China building Ingenuity copycat
China’s space program revealed yesterday that it is designing its own Mars helicopter for future missions to the Red Planet.
The picture to the right shows this Chinese helicopter prototype on the bottom, with Ingenuity on Mars on top.
Notice the similarity? In fact, one could almost say that the Chinese helicopter is an outright steal of the JPL design.
But then, why not? According to an 2019 inspector general report [pdf], China hacked into JPL’s computers twice from 2009 to 2017 and stole 500MB of data. That data almost certainly included the design plans for Ingenuity, under development at the time.
Copying the work of others is expected, especially when that design is found to work. In this case however it almost certainly isn’t copying, but outright theft.
Of course, that has been par for the course for China’s space program. They don’t appear to be capable of innovating on their own. They first must steal someone else’s design, and then revise and upgrade from that. Their final products might be of high quality, but in the end their long term ability to build something new is going to be severely limited, if they cannot start inventing things on their own.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
China’s space program revealed yesterday that it is designing its own Mars helicopter for future missions to the Red Planet.
The picture to the right shows this Chinese helicopter prototype on the bottom, with Ingenuity on Mars on top.
Notice the similarity? In fact, one could almost say that the Chinese helicopter is an outright steal of the JPL design.
But then, why not? According to an 2019 inspector general report [pdf], China hacked into JPL’s computers twice from 2009 to 2017 and stole 500MB of data. That data almost certainly included the design plans for Ingenuity, under development at the time.
Copying the work of others is expected, especially when that design is found to work. In this case however it almost certainly isn’t copying, but outright theft.
Of course, that has been par for the course for China’s space program. They don’t appear to be capable of innovating on their own. They first must steal someone else’s design, and then revise and upgrade from that. Their final products might be of high quality, but in the end their long term ability to build something new is going to be severely limited, if they cannot start inventing things on their own.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
“They don’t appear to be capable of innovating on their own. They first must steal someone else’s design, and then revise and upgrade from that. Their final products might be of high quality, but in the end their long term ability to build something new is going to be severely limited, if they cannot start inventing things on their own.”
Copiers are a dime-a-dozen, and they know they can be replaced.
Innovators have a desire that burns, … to make their vision real.
Those are *dangerous* people, especially in a hierarchy that is attempting to rebuild the scholar/official environment in which “The Party” can perpetuate itself as the the true savior and prescriber of what Chinese civilization is, and should, and *must* be!
Yep, this is a blatant rip off of Ingenuity. I bet the software was ripped off too. Sometimes coders leave “Easter Eggs” in the code. If we could only see the Chinese knockoff’s code and I bet we would find some JPL employee who left a surprise or two that would of got copied over.
Bob, you have the honor of naming it- “Fù Zhì Māo”, 复制猫, in English – “Copy Cat”
As long as the Chinese people are held under a regime that squashes liberty and intellectual property (or any other type of property ownership), there is very little incentive for innovation.
Jay:
.Nicely done. You covered the bases
When the elite few “in authority” are the only ones trusted to think, you unplug most of the distributed intellect from the problem-solving processes.
In China … and more and more, in America.
Innovators are the Gullivers, surrounded by Lilliputians who are led by the conventional wisdom of Lilliput to tie them down “for the common good”.
Biden their Puppet is sullying them with all they want to control Outer Space
Their “copy” is simply a slapped together PR model imho. There is no solar recharge array and the landing gear is way too yall and narrow and would be very susceptible to tipping over should it happen to land on an uneven location. I’ll believe they have a Martian copter when they start flying one on Mars.
All that said, in fairness, given the physics involved the fact that they have a similar design is not really too surprising. Counter rotating co-axisl props are an obvious solution for a compact, high lift, mechanically simple, reliable, lightweight rotor system that inherently has directional control. And once you reach this conclusion there really isn’t too much else to innovate on : )