The level of denial by many here of China's accomplishments here is just laughable. They're only the second country to ever land a working rover on Mars. They've right now got astronauts on their brand new space station which is being assembled in orbit via 12 launches on 3 different types of homegrown rockets over the course of 18 months.
If not for SpaceX NASA would right now have no way to even send its astronauts to ISS and the US military would be having trouble putting payloads in orbit with ULA dependent on the Russian RD-180 until they can get BE-4 working (see: Starliner/NSSL mess). Let's not even talk about SLS.
China's space program has leapfrogged into second place globally and would be pulling into first if not for the (unexpected just a handful of years ago) US ability to lean on Falcon 9/Heavy and Crew/Cargo Dragon and the hoped-for success of Starship.
The idea China is simply "copying" US accomplishments is absurd and willful blindness. We are lucky to still be barely ahead.
Chine has nailed execution at the highest level, no doubt.
But it is not yet an innovation machine. They are consistently a step behind in technological capabilities. This is not just in space technologies, it is hard to find areas where China invented and refined something truly innovative first.
Happy to be convinced otherwise with counter examples.
This thread is probably off topic and i don't share the GP view that people here were overly in denial, I see people discussing the mission, but I'll make a point anyway.
Mobile payment processing. TikTok. Governance. Chinese cuisine. Gunpowder.
Which were then copied elsewhere.
It's fair enough in some areas to say China copied, and stole tech (basic manufacturing initially, advanced fighter planes), but as a general characteristic to say "all China does is imitate not innovate", i think that's: a tired old inaccurate trope, blinds you to see achievements, prevents you from improving but comforting you and making you feel better about you own increasingly relatively less impressive achievements as a result.
It's not too much of a problem, but in general, is good for everyone to be clear eyed about what's actually going on: good if you want up appreciate and respect China, good if you want to compete or battle with China.
I find this trope, (understandable as it is because people recieve a biased view via media, and are incentivized to believe that because China's rise looks scary), part of the Western canon of comfort narratives that really shoot the West in the foot. When China was rapidly growing, they didn't look at the West and say, "oh they're so inferior, our culture is way more advanced than them," they hungrily absorbed everything that works to learn and grow. I think it's time the West shows a bit of humility and starts learning from China in areas where that works. It's not every area but the two cultures certainly can learn from each other in many ways.
People don't seem to appreciate the innovation involved in lowering the cost of manufacture.
Is there nothing innovative about building out a nationwide network of bullet trains? Have you seen the machines they build bridges with? They ain't buying them from Germany.
Let's see how that works out. Last I've read in a timeframe from some weeks ago is that they finally start building a test track somewhere. I'm torn. Sure it would be a cool thing to have. They'd outdo all the hyped hyperloops. OTOH they maybe come to the same conclusions as...errr...others before, that it makes no sense economically, especially if you already have a large HSR network capable of operating at +300kph. With REBCO or not. I mean, they tested that Transrapid thing in Shanghai. While 'cool', that wasn't expanded. Remains to be seen if that changes.
I've got some hope - REBCO is so much cheaper than any other superconducting material, and China really needs even more trains to offset from air traffic.
But does it scale? In the volume needed to equip the trains and tracks with it? Isn't it brittle? Doesn't it need so called rare earths, which are already in much demand for all sorts of electrification in all sectors due to decarbonization?
It does matter. If you are always a step behind, can you really be the leader?
it also raises the point of why is innovation lacking in China? Is it because of a culture of less openness and information sharing, or is it just a matter of time (i.e. they were catching up, now they'll start leading)
I don’t consider innovation to be lacking in China. This is just a point and distinction that you fixate on. I see innovation and consolidation of innovations abroad.
I think its important to recognize that a well functioning China doesn’t actually have to consider the egos of other economic unions. And their entire diplomatic relations are just placating the egos of the United States with continual reassurances that China doesn't have an expansionist policy (aside from already unresolved borders) despite its growing GDP, influence and strength making the US feel threatened. Have skepticism about that, but also recognize that it doesnt matter. China has 4x the population and should have 4x the GDP no matter how that makes another country feel. This likely means greater influence worldwide, just as the entire last millennium has played out for every other empire, and it likely means our expectations and rights will have to adapt to theirs, no matter how that makes you feel.
Reaching that area means “hey, maybe lets do space exploration, hey single party system approve all necessary funding with no deliberation, ok thanks, done.” and they were forward thinking enough to do it by the 100th anniversary day.
To answer your actual question, I see a lot of innovation in Shenzhen and Guangzhou. I see a lot of inefficiencies too. Too heavily reliant on relationships, basically nonexistent legal remedies for [intellectual] property protection, alongside a fairly omnipotent state that can roll out technology pretty quickly if the latent somewhat-communist ideals allow for that level of spending.
Given that the "Modern (1912-present)" section has just 7 inventions, and relatively minor I think that this link actually backs up my case of lack of innovation coming from modern China.
IIRC you can get into the tens of microseconds with an x86 box running a heavy linux graphic desktop with real time patches. Single digits with core pinning on a light headless system.
Bear in mind that real time performance and throughput are perpetually at odds with each other. Long story short, scheduling things such that everything happens in a tight time window means you need to leave gaps in the timeline.
This tradeoff is variable so you can loosen requirements for running something like a rover where there isn't really all that much need for tight realtime control, it's not trying to achieve micron positioning as it drives around. That means you can use a more efficient CPU and lower your idle current which is probably the real constraint here.
Looks like Kylin OS uses the Linux kernel. While not impossible to use in a real-time application (SpaceX Falcon 9 uses it) there's definitely work involved in stripping it down enough to work as an RTOS. NASA Perseverance uses VxWorks instead, which was designed from the beginning as an RTOS. VxWorks is also proprietary and looks like it's US export restricted.
8 ms isn't hard to hit. 8 ms with 100% reliability is.
8ms is incredibly slow for realtime systems. A difficult target for a control system would be three orders of magnitude lower than that on a full size OS like linux.
VxWorks is being partly phased out too, last I heard wind river was pushing people towards their own linux based offering. Speaking from experience it's absolutely miserable to develop on because of the licensing model and reliance on the Eclipse IDE. If you need a low level system FreeRTOS/CMSIS is a far better option and if you want linux compatibility (frequently just the convenience of ssh and rsync) just use real time linux.
I suppose what is slow directly depends on the hardware. On a 10 MHz CPU, 8 ms = 80k clocks, which is not necessarily easy to hit consistently, because of critical sections and scheduling overhead. On a 2 GHz CPU, 8 ms can as well be the normal slice of the scheduler.
I suppose the CPU on this machine may be severely underclocked because of the power requirements.
Less than 1us is relatively straightforward on an embedded system.
My application was simulcast for a software defined radio. It was running on a TMS320 DSP (192MHz) with DSP/BIOS as the operating system. Timing was driven by a GPS 1PPS pulse connected to an interrupt pin. The absolute response time was around 100ns and repeatability was of the order of 10 nanoseconds (dominated by the drift between the 1PPS and the processor's clock).
Seriously depends on what you do. Iq you're doing really low-level stuff, you could probably get in the microsecond range quite easily (for trivial stuff). But 8 milliseconds doesn't sound that impressive to me.
It's only impressive in the sense that they have to use really shitty computers to achieve that number. Playing around with Rust on a reasonably powerful x86 box, you'll have no problem writing programs with a response time in microseconds, but they aren't using the same computers you and I do (or Rust for that matter). Word on the street is that most space tech is based on PowerPC, since you can buy decently powerful radiation-hardened RISC chips without breaking the bank (only $300,000 or so).
This commenter is correct. Things like radiation tolerance and power draw are much bigger concerns. I've seen a number of projects using RT systems entirely because they were based on earlier systems that were RT and therefore the engineers just used the same kernel despite having no RT requirements.
PowerPC is popular because there are a couple companies out there that are taking these parts and running them through radiation beams to certify them for spaceflight (essentially profiling their failure modes so devs can account for them). ARM isn't popular yet as they tend to make it difficult to license designs for lower volume silicon but RISC-V in particular is gaining traction here very rapidly.
If based on anything described here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kylin_(operating_system) I'm unimpressed, the same way I'm unimpressed by Space-X using Linux. OTOH, who really cares if it flies, works, whatever without crashing?
If my impression is correct, this is based on Linux kernel.
Since other comments appearing not mentioning that, just add here in case someone mistaken it with a custom embedded OS. (Although I know little about embedded OS either).
In some "hard real time" systems failure to meet the deadline is treated as system failure. Vs "soft real time" where its a transient error. So the goal is bounded response time/latency/jitter at the 100th percentile.
Games are real time in the sense that their response window is 1/[desired frame rate] of-a-second. As far as hard realtime systems go, they're some of the slowest.
Games are only firm real-time, but the developers deserve respect for the response time. 1000/125 = respond in 8ms. Many games run at 144FPS (monitor resolution), or every 7ms.
Technically few games have single frame response times. The default UE4 configuration is 4 frames of latency. With tuning it can be brought down to 1 frame of latency. Unity, is uh, Unity.
Users interesting in this story may also be interested in this great 55 minute documentary covering the first few years of NASA's Curiosity rover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaUhLXolGaI (the active rover before NASA's more recent Perseverance landing).
Can anyone explain the sound in the clip? So Mars atmosphere is different, making sound travel different? But the weird echo and metallic muffle, what explains that - why would the machine be particular noisy?
It should indeed sound distant and muffled with the composition and temperature of Mar's atmosphere. Saw a neat pseudo-documentary on this not too long ago: https://youtu.be/OeYnV9zp7Dk?t=551
How did China know how to make their rover without sending a bunch of probes onto Mars? Did NASA share its data and info with China so that they knew what specs to make the solar panels, etc?
CNSA did acknowledge that they benefited from prior explorations to mars done by everyone, including NASA, soviet union, ESA and more. They are able to find general scientific data on mars, such as atmospheric density, composition, potential weather events, general topography in the public domain (I mean, wikiepdia has a lot of these information). For these, they should and are appreciating scientists going before them are sharing these information in the public domain. But I am sure NASA and everyone else did not release all super detailed data, such as detailed topology maps. And from public available info, they also know about general designs of NASA's landers and rovers, and the troubles NASA has faced operating these crafts on mars. If they learn from NASA's experiences, they can avoid a huge amount of unknowns and negative encounters. These are significant assistance when you are engineering systems. The pioneer is always way more difficult. So of course respect is paid and hats off to NASA and other pioneers.
But knowing these are not enough for you to build and operate a fully successful mission. Even if you had the entire CAD file of a NASA lander and rover, you don't know why they are designed that way, you will not operate, use and troubleshoot issues correctly. You need to build the system from ground up, so the people on your teams have full understanding of every single "why" and "how". Only then will you have full control and ensure the mission is success.
I am sure you had experience taking ownership to a software project written by others. You always have go to the original designer to ask "why" and "how". The knowledge transfer often last months and countless meetings. If you don't fully understand, you can't fix issues or build new features. Most people would rather build their own then to fix something they don't fully understand.
For CNSA, they can access public available data. Then they have to simulate, wind tunnel tests, how to land, what shape of lander they need, how to balance and control the lander etc. They need to build up their understanding of the entire system. They actually has been improving their technology and understanding of atmospheric and controlled powered landing from earth and moon missions. One of things they did differently is adding a flap to the lander to stabilize it in flight, they said it was to increase the lander's robustness when encountering more extreme weather.
For solar panels, knowing the distance to the sun, the atmospheric density, pressure, composition, force of gravity on mars, you can estimate the theoretical max of the solar energy available per unit of area. Then you could say assume only 30% is available due to weather. I am sure they have more advanced ways to estimate. Interesting fact about the rover, it has a solar heat capture and retention system. And they use the heat for thermo-control at night instead of electricity captured from solar panels, saving electricity use.
For where to land, topology and maps of mars is in public domain. You can find a general region where to land but these data are not detailed enough to actually land. And mars surface could have changed since these were captured. So tianwen-1 contains a orbiter and the lander. The orbiter has instruments such has high resolution imaging. They arrived mars orbit in February, and the 3 months since the orbiter was collecting data on mars. From these data they finalized their landing plans.
This is China's first spacecraft to ever travel this far. They also don't have communication network between mars and earth. So Tianwen-1's orbiter is also a communication satellite.
The impressive thing is the engineering side, how they engineered the system that each component all worked correctly in one go. The rocket: the rocket required to launch tianwen-1 (weighs 5 tons) to mars orbit was only tested successfully in dec 2019. China also doesn't have earth mars communication satellites and fully operational deep space communication system before this mission. This the first time all these system are tested live. To fly a spacecraft to mars for the first time, have it being captured by mars, and orbit mars correctly. Take data on mars. Release the lander. The lander going through atmosphere, releasing parachute at super sonic speeds, the lander detaches from parachute and uses a rocket engine to fly. At height of 100m, optical imaging and laser maps out the ground and autonomously navigate the craft to soft land on flat ground. Orbiter forms communication link between mars rover and earth. Mars rover collects sun light, drives, survives the elements of mars (so far).
Overall, they are standing on the shoulders of people who went before them. One shouldn't look down on their success, nor should they over-hype their success.
CNSA said Zhurong landed 3km away from their designed coordinate. For the first 42 mars days, zhurong traveled 236m.
That's why the rover landing happened 3 months after the probe reached Mars orbit. They spent that time to do all the reconnaissance work to prepare the landing.
Also this is the reason this mission is considered to be a great success, it shows their ability to landing on a totally unknown planet.
Once you've got that down pat, it's not that different to land one on Mars, especially since the Chinese rover was small enough not to require the elaborate skyhook approach.
Also, NASA is legally prohibited from cooperating with China on anything space-related.
Of course it’s different. You need to know how to make solar panels so that it will work on Mars. It’s different than those you would need for the moon. It would have to work through the dust storms.
The equipment would need to be rated differently. How the signal is sent from the rover to the orbiter would be different, etc. There’s a lot of knowledge that you would need to build up about Mars and having probes on Mars and the logistics of sending data to and from Earth via orbiter that you would need before jumping all the way to sending a large expensive rover to Mars.
That’s interesting about NASA not being allowed to share data. I really wonder how China was able to leap to sending a rover without lots of investment in understanding everything else about it.
Many of the design outputs of the NASA rover programs are public domain. For example, the peak solar panel rating of the MER (Opportunity and Spirit) is published, the size of the panels are known (or can easily by estimated), the power needed to drive the rovers around is published, the weight of the rover is published, the size of wheels can be easily estimated (or is published).
The logistics of sending data back can be reasonably considered to be a challenge that could be solved on the first try. The first space probe that NASA managed to actually get to Mars (Mariner) worked. The first landers that NASA managed to get to Mars (Viking) worked.
The proportion of Chinese stem graduates who aren’t simply copying their way around and are gifted enough to run these programs is likely about the same as the proportion anywhere else. Chinese people are no more or less intelligent than anyone else.
In my country, and I guess otherd in western Europe, we often fail to appreciate the sheer power of those "other" countries such as Russia or China. Many are still stuck in the colonialist vision of things where Europe and US were vastly superior. This is not true anymore. And as you point out, intelligence is uniformly distributed.
Days when Russia could send problems to Mars are long over, so with regards to Russia reality ironically corrected itself to match the US expectations.
Well, I must admit picking Russia was a bit far fetched :-) However, I have the feeling Russia is still a strong player on the geopolitical level (see Syria, Ukraine -- although I'm sure civilian casualties say otherwise).
Not supporting OPs assertion, but. Even with same proportion they will have huge advantage in absolute nos. Also society and government are lot different, changing the way and proportion of people persevere for a particular career option.
let's put ideology aside. It's quite interesting to watch different societies, governance, cultures evolving, cooperating,competing among each other. Eastern world is more likely have low entropy societies while Western have high entropy societies.
Both have strength and weakness. Low entropy societies are more efficient, extremely good at building physical things. But tend to have less varieties. High societies are more chaotic, but also more innovative, more productive in spiritual domain. Not only in technologies but also arts ,etc.
It would be ideal that both societies can cooperate and share the benefits leveraging advantages of both worlds. But in reality it's quite complex and not going to a good direction in short term
This seems like a "just so" statement. Fifty years ago people would say that Western societies are more efficient and better at building physical things.
So I don't really see it. I don't think Western societies are necessarily always going to be better at technology and I think you really, really underestimate the chaos and varieties of many non-Western societies. In many ways the West is quite low-entropy.
On HN it seems like there is a huge anti-US/sinophile presence which seeks to elevate any achievement, no matter how minor or retread, as if it were some major accomplishment done in spite of insurmountable purposeful opposition by the evil colonial empire building westerners. When even the slightest accomplishment is so outlandishly propagandized it becomes hard to view actual ones in their proper light. Especially when it’s unclear whether they’re “standing on shoulders” or simply trying to pass the shoulders off as their own.
Don't make the mistake thinking that this happened without "lots of investment". The Chinese space program is massive and has been running for decades.
Does the Martian atmosphere filter out certain frequencies of light? And how does it compare against the frequencies that their rover solar panel is sensitive to? Or is their atmosphere thin enough such that UV light gets through? Can they make use of that?
Lots of questions just about their solar panels and what would be the most effective chemicals to make their solar panels out of to maximize their output.
They have no probes previously on the surface of Mars. How would they know how to make their solar panels to be the most efficient without data? Did they just guess? Did NASA share that information? Or is that secret information that NASA kept quiet and Chinese spies stole that information?
All three possibilities could have occurred but I really doubt that China would just guess and then spend billions of dollars to send a probe without knowing if it would work.
Composition of the atmosphere and knowing what frequencies of light make it all the way to the ground is different. There’s so much dust in the air that it might reflect different frequencies depending on where you are. That’s why having a cheaper probe on the ground that measures this makes it a better chance of getting it right for more expensive probes. But they don’t have those initial probes.
My point is China has no probes on Mars unless they have secret ones. They can GUESS what would be best optional frequencies to tune their solar panels for but my point is that they are spending billions of dollars. Do they really want to rely on data they didn’t retrieve themselves? That seems like an odd thing to take a risk on. Better to either work together with nasa since they have the expertise. Hence I’m curious what the relationship is between China and nasa for this project and if it was an open one or if they got the data some other way.
Of course it's different, but you're still sending a probe to a celestial body, so things like building the rocket, designing radiation-hardened hardware, space communications, launching on a desired trajectory, automated landing with retro-propulsion etc are all similar and needed for both. Basically, if you're going to practice the Moon is the place to do it, and that's why the US, Soviet, Chinese and now Indian space programs are all following the same basic game plan.
> How did China know how to make their rover without sending a bunch of probes onto Mars?
Why would they need probes? The Mars atmospheric composition isn't exactly classified information, they know it's a solid surface. The rest is just math and some very complex engineering.
I'm curious about the use of a wireless camera to photograph the lander and the rover. It seems like extra weight and complexity for purely PR reasons.
Yes, you need to inspect each vehicle, but the rover can clearly examine the lander and move around it, while the lander needs only one camera, possibly an existing descent one, to inspect the rover.
This is a democratic model you are assuming, I don't think CCP needs the Chinese people to "support" anything they do, it really just boils down to whether the CCP leaders support it.
Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. Those lead to highly repetitive discussion, which is tedious and usually turns nasty — therefore not what we want here.
Possibly a technology test? I don't think it's any more or less silly than a helicopter that also doesn't actually do any science other than testing out the concept for future missions.
That’s pretty close to the definition of science… form a hypothesis and test it then report your results. Not every test has to be microbiological or geological in origin to be considered “science”. They’re also getting to test the resiliency of consumer grade computers and electronics in the Martian atmosphere and probably many many other experimental ideas that aren’t public knowledge.
It may be scientifically worthless, but the public pays for these missions and the public likes pretty pictures. JunoCam on NASA's Jupiter orbiter, Juno, was added in order to give the public pretty pictures of Jupiter.[1] I personally think that's really cool.
Something could go wrong with any of those and cameras can be pretty light these days since we put them in doorbells, so I doubt they're sweating it when there are multiple potential benefits to having it there. :)
Curiosity weighed almost 2000 lbs, so it's not like rovers on Mars are afraid to weigh anything which is not to say they don't run the numbers.
These missions usually have scientific AND engineering objectives. Having a spare camera that the hover put anywhere may not be very valuable scientifically, but it validates the engineering of all communication, power and mechanical systems involved. That will allow more advanced scientific objectives in the future.
Space exploration is a prestige game among world powers since the very beginning. China needs good PR pictures to show they can do just as well as NASA. If we are lucky they will try to one up each other for decades to come.
I would be very interested in seeing any technical info on exactly what solar cells it uses, since the top-quality triple junction 30%+ efficient GaAS cell manufacturers (space qualified) are not based in east asia anywhere, but in the USA. Spectrolab is a subsidiary of Boeing last I checked.
One big factor behind the difference of coverage the fact the Chinese are really restrictive with releasing footage: maybe you noticed in the article that the landing happened May 14 but the footage showed up just now.
So it's much less interesting for eg CNN to plan a big feature for the touch down if they can only count of stock footage.
Also note that when the rover _did_ touchdown there was news about it. Same when it was launched. But the slow release of footage and updates makes it harder to tell compelling stories. Stories happen when things are released, such as now.
That may be a big part of it, but also it takes a long time to get large files from Mars to Earth. It seems at least plausible that the videos are released now because it took that long to send, or was queued up at a lower priority than other lower-bandwidth data.
And pretty easy for US monitoring of launches to determine if no launch corresponded to this and tell the world it was fake. If was a fake, it would require a fair number of people outside the PRC to remain silent.
I am surprised that there is even as much coverage as there is. We are still getting basically the same footage of big deserts full of broken rock from Mars that we were in the 1970s, it is just in higher resolution now. There is not much reason for a person to get particularly excited about yet another Mars rover unless that person is interested in some pretty technical stuff. And with a Chinese rover, US audiences do not even get a nationalist thrill from news about it. Basically, unless you are into science, the reality of Mars is kind of boring. It is like Antarctica - there can be a lot of drama in getting there and surviving there and traveling around its rough conditions, but actual footage from there is almost entirely just very similar-looking vast white plains.
They reported it because it’s noteworthy but do you really think it’s a huge accomplishment for the US and deserves propaganda-level hype on all major news networks for an event that happened on may 16?
Instead you get incredibly hostile and defensive. It’s a great accomplishment for the Chinese but seriously man check your biased worldview at the door.
Do you get just as upset when China doesn’t report on the US gymnastics superiority in the olympics and instead chooses to focus coverage on the Chinese prowess in weightligting, table tennis, and diving?
To be fair, there's definitely plenty of coverage of both rovers. These and all science stories are particularly easy to cover [read: labor-cheap] since everything is spoon-fed on the account of not being able to get boots on the ground.
But what we can't do generate interest. There's only so much shoveling you can do before people not only lose interest, but get repulsed by the attempt.
Well, since they're competitors in this space, and it's not exactly a novel experience to drive a rover on Mars, they'd probably end up only using it to stir the pot. I guess be thankful they're not doing that?
If you're NBC and you're out to make money from advertisement...would you get more views showing spotlights of athletes from random countries...or spotlight of athletes from the US?
I guarantee you China isn't doing a spotlight on US athletes. Hell, there are some athletes they are taking away the spotlight.
>If you're NBC and you're out to make money from advertisement...would you get more views showing spotlights of athletes from random countries...or spotlight of athletes from the US?
If it had a mature audience, and not provincial chauvinists that only know/care for their "heroes" in a sports event, then they'd make money "showing spotlights of athletes from random countries" too, like it happens all over the globe.
>I guarantee you China isn't doing a spotlight on US athletes
Don't know about China, but I've seen the Olympic games TV coverage over the years from several countries in Europe, Asia, and the US too, and , and only the US cancels out the rest of the world in their coverage. Others get the full picture, enjoy profiles and full coverage of events involving "not their own" athletes, and so on.
If China does the same, that's their loss, but it's not some standard the US is OK for following...
I think its normal for a countries population to focus mostly on their own team(s) in international competition. Even for the world cup, that's the what it is (mostly).
I don't think its 'provincial' to want your own team to win.
LOL. I get that bashing the US is popular on this site, but this comment is really detached from reality. The US landed its own rover on Mars not that long ago, and they're not even covering it in the domestic press. Why would anyone expect them to cover another country's rover if they wont cover their own?
It means that the US had a responsibility to prevent anyone else from landing on Mars, and has failed in that. Should have used NORAD to intercept the Chinese rocket while it goes up, I suppose? That's what you get for sleeping on the job.
How much coverage of US missions made it into Chinese media outlets? Significantly less than the coverage of US missions in US media outlets. Why is that? Chinese propaganda.
For the same reasons, the coverage of Chinese missions will be downplayed in US media.
You can't downplay US missions and then ask why the US downplays yours. You already know why. Because of the propaganda war.
China's population is a huge advantage right now, China has figured out how to create a mostly participatory economy so they have 10x the number of brains engaged vs. the US.
Each US citizen must be 10x more productive just to tie. If the US gov were smart, we would make it significantly easier for those with skills to immigrate, but unfortunately we seem to be set on doing the opposite.
On top of that, China is making smart educational choices like making basic comp-sci required. The US educational system is using decades old curriculum or just cancelling classes altogether.
Demographic collapse, irresponsible extractive industry, and in fact many citizens are excluded from the most dynamic parts of the country by the Hukou system.
China is a really interesting place that has had an incredible meteoric rise, but there are problems.
Extractive industries and the Hukou system are a huge issue, but they can be fixed.
The Demographic collapse is wildly overstated. China has a workforce surplus and will have one for a long time, so there is no medium-term demographic issue. Instead, underproductive rural farmers will be proletarianized and turned into workers engaged in the economy.
This is a transition that was planned a really, really long time ago. The reason for the One Child policy being continued past the food insecurity times is moreso because there were too many farmers. And even today China has many more farmers than needed.
That's a narrative that most democratic countries want to be true, but that does not necessarily make it true.
A strict autocratic government is quicker at making decisions and may actually be ideal assuming it optimizes for the long-term best interest of the country and does not become corrupt. Only time will tell if the CCP is able to do this.
There was another talk (from NDT too IIRC) I recall seeing that compared the amount of academic papers China puts out. It's a poor metric & there is more low-quality submissions coming out of China, but overall they were set to overtake the US. Expect university prestige to start migrating east to top Chinese universities (assuming they become more friendly for immigration).
Samuel Slater ("Father of the American Industrial Revolution") is known in the UK as "Slater the Traitor". He stole the textile machinery designs from UK as an apprentice, then migrated to the US and build his own mills. British law banned exporting textile mill designs.
China will surpass the USA in raw GDP by mere virtue of its population size. All they have to do is get to something like 1/3 US GDP per capita and they'll easily win in absolute terms.
This is only a bad thing if China continues to become more authoritarian and starts getting truly belligerent.
What people? Plenty of people are concerned with what they're doing. US government is too inept to do anything or they're willingly cooperating with them.
Copying is one thing. State-sponsored wholesale transfer of trade theft is another. Now, I don't doubt for one second that the US/CIA has not done anything shady like that in the past but I do not believe it has ever been on the scale of effort that China has undertaken. And I say to my own country's detriment - more power to them. While the US fumbles with domestic politics, social justice endeavors, and enriching other countries, China has risen to take its place by taking the opposite stance and focusing all its energy on making itself the foremost global economic giant.
That movie turned out an huge disappointment for me; that moon chase could have been the base to develop an interesting subplot (if not a much better main plot), but no, it was just a self contained albeit technically well made, action scene that could give nothing to a terrible movie.
That sounds great. To me its no different than having a development goal to coincide with a trade show or any other festival. I would be open to celebrating it, its not like the CCP is going away just because it doesn't match the ideology I was raised with, or that I'm predominantly exposed to a small number of things I disagree with and little of the majority of other things it does which are completely benign or favorable. Sounds like it will be an awesome party.
So? Viking I entered Mars orbit in July 1976 for the bicentennial. Of course a country spending literally billions is going to time it well with local goals if it makes sense.
IMO, if anything you get bonus points for achieving goals like this on a a timetable you set, being an additional constraint.
Wow, I am not sure are you trying to belittle the engineers and scientists achievement, or deliberately make sure people emphasize CCP's role in this event?
I don't get it, if you don't pay attention to CCP, it's very appropriate to focus on the contribution of the people involved.
The CCP propaganda also emphasize the sacrifice and ingenuity of the engineers and scientists.
Somehow a rando guy online insists to call out CCP. Are you sure people actually likes CCP because of this? I mean, they hate CCP because of CCP's wrong doings, not because CCP is not interested in space exploration, right?
If not for SpaceX NASA would right now have no way to even send its astronauts to ISS and the US military would be having trouble putting payloads in orbit with ULA dependent on the Russian RD-180 until they can get BE-4 working (see: Starliner/NSSL mess). Let's not even talk about SLS.
China's space program has leapfrogged into second place globally and would be pulling into first if not for the (unexpected just a handful of years ago) US ability to lean on Falcon 9/Heavy and Crew/Cargo Dragon and the hoped-for success of Starship.
The idea China is simply "copying" US accomplishments is absurd and willful blindness. We are lucky to still be barely ahead.