China's Lunar Rover Has Mechanical Trouble

[groundloop]

Source: ABC News

China says its first lunar rover is experiencing mechanical problems, a rare setback for its burgeoning space program that in recent years has conducted space walks and placed a space station in orbit........

News of the rover's troubles were splashed across newspapers on Monday and even featured at the Foreign Ministry's daily briefing, with spokesman Qin Gang expressing hope that Yutu could "return to normal."

The mechanical problems appeared to be related to the solar-powered probe's process for shutting down for the lunar night, which lasts more than two weeks. The temperature during that time drops to minus 180 degrees Celsius (minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit).



Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/chinas-lunar-rover-mechanical-trouble-22161289

---

Do I even need to add any 'made in China' comments?

[liberal N proud]

1. Even when it is sent to the moon, it is still cheap Chinese shit.

[denverbill]

13. Funny but when I was a kid, 'Made in Japan' meant cheap, likely to break crap.

20 years later, their cars were better than the cheap American crap of the 80's. We are only catching back up to Japan now.

[madokie]

51. I'll put our ford focus up against any thing the Japanese has to off for the same price

hell even for a higher price. In all around driving we're averaging 32 + mpg and this is a car that carries 4 full sized adults in relative comfort. Its not even broke in yet so I expect the fuel mileage to get even better.
I was reading about the even smaller cars and most of them don't even get the mileage we're getting now. Course all of them are re-badged foreign made autos. Our focus is 75% union made in America with 72% American made parts with the remainder mostly coming from Canada and Mexico.

I'd say this is pretty good

I remember those made in japan toys that we laughed at back then too.

[FrodosPet]

57. He mentioned the 80s

I bought a new 1981 Chevette that was in the garage 3 times (with bad brakes and alternator) in the first week I owned it. It was a LEMON among many lemons of that era.

Back then the theory was wear 'em out fast so people will need a new car every three years. People were thought to be extremely brand loyal - once a Chevy guy, always a Chevy guy. Turned out, not so much...and here we are! The Big Three have never recovered from the stupidity of the 70s and 80s.

[denverbill]

63. I owned a 1977 Vega. One of the crappiest cars ever built.

I never even thought about buying another Chevy until a couple years ago when I bought my 2011 Cruze Eco. Most weeks we get 38+mpg in Denver rush-hour traffic. It got 50+ mpg on one stretch of highway driving on a road trip. And it too carries 4 adults pretty comfortably.

It took Detroit years to catch up to Japan in small cars, but they have now. My point was that China now is where Japan was in the 60's, producing cheap, inferior crap. It didn't take Japan all that long to go from a joke to world-class. We will see if the same happens with China.

[madokie]

64. Yes a friend of our has a Cruze

We like it real well. I even gave thought of buying one but my wife and I both are Ford people so the Focus won out.

50 mpg is awesome both for your wallet and for our atmosphere

[denverbill]

65. Yes the 41mpg highway they advertised sold me.

For under 20K, I don't think you could get anything else at that time which got over 40 highway.

I was leaning towards a Focus or Corolla and might have gotten a Focus if our local dealer wasn't so crappy. They didn't have the model I was interested in and couldn't even tell me if and/or when they would get one. I really wanted to buy locally though and I'm happy with the Cruze.

[madokie]

67. As you should be because the Cruze is an awesome automobile

Our friend bought the cheapest model he could get and he loves it and we like it too. We like it well enough that if we weren't predisposed to buy ford we'd bought one too.

[sofa king]

59. Now, if you're looking for computer parts,

"Made in Japan" is the seal of approval for a good component.

Most of you lost a desktop PC--including virtually all Dells--somewhere during the Bush years, to a cheap shitty Chinese capacitor that leaked out or exploded. Those made with Japanese solid state capacitors were fine, but any manufacturer who saved a few cents per unit going with the cheap capacitor built machines destined to die within a few short years.

That having been said, the Chinese can close the books on this mission right now and it's still one of the most resounding success stories in the history of moon landings.

Unmanned lunar launches, historically, have only a moderate chance of actually making it to the moon. Only around five unmanned soft landings of this one's weight class have actually succeeded--at least two others failed during landing, including one failed Soviet attempt at virtually the same time that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were touching down on the moon (the Soviets were trying very hard to get a lunar sample back to earth before the Americans could, but Luna 15 disappeared shortly after beginning its landing sequence). Then the rover successfully deployed and worked, which was not a guarantee, and then the whole damned two-part system survived an entire lunar night.

The Chinese are not nearly as forthcoming as our own public space program is, but if there is one major failure here, it is that the rover was not immediately sent out with its ground-penetrating radar toward the lava tube system I think it was trying to discover. Other than that, it has been an amazing, resounding success for China, and if they'll share their science, for humans in general.

[friendly_iconoclast]

32. That statement is both racist AND ahistorical

Firstly- The Chinese can and do make advanced stuff (Oppo Blu-ray players, for one)-
it's just that their manufacturers are no different from most others so 90% of the stuff
they sell is cheaply-made crap for a higher profit margin.

Secondly- Even the "advanced" US, Soviet Union/Russia and ESA had numerous failures with their
various planetary probes before they got them to work. The fact that it landed and worked
*at all* is a credit to the Chinese space program.

Research a little before you post next time, mmkay?

[seabeckind]

36. No, it isn't racist

You are mistaking racism for nationalism. There's a world of difference.

denverbill most likely grew up when WW2 was still very fresh in the US memories. As was the Korean war. That's when I grew up. You're dam right we were nationalistic. And for a dam good reason. They were killing our people. On purpose. Those weren't wars of choice, they were wars of necessity (well, maybe Korea was a little of both).

A second factor is that the depression was still very fresh. We were used to making do with as little as possible and most things were made in such a way that they could be repaired. When people bought something quality was very important.

And then I watched this country...one I loved...lose so much of what made us so exceptional. Textiles, electronics,...and now our space program has been outsourced.

Don't you dare.

[friendly_iconoclast]

43. Yes, it is- you forget that our space program had problems with the first planetary probes

Quite a few, in fact:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_program

Block 1 missions

Ranger 1, launched 23 August 1961, lunar prototype, launch failure
Ranger 2, launched 18 November 1961, lunar prototype, launch failure

Block 1, consisting of two spacecraft launched into Earth orbit in 1961, was intended to test the Atlas-Agena launch vehicle and spacecraft equipment without attempting to reach the Moon.

Unfortunately, problems with the early version of the launch vehicle left Ranger 1 and Ranger 2 in short-lived, low-Earth orbits in which the spacecraft could not stabilize themselves, collect solar power, or survive for long. In 1962, JPL utilized the Ranger 1 and Ranger 2 design for the failed Mariner 1 and successful Mariner 2 deep-space probes to Venus.
Block 2 missions
Ranger block II spacecraft diagram. (NASA)

Ranger 3, launched 26 January 1962, lunar probe, spacecraft failed, missed Moon
Ranger 4, launched 23 April 1962, lunar probe, spacecraft failed, impact
Ranger 5, launched 18 October 1962, lunar probe, spacecraft failed, missed

Block 2 of the Ranger project launched three spacecraft to the Moon in 1962, carrying a TV camera, a radiation detector, and a seismometer in a separate capsule slowed by a rocket motor and packaged to survive its low-speed impact on the Moon’s surface. The three missions together demonstrated good performance of the Atlas/Agena B launch vehicle and the adequacy of the spacecraft design, but unfortunately not all on the same attempt. Ranger 3 was launched into deep space, but an inaccuracy put it off course and it missed the Moon entirely. Ranger 4 had a perfect launch, but the spacecraft was completely disabled. The project team tracked the seismometer capsule to impact just out of sight on the lunar far side, validating the communications and navigation system. Ranger 5 missed the Moon and was disabled. No significant science information was gleaned from these missions. The craft weighed 331 kg.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_1

Mariner 1
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

r)
Start of mission
Launch date July 22, 1962, 09:21:23 UTC
Rocket Atlas LV-3 Agena-B
Launch site Cape Canaveral LC-12

Mariner 1 was the first spacecraft of the American Mariner program. A range safety officer ordered its destructive abort at 09:26:16 UT, 294.5 seconds after it was launched on July 22, 1962 as a Venus flyby mission.[1] According to NASA's current account for the public:

The booster had performed satisfactorily until an unscheduled yaw-lift (northeast) maneuver was detected by the range safety officer. Faulty application of the guidance commands made steering impossible and were directing the spacecraft towards a crash, possibly in the North Atlantic shipping lanes or in an inhabited area. The destruct command was sent 6 seconds before separation, after which the launch vehicle could not have been destroyed. The radio transponder continued to transmit signals for 64 seconds after the destruct command had been sent

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_3

Mariner 3 (together with Mariner 4 known as Mariner-Mars 1964) was one of two identical deep-space probes designed and built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for NASA's Mariner-Mars 1964 project that were intended to conduct close-up (flyby) scientific observations of the planet Mars and transmit information on interplanetary space and the space surrounding Mars, televised images of the Martian surface and radio occultation data of spacecraft signals as affected by the Martian atmosphere back to Earth.[1][2] It was the third of ten spacecraft within the Mariner program.

Mariner 3 was launched on November 5, 1964 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 13,[3] but the shroud encasing the spacecraft atop its rocket failed to open properly, and Mariner 3 did not get to Mars. Unable to collect the Sun's energy for power from its solar panels, the probe soon died when its batteries ran out and is now derelict in a solar orbit.[4]

The Chinese managed to land and have it work on their first time out, yet you call their spacecraft
"cheap shit"?

I'll reiterate: It was a racist thing to say

[mainer]

45. Ditto.

It was a racist thing to say.

[seabeckind]

50. I didn't say it but I agreed.

Questioning the quality of chinese products in the American market is not racist. Go back and reread the original post. It was related to those products.

So the US...which pioneered space exploration for this planet had failures. So what? It's a lot easier to follow someone who went before you than to be the one who "goes where no man has gone before".

I will reiterate: Racism has absolutely nothing to do with it.

The quality of products on our shelves has everything to do with it.

[friendly_iconoclast]

56. We see mostly the crap, because that's what sells

Last edited Tue Jan 28, 2014, 01:10 AM - Edit history (1)

And even reverse-engineering your way to a space program is an accomplishment.

By the way, you also forgot that the U.S. also copied a lot of space and aircraft technology-
or were you under the impression that it was only a coincidence there were an unusual number of
Germans in in NASA?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

Operation Paperclip
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II. It was conducted by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), and in the context of the burgeoning Cold War, one purpose of Operation Paperclip was to deny German scientific expertise and knowledge to the Soviet Union[1] and the United Kingdom,[2] as well as inhibiting post-war Germany from redeveloping its military research capabilities.

Although the JIOA's recruitment of German scientists began after the Allied victory in Europe on May 8, 1945, U.S. President Harry Truman did not formally order the execution of Operation Paperclip until August 1945. Truman's order expressly excluded anyone found "to have been a member of the Nazi Party, and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazi militarism". However, those restrictions would have rendered ineligible most of the leading scientists the JIOA had identified for recruitment, among them rocket scientists Wernher von Braun, Kurt H. Debus and Arthur Rudolph, and the physician Hubertus Strughold, each earlier classified as a "menace to the security of the Allied Forces".

To circumvent President Truman's anti-Nazi order and the Allied Potsdam and Yalta agreements, the JIOA worked independently to create false employment and political biographies for the scientists. The JIOA also expunged from the public record the scientists' Nazi Party memberships and régime affiliations. Once "bleached" of their Nazism, the scientists were granted security clearances by the U.S. government to work in the United States. Paperclip, the project's operational name, derived from the paperclips used to attach the scientists' new political personae to their "US Government Scientist" JIOA personnel files.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swept_wing

A prototype test aircraft, the Messerschmitt Me P.1101, was built to research the tradeoffs of the design and develop general rules about what angle of sweep to use. When it was 80% complete, the P.1101 was captured by US forces and returned to the United States, where two additional copies with US built engines carried on the research as the Bell X-5.

...The American Operation Paperclip reached Braunschweig on May 7 and discovered a number of swept wing models and a mass of technical data from the wind tunnels. One member of the US team was George S. Schairer, who was at that time working at the Boeing company. He immediately forwarded a letter to Ben Cohn at Boeing stating that they needed to investigate the concept. He also told Cohn to distribute the letter to other companies as well, although only Boeing and North American made immediate use of it.

In February 1945, NACA engineer Robert T. Jones started looking at highly swept delta wings and V shapes, and discovered the same effects as Busemann. He finished a detailed report on the concept in April, but found his work was heavily criticised by other members of NACA Langley, notably Theodore Theodorsen, who referred to it as "hocus-pocus" and demanded some "real mathematics".[5] However, Jones had already secured some time for free-flight models under the direction of Robert Gilruth, whose reports were presented at the end of May and showed a fourfold decrease in drag at high speeds. All of this was compiled into a report published on June 21, 1945, which was sent out to the industry three weeks later.[9] Ironically, by this point Busemann's work had already been passed around.

Boeing was in the midst of designing the Boeing B-47 Stratojet, and the initial Model 424 was a straight-wing design similar to the B-45, B-46 and B-48 it competed with. A recent design overhaul completed in June produced the Model 432, another four-engine design with the engines buried in the fuselage to reduce drag, and long-span wings that gave it an almost glider-like appearance. By September the Braunschweig data had been worked into the design, which re-emerged as the Model 448, a larger six-engine design with more robust wings swept at about 35 degrees.[5] Another re-work in November moved the engines into strut-mounted pods under the wings since Boeing was concerned that the uncontained failure of an internal engine could potentially destroy the aircraft. With the engines mounted away from the wings on struts equipped with fuse pins, an out-of-balance engine would simply shatter the pins and fall harmlessly away, sparing the aircraft from destructive vibrations. The resulting B-47 design had performance rivaling the fastest fighters and trounced the straight-winged competition. Boeing's winning jet-transport formula of swept wings and engines mounted on pylons under the wings has since been universally adopted

Try to learn a little more of the history you pontificate about, eh?

[NutmegYankee]

46. Not racist in the slightest.

The US constantly mocked the Soviets on their technology as well. And they were White Europeans. It's a nationalistic and protectionist statement.

[liberal N proud]

54. After you have to pack up you job of 30 years to send it China so it can be made cheaper and not ...

better, then you can tell me that is racist.

I have worked for many years with product made under the same brand, some in the US and some in China. The quality of the US product was superior to the Chinese product. That was true until 2 years ago when the company chose cheap over quality and packed up the equipment from 2 US facilities and sent it to China.

I had to work with the Chinese to set up the equipment there. I know many of them and have no problems with them personally, just the quality standards of their processes.

Nothing I said was aimed at the people of China, only the cheap things they produce.

[LanternWaste]

53. Nationalism trumps science... for idiots.

even in the 21st century, there are sub-literate progressive who value imaginary nationalism more than the expansion of science.

(Insert distinction without a difference here)

[DeSwiss]

2. I'm sure....

...Xi Jinping will find some way to blame this on Zhou Yongkang and bullet bills will be sent to the next of kin.

- K&R

[ramapo]

3. Kudos to the Chinese

Even if the rover is not able to continue the mission, it is another amazing accomplishment by the Chinese. Thirty-five years ago China was a backwards country. It now deploys world-class technology. While the United States has floundered in just about every area, China has come out of the dark ages. It is nice to know that there is at least one country that values its space program.

[psychopomp]

5. Just stop with that "the United States has floundered in just about every area" malarkey

and enjoy this nice pic:

[IMG][/IMG]

A year from now we'll be getting close-ups of Pluto.

on edit: Have you been to China? I stayed at one of the nicest hotels in the capitol and the water was unsafe to drink.

[zonkers]

66. Thank you. And I live in CA -- we get their old smog. They

are a fucking disaster. I wish they would spend a little less on space and a little more on dealing with real problems.

[Ikonoklast]

7. China has world-class technology? Stolen from who?

China's space program is state-of-the-art...if this was the 1970's.

[warrant46]

22. +1

[snooper2]

11. dark ages? Really? LOL

[Codeine]

44. The Soviets put a remotely-driven lunar rover on the moon in the 70s.

We drove around the lunar surface in a fucking collapsible golf cart over 40 years ago. It's a neat accomplishment, but don't confuse yourself about "world-class" technology -- the Chinese are very good at building other people's tech, often without their permission.

[sabbat hunter]

55. the Chinese government

and many of the companies there (which are mainly government owned corporations) care little for IP laws.

[bananas]

4. The solar panel is folded over the deck like a lid, insulating the interior ...

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/01251527-bad-news-for-yutu-rover.html

Bad news for Yutu rover
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla
2014/01/25 05:33 CST

The sun has just set on the Chang'e 3 landing site for the two-week long lunar night. As sunset approached, something seems to have gone wrong with the Yutu rover. In order to survive the lunar night, Yutu positions itself with one solar panel angled toward the direction of the rising sun. Then it folds down the mast that carries its color camera and its high-gain antenna into its body. Then the other solar panel is folded over the deck like a lid, insulating the interior and the mast, which are kept warm with a radioisotope heating unit. According to various reports online, it sounds like something in this sequence did not execute properly, although the reports are unspecific so I'm not sure yet what happened.

<snip>

More details are available from the unofficial Twitter account of the mission. Links take you to original Chinese, with Google translation below it.

<snip>

January 25, 15:25:

I'm sorry, so sorry we did not give up the ...... masters to treat it, I will not give up easily.Well, for everyone to see articles about my article, which I wrote before a master. But the master is very shy, embarrassed to tell you who he is (or may be afraid of everyone that he is not well written ......), entrusted to the king to publish a Nutshell. After reading, I think, a good horror master deconstruction of others like you, oh ......

<snip>

[another_liberal]

24. Is that last paragraph in code?

It reads like the Book of Revelations.

[House of Roberts]

27. Probably translated from Chinese?

That doesn't always work really well.

[tridim]

6. I knew this would happen just based on Chinese kitchen timer technology.

I went through three of them before realizing that Chinese kitchen timers aren't meant to keep proper time. They're just for decoration and then they go straight into the landfill. Worthless crap.

[seabeckind]

10. Toasters.

The most infuriating part is that every f'in box that this chinese toaster comes in has the name of an american company on it. Oh, and probably all came from the same factory and are all made of old american military debris.

I went thru 3 of them in less than a year and finally ended up with one made in canada.

When I was moving across country I gave my old trusty american 20 year old toaster away figuring it'd be cheaper and better to get a new one. Stupid idea. Really stupid idea.

Today's quality mantra...barely acceptable.

[Plucketeer]

15. LOL!!!

We went thru a STRING of new toasters until we hit on one that's worked unerringly for a dozen years now - a Rival model TT9442. It is, of course, Made in China. Yet another American brand name gone swimming.

The last couple before this one, I took out in the yard and treated to a sledge hammer tweaking. Oddly enough, they worked no better after being smashed than they did fresh outta the box!

[Codeine]

47. I just had the worst toaster experience.

The damned thing lasted for all of about three weeks, just long enough for our 9-year-old to dub it "The Scorcher" for what it was doing to her Saturday morning bagels. It was awful right out of the box, alternately burning things and refusing to toast other things.

[Boxerfan]

8. WE gave them the technology -wich was stupid- but do not discount the Chinese

I see the country as going through a modern version of the growth America experienced during our "industrial era".

And they will grow as a nation gaining the technology & the inherited knowledge of a wide labor base. Something we should have never given up was our manufacturing.

I hate to say but they will probably be the next world superpower-as if they are not already.

[seabeckind]

9. Didn't "give" anything

An american company took it there and made money off it. They did it deliberately.

And our gov't helped the companies do it.

[Psephos]

26. So very true...but consumers share the blame.

The reason Chinese-made goods are dominant is because they cost less. If demand had remained strong for more-expensive, locally-made goods, then those goods would have remained dominant.

In an instant-gratification culture, few take the long view, and even fewer back it with their $$.

[seabeckind]

29. Yep, that's what the outsourcers said.

Some of us might point out that we, the American consumer, really didn't have a choice. Some guy sitting in a boardroom got a great big bonus by saving the company few cents on that widget.

The price didn't go down. The quality didn't go up.

The profit went up.

It's a leftover bullsh!t argument from the 90's.

[Psephos]

31. My own eyes don't lie.

The majority of people shop price. If more chose quality at a higher price, more of those goods would be on the shelves.

To me, it's bullshit to ignore human nature.

I agree with your observations about quality and price, and about short-sighted corporate-think.

[warrant46]

23. A Fascist Dictatorship

With 2 Billion people

[dipsydoodle]

61. Actually I think their equivalent of your NSA borrowed it at the time.

Yes they probably will be the next world superpower.

[Ezlivin]

12. Dim sun

Proves problematic, eh?

[Yo_Mama]

14. That's too bad.

Hopefully they can fix it.

[seabeckind]

18. Not designed to be fixed.

Long ago I could resolder a broken connection in stuff. Try that now and you end up with glop on the end of the soldering iron and some unidentifiable material.

And then you need a new soldering iron. Which is intended.

[Yo_Mama]

38. Ancient Chinese proverb say

"Man who has Chinese-made soldering gun needs Japanese or German-made fire extinguisher."

[jsr]

41. +1

[mainer]

16. Consider how many missteps the US space program has had.

This is China's first lunar rover, and up till now it's been working. That's pretty impressive. They got it up there, it landed safely, and for a while anyway, it was doing its job. How can anyone call it a cheap Chinese trick?

[seabeckind]

17. Nobody says it's a trick.

It's normal.

Probably a mislabeled box. They thought it was supposed to go on the Walmart truck.

You can't fix chinese stuff. All you do is throw it away and head back to walmart. Then some minion takes it out of the landfill and sends it back to china to be melted down to make another one. It's a closed system.

[mainer]

19. Wow, having been to China and seen their airports and modern cities

it's hard to believe so many Americans are stuck in the mind-set that the Chinese are nothing but a nation of Walmart factory workers. The very first rockets were built by the Chinese -- centuries ago. But no, they're just a country of imitators who have to steal new ideas from superior Western minds.

[seabeckind]

20. Nice strawman

Nobody said "country of imitators who have to steal new ideas from superior Western minds".

What I said was that products manufactured in china according to the specifications of "american" companies fail to meet reasonable expectations for quality.

Whether that failure is a result of shoddy workmanship or the specifications is open for debate. What I am saying is that I have found that operational life of these products tends to be short and that they can usually not be repaired. And I think that is intended also.

If you like we can talk about LG or Samsung.

<on edit> As I think about it, this pretty much sums up the quality of life in the USA also, doesn't it? Seems like hafassed is the new normal.

[mainer]

25. so your crack about it going astray from the Walmart truck

and the cracks in posts above yours about shoddy Chinese products in no way cast aspersions on the Chinese? Now you're saying it's all because of faulty Western specifications?

I sure didn't read that before.

[seabeckind]

28. Didn't say that either.

Products available in the USA today have quality problems.

Walmart is the biggest purveyor of retail products (at least the small box items) and those primarily originate in china.

American companies choose to manufacture their products in china.

It doesn't matter what the cause is in these cases. The result is the same. Make of it what you will.

The "crack" about the mislabeled box was an attempt at levity by pointing out the irony of the chinese having to deal with a product of questionable quality. Something we in America deal with on a daily basis.

[friendly_iconoclast]

33. There's a lot of not-very-well-hidden racism in this thread

Believe me, I'm no fan of the Chinese government or most Chinese exporters-
but to act like Chinese people are congnetially incapable of designing advanced
spacecraft betrays ignorance of how every other early space effort went...

[mainer]

34. remember all those rockets blowing up in the early US years?

we needed Von Braun (A GERMAN!) to get us out of our blowing-stuff-up rut.

[penultimate]

62. Bashing China doesn't equate to racism though...

The Chinese government is known for stealing, buying and copying technologies. That's kind of their thing. That's not saying they cannot or do not create and innovate new ideas and inventions. In fact, they probably have more smart people than the the US and Europe combined simply because of their population size.

That being said, I don't get the criticism of China's space program. All programs started somewhere and they will eventually do more than most other space programs have or will do. How many astronauts has the ESA sent up on its own?

[Xithras]

58. Indeed. Some of the most brilliant engineers I've worked with have been Chinese nationals.

It's true that China pumps out a lot of cheap disposable crap for Walmart, but they do so because that's what WalMart wants. Nobody who has ever worked with actual Chinese engineers would question that they are, at a minimum, our intellectual equals. Hell, roughly 10% of the students in the UC system, one of the top university systems on the planet when it comes to cranking out inventors and engineers, are Chinese nationals (U.C. Berkeley actually has a campus IN China!)

If we get cheap Chinese crap in the United States, it's because companies like WalMart have decided that Americans will buy cheap crap and won't pay for things that are built properly. The Chinese themselves are more than capable of building anything they want.

Besides, it would be good to remind Americans that NASA didn't get a lunar probe right until try number THIRTEEN. Tries 1-12 either blew up during launch, missed their targets, or simply failed when they got there. Pioneer 4, which was try #5, is sometimes considered a "success", but it actually missed its intended trajectory so badly that its onboard cameras didn't even register its proximity and fire (it was supposed to pass within 10k kilometers of the surface, but actually missed by over 60,000 kilometers...it was presented as a "success" to the media to save face...one sensor was still able to get a radiation reading from the surface).

This really is rocket science. It's extreme engineering, and I applaud the Chinese for getting a working probe there in the first place. It would have been nice if it could have lasted longer, but I have no question that they'll get there.

[another_liberal]

21. You gotta love the name.

It's the "Jade Rabbit."

I hope they get it hopping again soon.

[bkanderson76]

30. Probably Should Have Purchased Some Warranty at Checkout....

[mainer]

35. Americans are always two decades behind reality

They still think of China as the land of coolies and factory workers.

Anyone who's been to Shanghai or walked through a gleaming Chinese airport or driven on their 8-lane superhighways or placed a cell-phone call from some remote mountain in China and gotten outstanding reception knows that they're years ahead of what you imagine as China.

I remember being startled when I saw an ancient-looking Chinese farmer standing in a cornfield, using an iPhone!

[seabeckind]

40. Totally irrelevant

Has nothing to do with the quality of the chinese product sitting on our store shelf.

Has nothing to do with the melamine in our dog food or the toxic substances in our drywall.

And your points above? A chinese blueray player? So what? My blueray says Sony on it and it's made in china. Who designed it? I'd suspect someone from Japan. Who came up with the technology? Sony but riding on the back of the DVD technology which came from CDs, which came from...

BTW, my 7 yo grandson uses an iPhone, tho he prefers my droid.

As far as the modernization of china? I think I would put more credit into the fact that they have lots of money and a national strategy. Of which we have neither. Lost those in the 80s due to the factors pointed out by Jesus below.

[mainer]

42. Your 7 yo grandson uses an iPhone. So?

but does your 85 year old grandfather use an iPhone? My point was that some really old farmer in China was already so conversant with technology that he's using it in a remote village. When the old folks are using it, it's in the culture. Young Chinese kids are every bit as comfortable with technology as your 7 year old -- and they probably have better cell phone coverage.

My 80+ year old relatives in the US are still struggling with their TV remotes.

[seabeckind]

48. Irrelevant to the discussion

I thought the point was the quality of chinese products on american retail shelves. It doesn't matter if some farmer is using an iPhone. My bet is that the workers chained to their station shoving chips in a blueray board don't have much time for iPhones.

What I was trying to convey by mentioning my grandson is that using a cell phone isn't rocket science anymore. I know lots of elderly people who use cell phones. I know lots who use Facebook to keep in touch with family. Hel, I'm an elderly people. My grandfather's been dead for close to 60 years.

BTW, the grandson also uses an iPad and grabs my Fire as soon as he gets a little bored. He keeps telling me I have to get an xBox but I'm resisting.

[Jesus Malverde]

37. Made in China.

Cheap shit that you buy... 95% of it was designed, quality controlled, and marketed by Americans at an American company. Your perspective is misguided..

Most of the shit built in China and exported to the United States is built under contract to American companies.

The destruction of the American middle class through trade is a self inflicted wound, brought to us by American free trade politicians and American savvy businessmen, who focus on the bottom line.

The enemy is not over there, it's right here.

[seabeckind]

39. Exactly.

So the Libyan Fable is told
That once an eagle, stricken with a dart,
Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft,
"With our own feathers, not by others' hands,
Are we now smitten."

Aeschylus

[SorellaLaBefana]

49. This is so sad

Even sadder, is the fact that we gave up on the moon decades ago and that such exploration is being left to the Chinese.

Why are not the wonderful Patriotic True-American conservatives upset about our abandonment of the moon to the RED Chinese?

Why do such people continue to de-fund science?

Oh. Right.

Because science keeps giving conservatively inconvenient answers.

Answers such as that humans, without reasonable doubt, evolved from "more primitive" animals, that the currently observed global warming is anthropogenic, that women and non-white people are just as smart as true-humans. "Humans" being, of course, only people who are white, male, heterosexual and Christian.

[seabeckind]

52. So true.

Welcome.

[penultimate]

60. That's too bad... You know, guys, not everything has to be a reason to bash China or the US

Any threads about China's space program, good news or bad news, always seem to end up with people using it to put down NASA or insulting the Chinese space program. Awesome job, people. Gives me great faith in knowing that even among those of us who are not backward conservatives, we still have petty people who can't get past irrational hatred for others or themselves.