The Chinese people are often stereotyped as being inscrutable, meaning “difficult to fathom or understand.” And that about sums up my reaction to yesterday’s news that the flight controllers at the Chinese National Space Administration intentionally sent the Chang’e 1 orbiter crashing into the Moon.
According to this report from the Xinhua news agency, ground zero was 1.50° south, 52.36° east. That’s a nondescript tract of Mare Fecunditatis about 90 miles (145 km) from the crater Messier.
The spacecraft, which carried eight experiments, rocketed toward the Moon on October 24, 2007, and had been in lunar orbit for 16 months. And it was beefy, weighing in at more than 2 tons. That’s comparable to the mass of a Centaur rocket that NASA’s hopes to drill into one of the lunar poles later this year, along with the LCROSS spacecraft. Chang’e 1′s impact undoubtedly made a sizable splash that should have been observable from Earth.
Meanwhile the editors of Businessweek seem to think that this qualifies as a “landing.”
Found by Mike Cosmi.
Obama found out the lunar landing was fake and asked the Chinese to smack their satellite into the exact same spot where the Americans were supposed to and cover it up.
its the Chinese emulatig the USA\USSR 30 years later…stop with the RED scare
Obviously NASA faked moon landing since there are no pictures of the leftover trash taken from the orbit… and Copernicus lied about Earth not being flat too… after all we ALL CAN SEE that the Earth is flat, don’t we?
Debilism is inherited, and mostly the uneducated have many children.
Thats why even in the 30th century there always will be enough morons around to make fun of
#20 Miguel,
Thanks! That was ROLF funny!
Also seemed almost real with all the crazy stuff coming out of that place.
I seem to recall NASA crashing a probe like this on purpose but the intent was to kick up a giant cloud of dust that could be analyzed by telescopes, spectrometers, and other sensors via another orbiting spacecraft. I am not sure if NASA did this on the Moon or one of the planets. I think it was intended to kick up what they hoped was subsurface water which could be recorded.
I doubt the Chinese could study any cloud of dust and debris from Earth with any chance of gaining any useful data. I bet the thing had something go wrong so they let it spiral in.
My understanding is the the new Moon race is to be the country that can claim a patch of the Moon that has available water. That is supposedly at the southern pole. THAT is where any moonbase would have to be located if the astronauts had any hope of long term habitation. With local ground water, even in ice form, the astronauts can create breathable oxygen and drinkable water.
Can I suggest something..
1. IF this wasnt a mistake..
2. IF we did go to the moon, and pick up rocks and dirt from the surface..
This was an IMPACT like the one on the Meteor that was a couple years ago..
CREATE a big hole, and spectrum analyze the stuff DEEPER then just the surface..
NASA crashed several probes onto the Moon on purpose, from 1961 to 65, with the RANGER series of spacecraft.
Well, with the track record the Chinese have selling space garbagge to suckers like Nigeria and venezuela, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit that they jusy lost control of the satellite and it crashed.
#5 Because they lost all the props from the original TV braodcasting, silly.
#6 Close, but I don’t think they were trying to land either. Look for Nigcomsat & Venesat for a good laugh.
#11 Why waste time with a kook. Just toy with the kook, it’s much more entertaining and a better investment of your time.
#15 Nah, they just saw UFO and thought the Brits were dominating the moon.
#27 Which would explain why they’re doing the same in 2009.
I TOLD the Chinese what to do. I can only guess “Spank the Monkey” lost something in translation
This tells it all doesn’t it:
http://forum.atimes.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6364&whichpage=1