Showing posts with label Mars sample-return. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mars sample-return. Show all posts

Friday, December 4, 2020

Will China Win the Race to Mars?

China Poised to Bring Home Moon Samples

With the impending success of a Lunar sample-return mission, it's worth asking: Does China now lead in the space race? 

In particular, how much more difficult than a Lunar sample-return mission is a Mars sample-return mission? Not much I would guess. So what's to stop China from bringing home samples of Martian soil, possibly with microbial life included, before anyone else? Nothing except a geriatric US space agency that lacks a sharp focus on the conquest of space, and couple of American billionaires. True, Musk and Bezos are extremely rich, but can they compete with the Government of China in a race that depends on the availability of a large amounts of brilliant engineering talent and unrestrained expenditure. 

What's more, being overtaken in the space race by a Third World country that graduates ten times as many engineers as the US is somethings that intelligent Americans must expect, particularly at a time when white privilege, transgenderism, and shuttering the economy to protect an obesity-prone population habituated to the toxic products of the American fast-food and food-processing industries from the consequences of a novel corona (i.e., common cold type) virus have become leading national preoccupations. 

Yes, it looks like an end to the technological supremacy of the American Empire and a time for the Communists again to terrorize the world. 

Related: 

ZH: China's New Supercomputer "10 Billion Times Faster" Than Google's