China releases videos of its Zhurong Mars rover
bbc.com
bbc.com
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.
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.
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.
TikTok: Check out Musical.ly screenshots which is the US app the was bought by ByteDance, all the foundation was already there https://www.google.com/search?q=musically+screenshot
Are these really the best examples?
By the way, Toutiao was a thing way before ByteDance acquiring Musical.ly.
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.
They famously forgot didn't implement the signalling protocol which caused the 2011 Wenzhou high speed train head-on collision.
It does require rare earths, but China has the capacity to scale up production tremendously and supply is not really threatened as of now.
YCBO is indeed brittle, but that's not a huge issue for maglev.
It's pretty much superior in every way to existing materials, from supply to scale.
The biggest issue with YBCO is the low critical current, but actually the higher the speed of the train the lesser the required current.
I can respect any organization or individual that plays the cards they were dealt
Here, they have an efficient innovation consolidation engine and political will and resources and are executing on it
Who cares what “they” - a private person or the government - invented. Its the actions that are important and interesting here.
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 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.
I would like their program to share data with the world. The more the merrier!
real-time response accurate to 8 milliseconds range. I am not that familiar with embedded software, but does that value really difficult to achieve?
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.
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 the CPU on this machine may be severely underclocked because of the power requirements.
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).
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 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).
HFTs are in the nanosecond range... so probably not that hard.
Also, my ping to remote servers is often 5ms...
> According to the Chinese space agency CNSA, the sounds are caused by the interaction of different metal parts.
In the video, they also quote the person leading the Mars programme:
> The sound is made by wheels rotating on the surface of the Mars rover. Basically, the sound of different metal objects bumping into each other.
[1] https://nos.nl/artikel/2386872-chinese-marsrover-stuurt-nieu...
What I'd like to know is, is this actually how it sounded there, or are we mostly hearing compression artifacts?
This page has some simulations:
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Prog...
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.
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.
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.
Continent-wide public education churning out legions after legions of STEM graduates?
What you really mean is “the richest/privileged move to US and Europe”
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
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.
SMDH
Can you elaborate on this?
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.
And people had a fairly good idea before going there, obviously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars#History_of_...
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.
Your statement is nonsense.
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.
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.
Is Earth in an ideology war again?
And that's the thing that gets a public supportive of your space program and thus the resources keep flowing.
Drop the PR and you drop the funding.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Isn't that scientific? Testing out the hypothesis of aerial maneuverability in Martian airpsace?
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.
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.
Communist party centennial is on July 1.
The propaganda ministry have a reserve of "highly patriotic news," which they throw on around big events.
Because you didn't bother to look for it, and just assumed it wasn't there because of your worldview?
I see it in plenty of U.S. media coverage. A quick search turns up CNN as the first result.
The US is currently putting nuclear powered rovers on Mars. That is why there is no huge US media coverage of this story in the US.
Do you think the editors of CNN/Fox/whatever saw this story and decided not to run with it just because the rover's power system is outdated?
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?
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.
Shauvinism, exceptionalism, and provincialism.
I guarantee you China isn't doing a spotlight on US athletes. Hell, there are some athletes they are taking away the spotlight.
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.
Yes, but only if you look hard enough. For other countries the regular mainstream coverage is like that.
>I don't think its 'provincial' to want your own team to win.
That's a different thing.
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.
China is a really interesting place that has had an incredible meteoric rise, but there are problems.
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.
When/if the CCP is overthrown and a democratically elected government takes its place, then maybe China will become the new world leader.
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.
Here's an example from 2007 where NDT is discussing China's emergence that people were missing at the time: https://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/commentary/2007-08-0...
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).
This is only a bad thing if China continues to become more authoritarian and starts getting truly belligerent.
how it was made https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_qWvfxdzRg