All: if you can't post anything but cheap nationalistic comments, or other obvious reactions, please refrain from posting. The goal here is to have <i>interesting</i> conversation, which is the opposite of reflexive generic stuff [1, 2].<p>If you're not sure whether you're facilitating interesting conversation, here's the key: what's interesting are the diffs [3]: the specific, interesting details that haven't been repeated before or elsewhere. Ask yourself whether your comment could appear in any thread on some generally related theme (e.g. space, China). If yes, it's probably not interesting in the sense we're shooting for here. The goal is to consider things we haven't before.<p>Please note: this isn't about being 'positive' vs. 'negative' - it's about not being repetitive/predictable. That's different.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a><p>[1] <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=reflective%20reflex%20by:dang" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20discussion%20by:dang" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=diffs%20by:dang" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...</a>
It seems pretty silly to get all up in arms about copying other peoples' stuff. That's how humanity has innovated throughout the ages: Copy what works and innovate on top of it.<p>None of our inventions arise from a vacuum. Cars are still as wide as Roman chariots for good reason. Power transfer uses the same base principles as were in play during the dawn of steam engines and before. Energy conversion has been an iterative process for centuries, with the odd leap and bound.<p>Industrial espionage exists because it works, and everyone does it because it's a cheap way to come up to speed with the leading edge of human knowledge rather than unnecessarily duplicating effort.<p>Crying "No fair! You stole it!" sounds more like a petulant child than anything else.
What I find very exciting and something that is totally lacking from any news articles and discussions I have seen outside space-geek circles is that China is actually very much open to cooperate with other agencies. The China Russia plan of a base on the moon is open to partners whom would like to join: International Lunar Research Station.<p><a href="https://spacenews.com/china-russia-open-moon-base-project-to-international-partners-early-details-emerge/" rel="nofollow">https://spacenews.com/china-russia-open-moon-base-project-to...</a>
To the (flagged) comments about China stealing research: I’ll abstract from lack of evidence.<p>Just stealing isn’t enough. Russia, I believe, ended up admitting stealing research on the Space Shuttle, and despite that their own project never really materialised. Even. You steal, that lets you catch up, not overtake.<p>So even if China is helping themselves (again, I don’t know), they still have to innovate and improve. Good on them if they do. And then, their own technology is also ripe for the taking if that’s how the game works.<p>It’s all progress one way or the other.
China Daily has a nice animation of the landing process.[1]
So far, though, no live video.<p>[1] <a href="http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202105/15/WS609f18aaa31024ad0babe089.html" rel="nofollow">http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202105/15/WS609f18aaa31024...</a>
For me what has always been amazingly fascinating about all of these missions (even more so for the Voyager missions) is to be able to work with so much latency!<p>In today's world, where we are used to working with millisecond latencies across thousands of kilometers, just to be able to do something with latency of minutes to tens of hours, boggles my mind!<p>Amazing accomplishment of humankind!
Now that more and more countries are getting into space exploration, I wonder how long it will be before commercial companies start developing and selling space probe platforms (just like launch platforms now).
I'm a Chinese guy and I don't like this at all. Here's some Chinese perspective:<p>1. The CNSA is severely underfunded in recent years, to the extent that a considerable amount of space tech graduates went directly into other more "lucrative" fields such as the IT industry.<p>2. This landing operation was not announced beforehand. This is a bit unusual, when compared to the past operations, e. g. the first manned space flight, where the national news network kept broadcasting the whole event. The CNSA seemed a little unconfident about it.<p>3. This year is the 100th anniversary for the CCP.<p>4. Given 1, 2 and 3, and how things work in the PRC, this Mars landing thing is more likely a "present" for the CCP anniversary, intended to strive for more funding. If the operation failed, they'd probably postpone the whole announcement till a more "proper" time, since nobody even know they tried to land the rover.<p>So, the current atmosphere in the CNSA may be a little tense. A failure may make them lose their already-tiny funding, and they did this (at this timing) to please the CCP in order to get more support. I respect all those engineers and scientists who made the marvel achievement, but this is not a pretty scene. And as a Chinese, I don't like it at all.
>Now that Zhurong has got down successfully, scientists will try to get at least 90 Martian days of service out of it, studying the local geology.<p>90 days, doesn't that seem short?
So China has put a probe on the Moon, launched a space station, and landed a rover on Mars, just in the last few months? Asteroid sample return is the next logical step. Looks like the second Space Age is in full swing.
Weird that people get upset by this. I wonder how anyone complaining about "copying" feel about software patents.<p>Honestly, I didn't even know about this mission until now. Good for China. I like "monuments" that countries engage in. They're not new. This is what Apollo was too. Better this than an F-35.<p>If bananas have taught us anything, it's that monocultures are bad (reinforced by the various COVID vaccines I might add). If SpaceX and all the "me toos" have taught us anything is that space (engineering) is hard.<p>The longevity of the NASA rovers is almost legendary at this point. They too were originally designed for 90 day missions. It'll be interesting to see how long this Chinese rover lasts.<p>If it's much shorter, which is what I suspect, I hope the lesson people take is just what an accomplishment the NASA rovers are rather than just cheap nationalistic shots at the Chinese space agency.
I'm curious, their landing vehicle seems to have less moving parts than the respective US rovers that use a complex sky-crane. Is there a particular benefit to using the sky-crane?
This raises a questions -<p>as China's Yutu-2 moon rover is still operational on the far side of the moon, if Rongzhu mars rover could be successfully deployed, assuming those two rovers (Yutu-2 on the moon and Rongzhu on the mars) can communicate with each other, via some relies of course, will that make it the first communication between two planets outside earth? has that been done before?
This is so cool, imagine it would meet Perseverance and the droids would engage in some <strike>battle</strike> friendly cooperation!<p>Q: Are the landing sites even remotely close to each other?<p>Q: Had any of sides incorporated this somehow unexpected counterpart into their master programs? Can they update the programs at all?<p>Edit: grammar
Nationalism is rife in this discussion. I don’t particularly welcome that on HN, but I _do_ welcome it in the general discourse of this new space race.<p>It’s my opinion that the first space race served as a proxy for an even more expensive arms race, and a way to channel unavoidable nationalism/idealism into good for all humankind.<p>The United States and China cannot avoid competition, as Thucydides would assert. A space race is a blessing in this context - I hope it heats up.
It's impressive how far China has come in just 2 decades. How significant is this achievement space technology wise? I still remember the first rover on Mars and it was a really big deal in my eyes back then.
Um.. why isn't this being talked about more? I remember the discussions were very lively everywhere from Youtube to HN and Reddit when India was attempting to land its probe on the moon.<p>A rover on Mars is a huge thing! Why are discussions relatively tame now?
This is good, there should always be friendly competition between Nations to drive Space Exploration. I hope this lights a bigger fire under the ass of the current US Administration and NASA to push ahead harder, faster and farther. The US doesn't know how lucky they are to have SpaceX and Musk.
Look all the copy comments aside, the future of the human race is getting off this rock we live on. Congratulations on the success of this mission. It moves all of humanity forward.
> China had to develop all space technology on their own.<p>It’s hard not to laugh at that statement. China runs the largest IP theft program in the world. To the point U.S. companies factor it in when doing business there.<p>Just search this - <a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=china+steals&t=fpas&ia=web" rel="nofollow">https://duckduckgo.com/?q=china+steals&t=fpas&ia=web</a><p>They also had the “thousand talents program”.<p>That’s not to say what they did was not impressive, it was. But it’s also a lot of stolen IP.
While I totally agree, the US in turn enables people like Musk to do… well, whatever it is Elon does…. more readily than other countries. Entrepreneurship is hard and especially so if your system of governance isn’t onboard with it.
I feel rather awful about this, likely similar to how people felt about Stalin getting man into space, but to keep things positive, maybe it will ignite a new space race. The US has interesting things happening once again with SpaceX, I wonder if a private company will be able to keep up with a motivated nation state.