Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test

Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by aardvarkr on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @10:11PM (#25369177)

It’s pretty damn hard to copy something that you never get to see. China can clone tech because they force companies that build products in China to essentially give away their IP. Can’t do that if the rocket is built exclusively in Hawthorne, CA and Boca China, TX with no outside contractors. They’re decades behind even the Europeans and Japanese. Chang’e5 is cool and all but Europe and Japan landed their spacecraft this year and last year on ASTEROIDS which is actually pushing the boundaries of space accomplishments and science. Hyabusa2 flew literally billions of miles (5.4bn to be exact)[0] during its mission to collect and return asteroid samples. The Chinese mission was a repeat of the 50’s just to say that they did it too. They’re not leapfrogging ANYONE, at least not until they do something novel.

http://www.hayabusa2.jaxa.jp/en/enjoy/material/factsheet/Fac...

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by someperson on Thursday December 10, 2020 @09:03AM (#25373768)

I tend to agree with you that China's space technology is not that developed -- their manned rocket and capsule is a scaled up Russian Soyuz design -- and I have doubts about their ability to catchup without major technology transfer (whether through acquisition or theft). But we should still recognize that their previous moon mission (Chang'e-4) did do something no other nation has yet done: land on the far side of the moon. That is pushing the boundaries and just repeating the accomplishments of decades ago.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by aardvarkr on Thursday December 10, 2020 @08:11PM (#25381089)

Is that really so impressive? The technical challenges remain the same as a near side landing except you’re in a communication blackout so signals have to bounce off a satellite in orbit. Even then that’s not novel because the Americans and Russians did the same thing, using their orbiting spacecraft to relay messages back to earth.

The Chinese literally haven’t done anything novel in their space program. Even the words they said upon landing on that mission were a copy of the Americans. ‘"It's a small step for the rover, but one giant leap for the Chinese nation," Wu Weiren, the chief designer of the Lunar Exploration Project, told state broadcaster CCTV.’ The Chinese literally can’t do anything but copy and it’s embarrassing.

https://phys.org/news/2019-01-chinese-rover-exploring-dark-s...

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by someperson on Friday December 11, 2020 @01:26AM (#25382945)

Well I think landing a rover on the far side of the moon is impressive. It's definitely a first for humanity and the scientists and engineers behind that mission deserve praise for that, even if in the achievement isn't pushing forward space technology at all.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by Invictus0 on Thursday December 10, 2020 @08:58AM (#25373722)

All it takes is one cyber attack.

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