China will launch a unmanned Moon lander at the end of 2013

Seems only USA has the courage to send humans. The rest of nations can only dream of such acomplishments by the glorious USA.

The rest of nations don’t know how to go throught the van allen belts and be able to survive. Did you know even NASA shut down completely the ships when going through it? (No, you will not find this info in the Wiki, just remember for when it became publicly known)

Only USA glorious heros were with the intelligence to manually land on the Moon. Probably chinese are just civilians, not the greatest heroes from the military and with 47 years of age even one of the last men walking the Moon had. Look and figure, a guy of 47 years walking on the Moon. And just now the chinese can even reclute a young guy to replicate it.

Soooo China sucks badly when compared to USA glorious past. Past. Perhaps fiction some say. No, I say Past. Is history. And history is written always by: Yep.

The reason why a lot of space missions these days don’t involve humans is because…

1). They’re cheaper (no expensive life support needed)
2). They’re less risky (a robot breaking down isn’t tragic like a lost human life)
3). Can go for extremely long periods
4). You don’t need a way to bring them back to Earth.

Heck, even NASA’s recent Moon missions did not involve sending astronauts there (despite plans to eventually set up a moon base for possible travel beyond).

Now I have also read before that Japan is wanting to set up a moon base by 2020, the catch though is that the base will be manned by robots, it would also seem to be that the human touch will still be possible in these missions of the future because of the development of brain-machine interface and ever more realistic virtual reality tech.

Not that I oppose the idea of manned space missions or even tourism beyond low-Earth orbit, it would be cool for sure.

And yes, I know that Van Allen said some years ago that his words were misinterpreted and really is not so harmful as he said. He continues alive and well paid. So all is good,
Well, so is just lazziness. Just put a chinese there and it would stop the whole Earth. Why just a robot? Come on. What is the problem? I don’t see any problem, just ask Van Allen !!!
I can pay the extra fuel and the extra food, water and air. It is so easy that USA did one and another time. Only the 13 was not so good, but well, you know it was the 13 and so is natural. But then one and other and other… like chorizos!

Ace, they have the International Space Station there orbiting Earth so the air, food, etc is not a problem. Is well studied. I think is just lazziness. Take a look how easy was for USA not do it only one time but one and other and other and other and other and… then one day they abandoned because the public was not interested anymore.

Then you see they are interested but not interested but interested but not really. Like you plan to go in 2020 or 2050 or perhaps in the next 400 years. But just now I send a rover… Ah, science!

From what I am seeing, the next space race is already taking place in the private sector, the race to build fully reusable spacecraft to carry tourists into low-Earth orbit and, maybe in due time, beyond even.

There’s also been news of a business mogul in Las Vegas who started a company known as Bigelow Aerospace and is working on plans to build a space hotel using inflatable module technology, something that is akin to a souped up version of technology abandoned by NASA.

I think this is a new low for you Bao2, bashing a country and calling them lazy because they are not sending people to the moon…

Van Allen radiation belt

The Apollo missions marked the first event where humans traveled through the Van Allen belts, which was one of several radiation hazards known by mission planners. The astronauts had low exposure in the Van Allen belts due to the short period of time spent flying through them. The command module’s inner structure was an aluminum “sandwich” consisting of a welded aluminium inner skin, a thermally bonded honeycomb core, and a thin aluminium “face sheet”. The steel honeycomb core and outer face sheets were thermally bonded to the inner skin.

In fact, the astronauts’ overall exposure was dominated by solar particles once outside the Earth’s magnetic field. The total radiation received by the astronauts varied from mission to mission but was measured to be between 0.16 and 1.14 rads (1.6 and 11.4 mGy), much less than the standard of 5 rem (50 mSv) per year set by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission for people who work with radioactivity

Google Moon project is pretty neat, it has the various landings marked. Apollo 11 you can see tracks from the buggy.

Amazing the technology available for missions such as this.

Very important factors why USA sent astronauts to the moon in the 60s.

There was lack of technology, while there was the theoretical know-how physics and math, computer science, programming languages and robotics was not even there. Now imagine that you hit F12 and you render in a PC thousand times faster than a 60s supercomputer. Today it would be madness not sending a robot, it’s only about efficiency.

Nice thoughts, the reasons are a lot more archaic though - the cold war and the prestige.

The UDDSR won the race for the first human in space, grabbing the USA at the groin, they could not let them be the first on the moon too and squeeze hard.
The USA literally bet the lifes of their astronauts that they can do it - it was an adventure and compared to the cost back then, a human was cheaper and more powerful compared to a computer, like “const” pointed out already.

Being it China sending anything to the Moon might get the funds for NASA going again. The reasons once more will be questionable, but if it gets the space program along again.
Let’s hope China or the UDSSR or North Korea (LOL) announces a maned flight to Moon or better Mars.

The next day the White House will announce that they increased the funding for NASA tenfold and that mankind has to dream again yaddayadda.

Anyone can point me to color high resolution images of the Moon, AND from NASA?
Are they thinking greyscale is better for some reason?

What moved me to post this one is because it says in the text how colorful this crater is, because is young and blah, blah, blah, and “note the shadows of grey” like saying to the poor taxpayer: it is in technicolor but you are not going to see it in your f*^g life dear taxpayer:

this crater in color is just mindblowing by the way. Look for it if you don’t believe me. It is mainly bluish.

http://www.redorbit.com/images/pic/69316/universe-moon-aristarchus-crater-lro-122612/

And what they do with Saturn is just without words too. They just like the world in greyscale. If you don’t, move to another Earth!

http://www.redorbit.com/images/pic/69313/universe-saturn-janus-mimas-cassini-122512/

I only remember like 4 photos with some color of Saturn in my life. The rest of course is from “youtube astronomers”. We live in a world where people has better technology than the “scientists” (because the ones in NASA are not that but actors or just braindead believetheyareandjusttheonetofoolthetaxpayer people). I have a camera that has 16x more resolution than the one on the rover in Mars. Same with the Cassini and every from NASA except the Hubble. Only the Hubble has a good resolution, and always pointing to objects the people doesn’t want to see. Point that fu*er to Ceres for godsake.

Look at images 23 and 24 of NASA 2012 mission:
http://www.redorbit.com/images/pic/69216/633104main_pia15514-43_full/

As the years pass we continue to have even worst quality.
Now the greyscale is gone and now the violet is the new topic trend it seems…

We have a taxpayer that is ridiculed as I see it. They are robbed of the money if this is what NASA is doing with the money. Seems better to close the agency that continue doing the world wide ridicule. I need someone defending NASA to see the missing point I am missing obviously.

In 2012 and we have a photo that has lower quality than an astronomer can take with a high end telescope, FROM EARTH!!! And the colors are wrong and different when NASA tries color. Yes, I understand now why they stick with greyscale. They mastered greyscale, but feel lost with color images…

You do realize that:

  • The moon is gray anyways and colorful is just a “term” there, not in reference to color? A song can be colorful too.
  • That it takes decades to plan and build a deep space telescope, and another decade to launch it, get where it should get and transmit images back? So yeh. It’s decades old technology.
  • That a lot of the imaging does not happen within the light spectrum visible to humans, but in Xray, heat and UV areas and colors are all wrong?
  • for scientific reasons grayscale sensors are just better. Every sensor is just “gray”. Your average color camera just has a filter in front splitting it in r,g,b components. And resolution and qualitywise, grayscale is better. Those people want to do research, not please your aesthetic needs.
  • the Hubble color images are just colored black and white images: http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_the_pictures/meaning_of_color/

I was said in another forum that it is because the bandwith. I remembered them we had Apollo live video in color!!!

Arexma, all the cameras are greyscale. But if our cameras do the correction you see in NASA cameras you would say: WTF Is this?
In images 23 and 24 of GRAIL 2012 mission, you see: low quality, color. But the color now is violet in hue, so wrong again.

Decades pass in planning and you can’t replace a camera? Even 60 years ago people had better cameras than they show us they say they are using (of course they don’t have 1 megapixel camera on a rover in mars, they say it is that way but that is of course a lie, it is probably a 100 megapixel or more camera. The same for every other mission from ESA or other countries. Now you know they are taking astonishingly sharpen images in complete astonishing color and they show you the image 23 and 24. Do you feel good? Don’t you think it is enough that they show such a shit in 2012?

Do you have any idea of how hard it is to send the data from the rover to earth? they probably do it in lower res, so its easier to send, and it looses quality due to interferences, there was somewhere around there a HD panoramic image taken by curiosity rover, really cool image, incolor and full HD, they said it was REALLY hard to send that to earth

You do realize that they didn’t have digital video back then? They transmitted analog with a quite low resolution. It’s one thing if you transmit a lifestream of an event or if you do scientific image processing.

I have no intention of finding those two images by myself, however I get the strong feeling that the hue is the hint to what spectrum the images were made in…
If NASA/ESA colors their images, they usually hint the spectrum with the colors… smart huh?

Again, they are not here to please you, and don’t give a rats ass. They could show you nothing at all. They’re doing science you know, not an art exhibit for you.

So magnetic fields were working differently in the sixties than now in the New Age of Acuarius we are just starting. There was a limit of the quality in the movies you could send in the old universe. Now a few years later with this glorious and phenomenal universe we have now we can transmit much better.

Basically, from mission 2012 we have 2 pictures in low resolution and near 10 artistic impresions. Seems all the workers fired in Disney are now working in NASA. Good for them. Is a win win situation. No linux this time.

I can create a system to transmit in 4k from the Moon to Earth and in color. If people wants it just press NASA to contact me. if not enjoy your NASA pictures in greyscale and 200x400 resolution. Is plain as that. If any “youtuber” can do it, then NASA is lying. And the taxpayer money is just wasted. Fire those suckers and contract more Disney animators.

NASA is a screen. A mockup. Is not the real thing.
If you don’t think a public agency must be accountable then you have a wrong belief I don’t have. Your belief will agree with them to keep things from you and not answer you when you ask them. It is a belief that creates separation and “VIPs”. Not the way I see the world. They must disappear if lying.

I’m a bit sceptical about “youtubers” taking high-res pictures of mars from earth. With a telescope with a diameter of 10 cm, you would barely be able to distinguish between details 3000 km apart, when the eart is at it’s closest to mars. Even with a telescope with a diameter of 1 m the resolving power would be limited to details about 300 km apart.

Those calculations are done for light with a wavelength of 500 nm, so using infrared would give better resolving power, but then of course you would get no colors.