China aims for the Moon - article in "Nature"

[czokletmuss]

(...) If Chang’e-3 lands safely on the Moon, China will join the Soviet Union and the United States as the only nations to have successfully landed exploratory spacecraft there. “You cannot call the Chinese a rising or emerging space power any more,†says Bernard Foing, a lunar scientist at the European Space Agency in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. “They have shown they are very advanced.†(...) Depending on what happens with Chang’e-3, the National Space Administration may launch an almost identical rover and lander pair  Chang’e-4  to another spot on the lunar surface. Beyond that, the third and final phase of China’s lunar-exploration programme calls for a robotic mission to bring back samples of lunar material, probably in 2017–18.

Space analysts expect that the lunar and crewed objectives of China’s space-flight programme will merge, with Chinese astronauts (known as taikonauts) aiming to walk on the Moon some time in the 2020s. China’s plans are notable for their long-term outlook  not so easy to implement in a democracy  and for proceeding incrementally, says Joan Johnson-Freese, an analyst at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. “They have a long laid-out programme of very careful steps, but they are taking bigger steps with each flight,†she says.

Source: http://www.nature.com/news/china-aims-for-the-moon-1.14243

[Neil1993]

The post about how the non-democratic nature of China's government is particularily interesting. It is true, that in the democratic systems in north america (I'm living in Canada right now) politicians will avoid long term projects or strategies, often for the petty reason that the next guy will get to take credit for it. How could we possibly change our own democratic systems to encourage long term strategies and yet still maintain the democratic ideals?

[Kryten]

I don't even see how that would apply in this situation, to be honest. Democratically or not, the top leadership in China changes every five years or so-I'm not sure about the situation in Canada, but that's more frequently than usually happens in the US.

Edited December 11, 2013 by Kryten

[Axder]

Well this is kinda different, I am from Czech republic and we used to have comunist party as leading party before 1990, and even if some people changeges on highest spots. It doesnt realy makes difference. You set goals and even if they blow, then you cover it and party survives as a whole. That also a reason why they dont do so much livefeeds as we are used to from NASA. Failiure is not accapteble and so you only say good news, and rarely the bad news. For example gagarin was officialy published after he returned, not when he launched, and chernobyl tragedy was published weeks after explosion. Its comunist habbit to hide bad news, and say god news with big publicity.

[Neil1993]

That's very true (both previous posts). However, it would still be nice to have governments more focused on long term strategies. I know that in Canada most politicians never seem to see any further than the next election, while space related to projects can stretch from a decade long, like to Apollo moon landing (ok, that was 7 years) to a century (the 100 year starship). It's unlikely that we'll get many big groundbreaking and frontier pushing projects with that mentality.

[jwenting]

How could we possibly change our own democratic systems to encourage long term strategies and yet still maintain the democratic ideals?

you can't, not unless you introduce a long term external enemy and the very act of ordering the program is going to give you a lot of political capital, enough to win the next elections even if they're years away.

That's how Kennedy got away with it (not that he lived to reap that political capital).

The rest of the US space program until the cancellation of Skylab was pure spinoffs of military requirements and projects (and that includes the Shuttle, which was intended as a crew bus to a military space station that never saw the light of day).

I'm afraid that even if starting a program now that would not lead to political gain in the next elections but would mean the destruction of mankind were it not launched, it would never get funded.

[Idobox]

Chinese leaders are not elected by the population, they don't need to be popular with the crowds, they don't need to be more popular than somebody else, they just need the support of the party, people who usually have similar ideas and goals.

They take decisions depending on what they think is good for the country (or for them), not on what the media and other politicians have convinced the people is good for the country. And because party leaders are usually more difficult to influence, and more rational in their decisions, you end up with much more stable programs.

Western democracies are ruled by popularity contests, which results in a lot of wasted energy, and a lot less stability. It also means more versatility, and having the rulers at least pretend to work in our interest.

On a side note, I learned recently that both American and French revolutionaries did not want a democracy because they thought the people was too stupid and passionate to rule, and devised systems where a small bunch would have all the power, technically an aristocracy. And they used the word 'democrat' as an insult.

[Neil1993]

I'm afraid that even if starting a program now that would not lead to political gain in the next elections but would mean the destruction of mankind were it not launched, it would never get funded.

That's an accurate yet sad comment on the current state of affairs.

[jwenting]

Western democracies are ruled by popularity contests, which results in a lot of wasted energy, and a lot less stability. It also means more versatility, and having the rulers at least pretend to work in our interest.

On a side note, I learned recently that both American and French revolutionaries did not want a democracy because they thought the people was too stupid and passionate to rule, and devised systems where a small bunch would have all the power, technically an aristocracy. And they used the word 'democrat' as an insult.

The US system reflects that, it is not a democracy but a federal republic.

The federal government is elected by the states, how the states elect the electoral college is (or at least initially was) up to the states.

If each ended up holding democratic elections, that was never the intent of the founding fathers (the very thought of Washington dictating how the states handled internal affairs like that never entered their mind).

Technically, a state could be ruled as a theocracy with a high priest at the top, the citizens having no say whatsoever. That high priest would then determine which candidates to support for federal office (and yes, under the constitution as written and intended there was no separation of church and state at the state level, the only provision in it is that the federal government will not dictate which religion a state shall adhere to, will not impose a national religion at federal level. If a state were to impose a religion on its citizens, that was that state's internal business and none of the fed's to interfere with).

[astropapi1]

Sheeyt! That thing is as big as the Apollo LM's descent stage!

[Axder]

Sheeyt! That thing is as big as the Apollo LM's descent stage!

Well curiosity is als this big I belive. But yep its quite big.

[Nibb31]

The US system reflects that, it is not a democracy but a federal republic.

It's both. Democracy is a principle. A republic is an implementation of that principle.

Democracy is the notion that the people gets to vote. Direct democracy can lead to the rule of the mob and oppression of minorities and is generally impractical. Therefore, most modern democracies are republics and have some form of indirect vote in their system. In the US, the people gets to vote on their representatives. Whether that vote is direct or indirect is irrelevant, it's still a democratic process.

A republic is a particular implementation of government where the power is in the hands of elected representatives. A republic isn't necessarily democratic. For example the Roman Empire or Ancient Greece were plutocratic republics, and China is a republic where nominated party members elect the representatives, not the people.

The US, however, is a democratic republic, which is a form of democracy. Stating the opposite would be like claiming that the UK is not a democracy because it's a kingdom, when it is actually both.

Edited December 12, 2013 by Nibb31

[K^2]

It's both. Democracy is a principle. A republic is an implementation of that principle.

You shouldn't mix definitions like that. If you insist that Democracy is a principle, and US is a Democracy, then US is a principle?

Word itself can mean a principle or a form of government. It's the later we should be considering. Whether you want to consider US as a democracy differs a bit by definition, but typical definition involves "equal representation," which is not the case in United States. So it's entirely fair to say that U.S. is not, in fact, a democracy. It is, however, a democratic, federal, presidential republic. UK, in contrast, is a parliamentary monarchy. Whether or not it can be considered a representative democracy, I don't really know. I'm not sufficiently familiar with their system. It is not a republic on technicality only, however. Even though their system follows all of the same rules as a republic, the fact that they do have a monarch means we call it a constitutional monarchy instead.

[Idobox]

OT, but republics aren't democracies per se.

Democracy means power to the people, which you might think voting gives. But in practice, a small group of people have all the power, some of them being elected; with you having no way to stop them until they reach their term. Technically, we have a mix of oligarchy, aristocracy and plutocracy.

True democracy is almost never used at the scale of a country because it is extremely slow and inefficient, but it is used in many cases for smaller organizations. A proposal to make representative democracy more democratic is to replace elections by random draw, like juries or some position in Athenian democracy.

And as I pointed out earlier, the people who devised current systems in the US and France did not consider themselves democrats, didn't want a democracy, and used that term in a pejorative way, a little bit like the word socialism in the US today.