"You guys have der money, we have the brains." LOL

I'm sure the good folks at Pfizer and Moderna would disagree with this sentiment.

Yea, no other country or group of countries has anything like the Hubble Telescope. Launched 30 years ago! Still more advanced than the rest of the world has.

It's great living in a country that won't spend the money to maintain Arecibo.

The VLA is in the USA, and has more resolution. Aercibo was state of the art 50 years ago, but science has moved on, and no one scientist wants to live in Puerto Rico now.

It was operated by the NSF. They have an 8.3 billion dollar budget in 2020.

I would imagine the US spends more on space research than the rest of the world combined. If not, it will be damn close.

My intentions when starting this thread were the same as showing good sportsmanship to the other team. Any progress China makes will surely lead to the US stepping up it's game.
I think it would be great to see other nations and us on the moon.

I share your view. The return on investment is well worth it.

I understand and agree. Some chose to dump on the US efforts.

I'm told that Arecibo had abilities that are unmatched anywhere else in the world - not even the bigly one in ... China.


The comment about NASA's budget is likely mis-placed as $$ for Arecibo would likely be a line-item; not to mention the fact that NASA has LOTS of different sciences and science education it needs to fund.

Seriously though - do you think the users lived there?

Thirty years ago most of the users of Palomar and the Kitt Peak scopes were warm and happy in Cambridge, Ann Arbor, Pasadena and probably the rest of the world. You don't have to be there anymore. Heck, the astrograph Tombaugh used to discover Pluto 90 years ago could have been, had they had digital technology, run by a tech and ol' Clyde sitting somewhere warmer than a mountain in Flagstaff to do the analysis.

And w.r.t. radio scopes, the VLA is just a part of the VLBA - resulting in a radio telescope/interferometer equivalent in diameter to the earth. We have one of those dishes in Los Alamos down towards Bandolier Nat'l Monument and the Rio Grande. Because it's "behind the fence" we tell visitors it's for communication with the aliens...

The VLBA was used to make the "picture" of the black hole a few months ago.

I see your location tag. Please share more. :D

Really? I'm sure they've seen that somewhere around 40% of Americans won't take their vaccines.

As you well know, I was referring to the American companies that are on the verge of bringing a vaccine to market at an unprecedented pace. An achievement that one could reasonably put in the same bucket as that outlined in the original post, the one to which you replies with your lament.

Since you seem to prefer the pathway of your recent posts, by all means...

SmileWavy

China can up its game with all of the copied, Merican designed space craft and launch vehicles all they want. They are good at copying everything we design and produce. Now build quality will be in question, cheaping out on parts for space suits, vehicles etc. will probably leave the astronaughts dead. All of our vehicles were carefully designed, with tight tolerances, and all critical issues have been addressed. Yeup some mistakes were made, but we learned from our mistakes, addressed em' and corrected em. Cheaping out wont fly in space. Merica!

To the Van Ellen belt and beyond!

<iframe src="https://www.vibby.com/embed/vib?vib=71kW4F-HK" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" seamless="yes" style="overflow: hidden; width: 100%; max-width: 770px; height: 433px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
_

So you presume the Chinese aren't capable of learning, and designing or producing things with tight tolerances? That that kind of work is beyond their capabilities?

So all those Nuclear reactors they built and improved
the new ones they designed
Their massive dam
the fusion reactor they managed to fire up not to long ago.
their ICBM's and nuclear warheads
The lunar lander they somehow managed to get there , and land on the moon
Fighter jets

You think all of that was done on the cheap? with ill fitting parts?
If that were true they would have had nuclear accidents long ago.

It seems very odd that you in one paragraph go from chest thumping over old glory (Moon landings and shuttle), and at the same time admit own mistakes (apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia) and just say "well we learned" in a smug way that makes it sound like nobody else could possibly ever learn from those things the way the us did.

That they sell cheap crap via AliExpress doesn't mean they can't produce quality engineering when they need it.

They have 1.4 billion people, that's close to a billion more Chinese then Americans.
Even if , out of all their engineering graduates.. they have just 10% capable of High Quality Engineering.. They'll still beat the US in output and cover their needs for Space projects.

And have you ever known Asians to have a bad reputation when it comes to maths?
nope.

Considering the US has had 15 people die in spaceflight , Rooskies had 4

The Chinese sent 11 up, 11 came down, if you want to talk about a good safety record.. they have it covered.
So far they have managed not to kill anybody.. Which isn't bad at all.

Maybe not the highest volume.. but you can't fault em for their safety record at this point.SmileWavy


Even if for some reason their engineers at graduation had a lower percentage of High Output, High Quality.. compared to the US engineers at graduation
They more then cover that in absolute numbers cause there's a billion more of them to begin with, so they have so much more engineering students to pick from.

Their top 1% is bigger then the US or European top 1%....combined.

That massive dam is buckling in several places. After just a few short years.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/07/frightening-china-admits-three-gorges-dam-moved-ignores-numerous-prior-reports-says-just-happened-last-weekend/

It will be a massive flood when it goes.

Dude.

Soviet Union landed multiple probes on Venus. And took colour pictures. If you know the environment on surface of Venus, you will understand.

ESA probe landed on Titan, a moon of Saturn. And took pictures.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1607523916.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1607524164.jpg