China Plans to Build Nuclear-Powered Moon Base Within Six Years

[Hydrogen]

• Country aims to send astronauts to the moon within 10 years
• China is expanding its ambitions in space, challenging the US

China plans to build its first base on the moon by 2028, ahead of landing astronauts there in subsequent years as the country steps up its challenge to NASA’s dominance in space exploration.
The lunar base will likely be powered by nuclear energy, Caixin reported. Its basic configuration will consist of a lander, hopper, orbiter and rover, all of which would be constructed by the Chang’e 6, 7 and 8 missions.
“Our astronauts will likely be able to go to the moon within 10 years,” Wu Weiran, chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program, said in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV earlier this week. Nuclear energy can address the lunar station’s long-term, high-power energy needs, he said.

China has ramped up its ambitions in space in recent years, sending probes to the moon, building its own space station and setting its sights on Mars. The plans have put it in direct competition with the US. NASA has a rover on the Red Planet and is seeking to return astronauts to the moon this decade for the first time since the Apollo program ended in the 1970s.

Both China and the US are spending billions of dollars to not just put humans on the moon, but also to access resources that could foster life on the lunar surface or send spacecraft to Mars.

In 2019, China became the first country to land a rover on the far side of the moon, and later brought back its first lunar samples. The base is intended to be the first outpost on the moon’s South Pole, an area scientists think is the best place to find water. NASA is also targeting that part of the moon. China aims to eventually expand the base into an international research station.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-25/china-plans-to-build-nuclear-powered-moon-base-within-six-years

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Could this signal the start of a new space race between the united states and china?

Given the current state of the global economy does space exploration and efforts to make the human race multi planetary remain worthwhile goals?

The other hot topic for aerospace appears to be asteroid mining. Which is interesting as it has often been repeated that if the moon were composed of 100% pure gold, it would cost more to extract the mineral than its currently worth at market value. If there is a tipping point where it becomes financially profitable to mine asteroids. I'm not certain if the relevant technology to make the process feasible currently exists. Mining expeditions on earth typically also need large quantities of water to conduct mining. Scarcity of water in space, could further hamper any potential mineral extraction.

Could china beat Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and all of the american billionaires with space start ups to a manned moon mission? That might be an interesting topic, if the economy wasn't in such poor shape at the moment.

[franky1]

a moon nuclear power station

rockets like space X starship have a huge payload. enough to fit a submarine nuclear plant inside it. and thats exactly what is being planned..

dont imagine large nuclear plants that power earth cities. imagine submarine nuclear power engines being sent to the moon. as a "plug-n-play" system to power a engineering teams sleeping/working quarters

again imagine it like the capacity of a submarine which can service a crew of upto 100 "colonist" engineers per sub-power plant


asteroid mining:

one space X starship has a payload of ~100 tonnes

remember just 1 tonne is: 35274ounces ($56,438,400 of gold per tonne)
meaning it "could" carry $5.6billion of refined gold

if it costs $100m for a return trip to and from moon/asteroid that means it need to collect 2.3 tonnes of gold to break even

star ship can carry about 100 tonnes

so im sure the mining cost is not going to be 50x the transport cost

.
earth mining is much more expensive due to the fact that gold is not centered in a small lump. it has been due to the planet having land air and water. distributed an ancient asteroid craters content of gold over thousands of miles. meaning its like 1000x les gold per soil content on earth, than in a asteroid lump in space

EG: earth stats is an acceptable   soil 1:1,000,000 ratio
asteroid content of 1,1000 is acceptable

..
as for the master plan

its this:
destroy/break up and asteroid and send it on a safe speed trajectory towards the moon. due to no gravity the thrust and fuel burn of moving it to the moon is negligable.

once on the moon its refined to take the unwanted material away and consolidate the rare minerals into payloads.
then send that payload of rare mineral to earth

[hatshepsut93]

People, governments, organizations plan things all the time, doesn't mean all of those plans will materialize. When China or anyone really would start actually building a moon base, that would be significant news. Until that happens, it's pointless to discuss the implications of moon bases, potential new space race and so on.

And I'm skeptical about any big moon bases in this decade, the cost/benefit of such endeavor seems to be rather poor. Better focus on improving the rocket technology first.

[franky1]

dont imagine a moon base as some bio-dome suburb

imagine it as launching a submarine with crew cabins and workspaces inside where by instead of a propeller at the back.. its a rocket.

where they live and work in a "space submarine" concept

[Lida93]

Every decision has implications and consequences that follows and going by the way the earth has been badly polluted through the activities of man it's then obvious that the moon based idea by either China or any other authority would only on the long run not be so advantageous in the way they might display it.

Imagine a situation where we have a polluted moon and a polluted earth how else could the universe and it's inhabitants survive ? I wonder

[franky1]

Imagine a situation where we have a polluted moon and a polluted earth how else could the universe and it's inhabitants survive ? I wonder

moons gravity is super low
it requires less energy to propel garbage into space than to drive it to a crater 20km away(EG landfill) to be "out of sight out of mind"

also moon activities would do more recycling.

and outside the "submarine" base there is no atmosphere to lock in carbon so it too would escape into space more freely.

so moon living wil see less waste.. just over a few decades a tail of waste heading towards the sun

[usekevin]

Always China will look into future base technology or updates to the new way of technology. China had occupied almost his boundary sharing countries,which includes Tibet,India.So they are moving from earth to moon.Their target was already with the Mars,but some research about the mass was I build the the huge volcano in the Marks.So I had personal think of skip due to huge heating after December 2022.

[justdimin]

one space X starship has a payload of ~100 tonnes

remember just 1 tonne is: 35274ounces ($56,438,400 of gold per tonne)
meaning it "could" carry $5.6billion of refined gold

if it costs $100m for a return trip to and from moon/asteroid that means it need to collect 2.3 tonnes of gold to break even

star ship can carry about 100 tonnes

so im sure the mining cost is not going to be 50x the transport cost

I understand the math, and I understand the want for something like that to become reality and I support the idea and whichever nation it is, if one eventually does it, then more wealth will come to earth so I am fine with the idea.

But, I would like to also help people realize that we had covid and failed to distribute masks to everyone and even convince everyone. While we are incapable of doing something as easy as this, that doesn't mean it is going to be that easy to build a whole lunar space base, imagine how harder that is. So, my idea is that humanity is not grown as much as we can organize in a way it could be growing enough for a lunar space station.