China—An Ambition Space Program
“If China can go to the moon, eventually with a manned program, it will represent the ultimate achievement for China in making itself essentially the second most important space power, accomplishing what even the Soviets had not,” says Dean Cheng, a China military analyst for CNA, a private research corporation
China’s Chang’e 1 is hopefully going to spend the next year or so orbiting the moon, mapping its surface, and looking for its resources. It is a very small step in an otherwise highly ambitious space program with several goals in mind—a Chinese space station orbiting Earth, a Chinese moon colony, a joint China-Russia explorer on Mars, an unmanned rover to the moon by 2012, and a robotic mission to bring back samples by 2017.
A lot to do with it is China’s Committee for National Defense, an organization which has identified as their primary pillars the China’s National Defense Program—focusing on the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry. Yet their policy formation and day-to-day care management belongs to the CNSA, or the China National Space Administration. This organization, along with the China Aerospace Corporation, was created from the Ministry of Aerospace Industry before it was dissolved in 1993.
After this, it was re-structured into two areas: China Aerospace Machinery and Electronics Corporation (CAMEC), and the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC)–top players in the China Space Programs which have brought their Space Programs to where they are today.
On September 28, 2009, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin had returned to the United States after visiting in China, saying, “I expected to meet capable, involved, committed, energetic people who are devoted to their country’s space program,” he said of his get-acquainted visit, “and that’s exactly what I saw. They’ve got very obviously expert people doing the work they are doing, fully the equal of any other country doing these sorts of work, certainly nothing other than to be proud of.”
But recently, some Chinese Internet “gurus” have decided amongst themselves that China could have borrowed one of NASA’s pictures of the moon and used it as their own from their lunar orbiter, the Chang’e 1, charging them with plagiarism as it looks so much like a similar lunar image taken in 2005 from the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
The moon, is a moon, is a moon….how many images can you take of it and not have it similar to another one taken from the same perspective? And even though they are similar, there are some striking differences if a person looked close enough. China has fast become the third country to put a man into space with their own rocket, after Russia and the U.S. Following that, it sent two astronauts on a five-day flight on the Shenzhou VI Mission. I seriously doubt they will jeopardize all of that to “copy” or “borrow” a picture from NASA, an organization which continuously is backing out of contracts, changing their minds after billions of dollars are already spent, or having their own employees stealing hundreds if not thousands of dollars under their very own noses. Get real, people.
This entry was posted on Sunday, December 2nd, 2007 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Public Relations, Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
