Jade Rabbit moon rover may be beyond repair, state media hints | Hacker News Reader

Jade Rabbit moon rover may be beyond repair, state media hints

scmp.com

22 pointsswatkat11 comments

Moon dust probably destroyed the bearings. That stuff is brutal on seals.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/11/the-m...

This link seems to work - http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1414534/jade-rabbit-m...

Another bump in the road. I hope it doesn't dampen the scientists' interest in further exploration. The next rover will undoubtedly work even better! That's the goal after all - to continue to explore and get better at it.

If this is the case, its a real travesty for human achievements in space. The Chinese space program - while certainly not as accomplished as the Russian and American programs - is accomplishing achievements at a rapid rate.

But, on the other hand, maybe it is a good thing - given that China's interest in the moon is industrial, and not necessarily scientific. Unless the plan is to clean up China by moving its industry to space, I can't see it as a good thing that the universes' resources could shortly be being plundered by the worst polluter - and violator of human rights - on the planet.

Industrial interest in the moon is a good thing for the development of space travel and discovering new things. Also, you might find America's human rights abuses to be worse than China's when you count all the imprisoned American people who shouldn't be there and the forced conscription around the time of America's moon missions. America's pollution is certainly worse than China's when summed over the last century.

Low-polluting, low abussing countries like Tuvalu are typically not well equipped to go to the moon.

"forced conscription" is a tautology. And frankly, "around the time of America's moon mission" was also "around the time of Mao's 'Great Leap Forward'"... where tens of millions of people died due to pure political incompetance. The death count was an order of magnitude worse than the horrific farce that was the Vietnam War. Hell, even when it comes to just the Vietnam war in its own context, US conscription was one of the smaller immoral things about it.

But ultimately, counting past misdeeds doesn't help us plan for the future. We're here now, and we're looking forward. If country X was the worst polluter in 1950 and isn't now, what good comes of castigating X now? We wouldn't castigate modern China because of Mao's Great Leap, why do the same to the US from back then? There's plenty of modern concerns to deal with anyway.

>Industrial interest in the moon is a good thing for the development of space travel and discovering new things.

True, but do you think your nation is ready to go to war for the right to manufacture on the moon?

America certainly has its share of human rights abuses (I'm not American, though, in case it matters to your argument), but pails into insignificance in the face of the mighty China, a land of near-infinite capacity for human misery. No amount of whitewashing will change this opinion - I've been there, seen it. (America too, incidentally).

So, my point being, I'd sure rather the infinite power of Moon-manufacturing not fall, necessarily, into the kind of power for whom human life is not as significant as, say, technological prowess. Would that the Moon changed Chinas' ways, though ..

I saw the article for a brief moment, then it redirected to a blank page. Don't really care anymore.

edit: Really, no comment on why a story about _friggin space_ would be dis-interesting to a consumer due to NYTimes-like article handling that can fail on edge cases?

Consider the Apollo missions if a CJ[0] portal failed in delivering promised content, what the user clicks a link for. Maybe I care too bloody much about every nation's space program than to give time to a probable advertising redirect.

In the end the search engine content shell game really annoys users, don't expect positive results from it.

[0] http://www.cj.com/

>I saw the article for a brief moment, then it redirected to a blank page. Don't really care anymore.

I had the same problem. I run Firefox/NoScript. Perhaps there's a redirect to some ad site that's blocked?

I was able to read the story in Firefox by using

    Tools -> Web Developer -> Page Source

and then paging down thru the vast amount of HTML until I found the story. Here's the beginning. I'm not posting the whole thing, wouldn't want to disrespect the copyright of some Chinese website (the irony of respecting Chinese copyright doesn't escape me):

    Scientists may not be able to repair China's lunar rover, Jade Rabbit, that has broken down on the surface of the moon, a report on state media suggested.

    The report from Xinhua, written as if it sent by the rover itself, said the problems could prove insoluble.

    "Masters are working round the clock. In spite of that, I know I might not be able to make it through this lunar night," the "report" from Jade Rabbit said.

    "If this journey is to be suspended ahead of schedule, I am not fearful. No matter whether I can be fixed or not, I believe I have left masters much valuable information and experience."

    The authorities reported on Saturday the rover had experienced a "mechanical control abnormality'' and scientists were trying to fix it.

Blank page for me in FF/noscript, but in vanilla chrome is just plain broken. I get a background colour, an advert, and a couple of broken scrollbars.

Well, page opened fine in my system (Chrome 32, FF 26, Win7).

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