The new race to the Moon - What does it say about us?
Could China's Moon shot signal an Asian reprise of the US/USSR Cold War race to the Moon? More significantly, can we develop missions to explore other bodies in the Solar System without an underlying military motive?
That is the upshot of an article included in a daily briefing I get from Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society.
I don't need to add any commentary to the following from that daily e-mail. I simply hope it will spark discussion of those opening questions. Please chime in!
What's Behind Asia's Moon Race?
from the Christian Science Monitor
Beijing - As the rocket carrying China's first lunar probe blasted off Wednesday evening, it left in its wake a vapor trail of questions about the nature of Asia's new space race.
The continent's giants are jockeying for position beyond the earth's atmosphere. Japan launched its own moon orbiter last month. India plans to send a similar satellite up next year. The dawn of the Asian space age, however, has been darkened by suspicion, instead of cooperation.
... The moon shots, all designed to learn more about the lunar atmosphere and surface, have no military purpose, officials in the three new space powers are quick to point out. But in a field where civilian technological advances can easily be put to military use, nations closely scrutinize each of their neighbors' steps forward.
To read more: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1025/p06s01-woap.html
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Military Motive?
Does there have to be a military motive behind everything that is done in space. Perhaps one should consider the fact that these developing space powers are simply trying to catch up technologically.
Another moon mission will definitely not hurt.
Albert Lal
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The Chinese have had ICBMs
The Chinese have had ICBMs for decades.
And if strategic competition is what it takes to put humans in space, I say bring it on.
Dan Ibekwe
Comments
Well clearly this puts them in a position capable of producing ICBMs, unlike Iran--but what the suspicion tells me is that, quite unfortunately, human beings haven't figured out how to coexist yet. This is a significant problem in the age of peaking material production, of which you are aware Dr. Bortz. One good sized war and the rapid dissipation of the remaining and Not unlimited supplies will send the future to an unimaginable place--whether it be good or bad. This is the pivotal time in which we have apparently few options: we, the human race, with all our "intelligence," work together to overcome the burdensome laws of thermodynamics and ensure the future of our ability to do work ("energy") in a concentrated, portable form("fossil fuels") as is required for our current social structure ("global economy"--"made in china"); or we try to take the remaining resources from someone else, who wants to take our resources from us, using up all the resources we have in the process and turning society back to the preindustrial state of technology... which, i might tell you, cannot possibly even come close to feeding 6 billion people.
It may sound like a false dichotomy. I understand there are other paths that include the continuation of life, but in this you can find truth: there is either war or there is peace between nations. What we must not forget is that in life there are two ways, the same two ways it has been since the beginning and the same two ways that have carried us to where we are--life or death--and war is by it's very definition not the continuation of life.