On Sunday, Chang’e-3 completed China’s first soft-landing on the moon. A few hours later, China’s first moon rover, Yutu (Jade Rabbit), successfully separated from the lander.
Yutu’s mission is only a part of China’s ambitious space program, which has received a huge amount of capital and personnel investments in the past decades. In a China Central Television simulcast, the host and chief designers of the Chang’e project explained and discussed the whole procedure in a 3-D studio simulation. During the program, they tried to underline the technological complexity of this project as well as its historic significance. With the successful soft-landing and operation of Yutu rover, the CCTV narrator said emotionally that China is now the third country (after the Soviet Union and the U.S.) to have achieved soft-landing on another astronomical body. The successful soft-landing of Chang’e-3 and the images sent back to earth by Yutu rover may give the Chinese excitement, pride, and perhaps even a distraction from the on-going tensions in East China Sea.
China has indeed made a rather astonishing progress in the aerospace industry during the past decades, and is now recognized as an important player in outer space. There can be many reasons to explain how China could have made such advances within a few decades. However, there is an interesting phenomenon that stands out: on average, aerospace technician teams in China and much young than their counterparts in Russia, and the US. According to Yang Baohua, President of China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), technicians in Chinese aerospace teams are mostly in their early 30s. The average age of the whole Chang’e-3 project personnel team, for example, is 32.4. By contrast many Russian and American technicians are in their 60s or 50s.
With its growing economic power, China can provide virtually endless capital investments into the aerospace industry, attracting young professionals into a number of simultaneous aerospace projects. Though there are suspicions in the West that China may have acquired some of its hi-tech equipment through industrial espionage, we should not ignore the fact that China launched and successfully accomplished its nuclear, missile, and satellite programs in the extremely difficult blockade era when the Soviet Union ceased to provide China’s only support.
In the photos that the Yutu rover and Chang’e-3 take of each other, people will clearly see China’s national flag symbolically pictured in the background of the Bay of Rainbows, which no other probes and rovers have ever touched upon. As the sign of our times, countries always do this and China is no exception.
Give the progresses China has made in the fields of rocket technologies and aerospace science, particularly in the past ten years, what kind of role will China play in space and how far will Chinese probes and rovers go?
In the most recent White Paper on China’s Space Activities, released by the Information Office of the State Council in December 2011, China announced major tasks for the next five-year period (2012-2017): space transportation systems, man-made earth satellites, human spaceflight, deep-space exploration, space launch sites, and so on. Obviously, China’s aerospace industry has been developing in a systematically designed pattern that enables Chinese probes, though not going too far, to travel fast enough to surprise the world. As the Yutu rover explores the moon’s surface, Chang’e-2, a previously launched probe, is travelling into the deep space. Chang’e-2 is sending signals back to Earth from more than 65 million kilometers away, and it is still traveling.
Aerospace science also calls for cooperation. In the recent sci-fi movie Gravity, China’s space station “Tian Gong” saved the main character’s life, although it, like the U.S. spacecraft, did not survive in the deadly accident. This does not necessarily imply that China is a savior, but may tell us a truth about how vulnerable and fragile we are in a total disaster and how important it is to join hands with each other. Hence while China holds to its rights to freely explore outer space, it is also involved in bilateral and multilateral international exchanges and cooperation in major fields such as space science research, applications for satellites, space labs and space stations, and of course commercial satellite launch services.
With Chang’e-3 and the Yutu rover on the moon, we can see the larger picture of the Chinese dream. With the knowledge and skills of its young aerospace technicians, China’s exploration into space will be going much further in coming years. However, China should also work wisely and skillfully with its neighbors and other countries to find solutions to various disputes and conflicts that it is involved in. China’s rise on Earth must be peaceful, since here is where all dreams and journeys start.
As long as China doesn’t stretch its ECS ADIZ to the moon.
The Chinese space program started in the 1950s, not 10-20 years ago. China recognized their space program is mainly due to contributions by the Father of Chinese Rocketry, Mr. Qian Xuesen.
Who is Qian Xuesen? He is the founder of USA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Accused by the McCarthy Inquisition as a traitor to US and imprisoned without trial for 5 years. He was then traded to China for a captured American spy.
Under Secretary Kimball of US once said:
“It was the stupidest thing this country ever did. He was no more a Communist than I was, and we forced him to go”.
American racism works to the advantage of China. :-)
The Russian had had many rocket failures in last year or so. They always blamed it on mysterious electromagnetic interferences from unfriendly nations.
To stop the Chinese from launching anymore rockets, that strategy may work.
So why those leaders of certain mation who told people they are fighting to preserve freedom and liberty pass global laws to authorize shooting down any Chinese rockets?
We need these freedom loving leaders to protect us, right? John McCain, whare are you when the world needs you? Dick Chaney, we need you to stop China. How about …
@Oral, technically, you were full of oreo (a cookie), no more and no less. What do you know about spaceflights? Most space flights were fakes, so to speak. You get that right?
@ Parody or example of a particularly poor ad hominem attack?
…
I honestly can’t tell if you are trying to denigrate me or are parodying those who act as such. I’ll leave things off there as, if it is a parody, then it’s best left without any in situ examination; otherwise, your comment’s not even worth the thought given it already.
The implications for this are a bit worrisome since scientific advancement waits for no one. If Chinese scientists are younger on average, the trend would seem to favor them in the long term. As is, we already have the really awful habit of resting on our laurels and bringing up the glories of the past as “proof” that we will always be number one.
@ TDog
Not really; you’re comparing two very separate entities.
First off, NASA is a relatively mature institution, such that it isn’t really growing, meaning that the ratio of new hires to those retiring is about the same. This means the age distribution follows a more normal distribution; if the average hiring age at NASA is 35.4, then we would (assuming standard work-retirement cycles) the average age to be somewhere in the 50s. The PRC’s space program, however, is in its formative phase, such that the hiring/loss ratio is much higher, so that we see the distribution skewed more heavily to the left (the mean age is considerably younger)
Second, we also must consider the average age of those hired by each nation-states’ respective employees; the US generally does not hire those without large amounts of industry experience, whilst the PRC is far more willing to hire relatively “unproven” quantities for their space program. As such, the average age of US hires for their space agency is considerably higher than that of those hired by the PRC’s. Part of this stems from the matter that most PRC R&D endeavours are “brute-force” research (productivity is far more closely correlated and follows a much more direct relationship to the number of individuals and resources involved), which is par the course for groups with high population density.
http://nasapeople.nasa.gov/workforce/default.htm
If the average age of new hires is 35, but the average age is over 50, it means new hires are not replacing retirees.
One must also consider that older does not necessarily mean better. Wernher von Braun was in his twenties when he started his career in rocket science and in his thirties when he helped the United States launch its own rocket program. J. Robert Oppenheimer was also in his twenties when he started publishing papers on nuclear physics and was in his thirties when he started work on the Manhattan Project. Clarence “Kelly” Johnson was in his thirties when he helped design the P-38.
Age, as you can see, is not related to results. NASA’s skewing to the right, in this instance, points to stagnation rather than seasoning. I am not saying that NASA scientists and engineers are untalented or stagnant themselves, but rather that the US government’s almost willful neglect of our space program is going to come back and bite us in the rear.
The dry rot of scientific underfunding is not easily fixed and the advantages lost are not easily regained.
@ TDog
In regards to the matter of age distribution, you’re assuming a static system with only two terminals; you have to figure in additive relationships (i.e. variable additions and removals of the system) as well as drop-off following the end of the Cold War and the cycling it entails (which creates a sort of “waveform” function over time).
Likewise, you’re taking the converse of my statement in regards to age and hiring to contradict me; I’m not arguing they are hired because an individual of a certain age has some intrinsic level of skill, I’m noting that more older individuals tend to have more experience and technical skill. Your argument would only apply if I was arguing age is the causative agent of skill, rather, I’m simply relating that age is correlated with experience.
Oro Invictus,
There is also an equal chance that older individuals are more set in their ways.
Well, technically, the PRC hasn’t been progressing very rapidly relative to the former Soviet Union and the US in space exploration. It was about 5 years between the first human spaceflight and the first lunar soft landing (USSR) and 8 years between said human spaceflight and a man landing on the moon (US); it took about ten years between the PRC’s first human spaceflight and this latest achievement (and will be at least another decade before any human lunar landing). In fairness, the US and the Soviet Union were in a “Space Race”; however, they were also initial primary innovators in these endeavours.
Still, technically speaking, it is a very impressive achievement and those involved in its research and development should be very proud; indeed, in some ways, it was like when I first saw video of the Apollo 11 landing, so very overjoyed to see humanity’s commitment to pushing the boundaries of science… And feeling a deep well of sadness when I saw the damned flag.
And that is the problem: No matter how much the various nation-states claim their achievements are for all mankind, it is first and foremost for themselves. Any such achievements become tainted by foolish nationalism, with basal patriotism.