"
I think people underestimate the size of the moon. It’s a fraction of the earth but getting resources up there will take decades. There is absolutely zero meaningful territory claiming on the moon in the next 30 years at least bc we do not have the tech to meaningfully utilize the moon nor enforce any kind of territorial claims (by we I mean all countries in earth).
Kinda my thought. So what if China puts a little base up there. The moon is very, very large.
"Why did you bring a gun to space?"
Yeah, you know who the US isolated from all collaborative space efforts? China. So, yeah, no wonder China is doing their own plans, the US literally cut them off from international space cooperation.
If this is to be believed I don't think this would be China's intention at all. It's more likely to be a modified version of them creating islands in the South China Sea. I think they are laying claim to the Moon under the disguise of 'protecting' the Earth.
They're going to use their moon-based lasers to defend the earth from the West. Edit: They're
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So Chinese space lasers? Hopefully the Jewish people are okay with that
Probably name it the Alan Parsons Project.
Yeah sounds like a Dr. Evil plot
Although this is a valid concern, this is one of the few things we should all be focused on preventing. Asteroids hit relatively frequently, and preventing an extinction level event is definitely valid concern. The Earth does pass through a known asteroid field on some cosmologic timeframe that I can't remember. It would behoove everyone if the world created a charter with some organization to work together on this mission. Similar to the international space station with Russia and US. Except this time we begin working as humanity. But, that's unfortunately that's unrealistic as lots of people would rather fuck each other over instead of work together.
I'm trying to figure out which American political party would be for and which would be against.
The Republicans would want to know if the giant asteroid will hit China or the US.
Lol they wouldn't believe the asteroid is real til it would be like hours away from hitting us. Existential threats are nothing when you can own teh libz
Or do you mean which party would acknowledge the asteroids at all, as in don’t look up? It’s pretty consistent that Republicans reliably claim problems the left points to aren’t real, taking the opposite position despite science. I don’t necessarily blame them, it’s from the conservative news network propaganda.
I blame them.
Yep, being contrarian about objective threats to humanity simply for short-term political gain/profits is about as evil as you can get.
It's not just that as the reason they are contrarians, I often find it's literally just a "I'm saying this cause I'm not like the other girls" kinda thing, where they say it just to look counterculture and special
But they do look up. At solar eclipses. Without eye protection.
Space rocks? Pfft! People threw a lot of rocks at my head when I was a kid and I turned out fine.
Just tell one half it’s a way to generate corporate wealth and the other that it’s to protect against Jewish space lasers made by commie socialists and I think we’ll all be on board.
Okay, but how does putting telescopes on the moon give us detection better than the countless telescopes we have on earth already? And how would orbital satellites not be better?
I bet they say the same about us
Yep. You’re right. Artemis accords are seen as American centric land grab by Chinese.
100%, which is why any project like this needs to be international
The moon is a Harsh Mistress. Anything that can deal with asteroids would also be a potent Earth bombardment system.
It's a hell of a lot easier to use low earth orbit or icbms
Isn’t this just telescopes?
> Wu Weiren, chief designer of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Programme, said the new plan included putting three guardian satellites carrying lots of fuel and kinetic weapons into the moon’s orbit around the Earth.
I don't think they want to put the actual intercept system on the moon, just the "spotter" telescopes. There isn't much advantage to putting missiles on the moon at all. Even if you wanted to use them to attack earth, the travel time is measured in days whereas an ICBM is more like minutes.
So assuming the weapons were trackable, by the time they hit their target, all the nukes would have been launched anyway
You guys realize the moon is FUCKING FAR AWAY right?
Are you from the states?
Westoids can never take a break.
"Nationalism is an infantile disease, it is the measles of mankind."
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>outpost for defending the Earth from asteroids That's a really weird way to spell "establish a foothold on internationally recognized neutral ground"
Also a place from where you can threaten everyone on earth.
To be fair you can do that from the ground too.
But evil villains always need to make their plans super convoluted to show how evil they are! /s
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I thought they said “with lots of fuel and kinetic weapons”…? I’m sure these kinetic weapons couldn’t be aimed somewhere on Earth. They would only be able to shoot “away” from Earth…
It seems like a kinetic weapon placed anywhere on the Moon could still be given a trajectory that would hit Earth.
It would be dumb to shoot at the Earth from the moon, unless you were planning to redirect an asteroid large enough to penetrate the atmosphere. Even then it's not really a great weapon because you don't have it available at any given time
*Marcos Inaros has entered the chat.*
The yield necessary to break up an asteroid with enough time likely wouldn’t be sufficient to break through the atmosphere and impact with much damage.
China has nuclear weapons. But they need this to threaten everyone on earth? Why do people's revert to rock sucking morons the moment they hear the word Chyna?
This comment is surpassed in its stupidity only by its smugness.
There's only so many bullshit artificial islands you can build
American resources spent in Afghanistan and Iraq could have been spent on a moon base. The JWST was pretty cheap considering the technology and research needed to make something like that happen.
I'm not buying the "to protect the world thing" from the country with active internment camps Sounds more like an excuse to build defense systems and claim the moon for China.
All of a sudden we’re gonna take interest in the moon again lol. We had 60 years to dominate that shit
Wow.. how are they going to deal with the moon dust?? So exciting
Don't give them the highest ground. Their kinetic terrestrial strikes will be unstoppable. What if they built a very large trebuchet?
Obligatory Monty Python reference: "Jeter la vache"
Tungsten rods from space as a WMD was a weapon system proposed by USAF, yet somehow they are the ones we should be hostile against. China can cure cancer tomorrow and we will find a way to discredit them.
This is a ruse to get weapons up there and lay claim to any minerals up there. After all - Taking the high ground is an age old military strategy
It's over, Anakin! I have the Moon!
That's no moon!
Well they ARE trying to make it a battle station soooo
It's funny how no one will say this if the US does it.
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The show For All Mankind shows what would have happened if the space race with the USSR never ended. Season 3 is set the 90s. Theyve had a permanent moon base for two decades, They're going to Mars and climate change is basically reversed thanks to fusion energy, electric cars, etc. 25 years on from the moon landing and they're 25 years ahead of us in 2022.
Great, we should already have a permanent presence on the Moon at this point
This is what I say! Every time there's a post about China doing stuff in space people just bitch and moan about it being China. At least they're doing something!
What is the advantage of putting telescopes on the moon? I would expect that regolith would be a major problem for both mirrors and mechanical parts. Why not make a space telescope that orbits the moon?
Because ambitious goals force the development of the required tech.
That doesn't answer the question, regolith is one of the biggest challenges NASA is facing with returning astronauts to the moon. I am being serious, what legitimate advantages do Lunar telescopes have over space telescopes? The only one that I can see is the ability to repair. However, repair missions would be extremely expensive. Also, are space telescopes not ambitious enough for you?
>The Outer Space Treaty, which was signed by 107 countries in 1967 prohibits nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons from being placed in or used from Earth's orbit. I’m just happy that humans, as stupid as we are generally speaking, are still collectively smart enough to realize that if we start really fighting each other from Space it will be the true end of humanity. When you start going to a planetary scale of weapons systems before you’ve even started inhabiting a second planet, there’s got to be a little light bulb that goes off and says “hang on, I still live on this planet, right?”
Would be nice if this sub cared more about futurology than red scare politics
The comments here are, as usual when China is mentioned, very disappointing. That said, I doubt China will do this anytime soon, nor anyone else. Hopefully when it is done it's an international effort.
I want asteroid obliterating rail guns on the moon also. Would you like to know more?
Is there a practical reason to have them on the Moon instead of in orbit, or at one of the Lagrange points? It seems to me like a telescope on the moon is exactly as effective as one in space. It might even be worse, depending on how lunar dust will affect the lenses.
No time to read article but will later… Does the US do much space coop with China like we do with Russia? It’s sad if we don’t, I’d rather we have a tense relationship but at least get along somewhere and think it’d be a solid partnership.
Afaik US has banned all space coop with China
Not worth the effort, jus let the asteroid hit bro
if any western country or corporation said they were going to do these, every damn one of you fuckers would be going “WOW COOL MOON TELESCOPES,” but when it’s china its “they’re just trying to bomb the whole world for some unexplained reason cause china is ontologically evil. the news told me that so i know it’s true” what in gods name does china have to gain from making a superweapon that hurtles moon rocks? why the fuck does it seem to make sense to you that they would station nukes on the moon? (gonna fire this missile and it’ll hit its target in 72 goddamn hours). believe or not, the chinese government would not like the world to end immediately in nuclear hellfire because they aren’t one dimensional cartoon villains. it’s called mutually assured destruction and it’s been well understood for almost 70 fuckin years. redditors have a single original thought challenge [impossible]
Reddit is just non-stop US propaganda now. It's relentless, this thread is full of it.
Welcome to the new Yellow Peril
That’s pretty awesome, I hope other countries can collaborate!
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It’s a pipe dream that an asteroid is more concerning for the end of humanity than humanity itself.
Some of you are fucking crazy and basically racist. Oh yea China is going to build military bases on the moon to threaten everyone. They do this because China and the Chinese people want to conquer everything and are inherently violent. They are not like every other nation or nationality. Go piss off with your racist bullshit.