We went to the moon in what 1969? China is just now sending a manned space flight into orbit using borrowed technology 40 or so years later? Thats not what I would call a race.

Here's an article about the new welding process they are using:

http://www.nola.com/business/index.s..._river_default

and here is a video of the friction stir welding process. The technology has been around since 1991 and was developed in Britain:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=aNbQH8XBgxQ

Rockets are not the future in space...apart from deep space missions.

I've listened to a podcast from the European Space Agency a couple of days ago...one expert talked in detail about the Space Elevator

This is not a science fiction story....in the last couple of years there were breakthroughs in material research (nanotechnology etc.), which are the basis of such a rope...there are big engineering problems to solve but more or less it is just a matter of funding and setting priorities.

I question myself if it not would be wise to stop all human space missions (apart from supplying the ISS) and let NASA/ESA build this thing together in the next 20-30 years.

It would be nice if the first manned mission to Mars was a multi-national effort but I fear politics would scupper it long before they got off the ground.

I agree August, the price tag for that kind of mission is going to be huge! Do it like we did the ISS, many countries getting involved. In fact, Japan has a supply ship docking with the ISS this weekend, working with other countries is the way to go.

You ever read any of the Studs Terkel books? If you do not know of him he was a man who went around and interviewed Americans of every stripe you can think of about certain times in history,The Great Depression,World War II for example.He was really good because he would just interview and write what they said no cherry picking if they said something racist he wrote id they said something pro communist he wrote if they said they where gay he wrote.

Anyway his book of interviews with people that fought or lived through WWII "The Good War" he talked to this guy from the Bronx in the old day there where a lot of Italian Americans living there and this man he spoke with he described how he felt that people had changed after the war.He said that he felt that after the war people(in general) felt more entitled than they had in the past.He said that people had kind of a false pride.

Now that is not to say that everyone is like this but it seems as time goes by more and more people are feeling more and more entitled which will get everyone nowhere fast.


I agree to a large extent with Ducimus I think too many people have too much pride in the past and not enough on the current collective we have done.I can tell you that the share is not equal today for example in war to most Americans the past 10 years truly has not been a war to them as to for them it has cost them nothing directly yet you will see lots of folks thump their chests like they some how contributed with their made in China yellow ribbon yeah that really helped.

Now I am not saying it is a bad thing to look at what has been done in the past and have pride about because any nation good or bad is a collection of its people.But more people need to sit down and stop making themselves entitled on what others did in the past that only gets you to a certain point after that you have to carry the torch yourself.

I guess the 4th of July celebrations should cease. Apparently we the people should not take pride. :hmmm:

As far as folks who fought or sacrificed at home during the war how should they feel? Of course people changed after the war. Who wouldn't? By your description of Terkel's book I think he saw the plainly obvious.

What in the current collective can we take pride in?

Can't say that I have, but you used a more fitting word, one that evaded me in my previous post; i.e, "entitled".:yep:

I thought what NASA is doing here speaks volumes about what we built back in the 60's. Still works after sitting on display for over 40 years!:up:

http://www.space.com/19379-saturn-5-...st-firing.html

Well I'm sure China has enough smart folks to make their space plans happen. It looks like this is the price America has to pay for defunding space exploration, a solely political question. What the "spaceflight brought nothing but the Teflon pan" crowd fails to see is that the massive funding by the taxpayer brought a lot of indirect revenue. Countless bright minds got into studying science through the events they witnessed during the early spaceflight days. Not only in directly related fields like engineering, but also a lot of the 60/70s crowd of innovative computer nerds for example got into science due to their fascination about spaceflight.

With the focus more and more on privatized education combined with an unwillingness of the US public to put taxpayer's money into education I don't see any shift soon. Put a perceived general lack of appreciation of education in today's society into the mix and we are at the situation we have now.

I do think this thread is miss-titled. China has not yet accomplished anything that could be considered winning at anything in space.

A more accurate title would be that the Chinese are now a participant in the ongoing space race.

Unlike President Obama, you have to actually do something before winning the "award". :D

Early in our space program, we had rockets blowing up on the pad. But so has China, they had one in 1996 go off course and slam into a nearby village. It was estimated that approximately 500 villagers died in the accident. The Chinese Govt claimed the wind blew it off course. Yeah, right! So yeah, they are leading in the space race for the number of people killed after a launch!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_EnrVf9u8s

So, what I said earlier holds true.:arrgh!:
Cheap rockets will never reach orbit. They just go BOOM!:huh::haha:
The celestials are in learning mode and will be for a long time.

At least we didn't wipe out any towns when we were learning to spacewalk.:up:

Perhaps because we were able to launch over an ocean?

That and a lot of our newer equipment are equipped with a self-destruct system. If it goes off course, they can blow it up before it can fall back and hurt civilians.

Range safety equipment has been around for a long time. Many of the shots of early rockets exploding are due to this.