China scientists propose both a communications and GPS-type infrastructure on the Moon
In line with the remarkably rational and long term plans China has developed for exploring the solar system, Chinese scientists have proposed the country develop both a communications and GPS-type infrastructure on the Moon, with both including constellations of satellites in orbit as well as facilities on the ground.
A first phase would establish satellites in elliptical frozen orbits around the moon. A second phase would see further … satellites and spacecraft at Earth-moon Lagrange points 1, 2, 4 and 5, a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO), and a spacecraft in geostationary orbit, termed a cislunar space station.
A third and final phase would add satellites in existing and new distant retrograde orbits (DRO), forming a near-moon space and extended space constellations. The system also includes comprehensive ground-based facilities.
While this plan is simply a proposal, it fits with China’s overall strategies for lunar exploration, all of which are designed carefully so that they can be scaled up for more complex operations there as well as elsewhere in the solar system. And based on China’s track record in space in the past decade, we should be entirely confident this program or some variation will be built.
That is, unless China undergoes a major economic collapse and a change in leadership that has different priorities.
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In line with the remarkably rational and long term plans China has developed for exploring the solar system, Chinese scientists have proposed the country develop both a communications and GPS-type infrastructure on the Moon, with both including constellations of satellites in orbit as well as facilities on the ground.
A first phase would establish satellites in elliptical frozen orbits around the moon. A second phase would see further … satellites and spacecraft at Earth-moon Lagrange points 1, 2, 4 and 5, a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO), and a spacecraft in geostationary orbit, termed a cislunar space station.
A third and final phase would add satellites in existing and new distant retrograde orbits (DRO), forming a near-moon space and extended space constellations. The system also includes comprehensive ground-based facilities.
While this plan is simply a proposal, it fits with China’s overall strategies for lunar exploration, all of which are designed carefully so that they can be scaled up for more complex operations there as well as elsewhere in the solar system. And based on China’s track record in space in the past decade, we should be entirely confident this program or some variation will be built.
That is, unless China undergoes a major economic collapse and a change in leadership that has different priorities.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in the past two weeks has the mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuses to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
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c/o Robert Zimmerman
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Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
The PRC is already undergoing the early stages of a general economic collapse. One can admire the ambition and scope of PRC plans for space while also appreciating that they will prove impossible to actualize with a national economy whose foundations are busily turning to quicksand.
But you said the same thing two years ago….
These aren’t a bunch of drunk slaves, you know.
The old joke about a well organized outfit looking like a “Chinese Fire Drill?”
There is a little something to that.
Xi is a villain–but he’s their villain.
One of the better superhero cartoons from the 1990s-early 2000s had Superman being brainwashed into attacking Earth.
In his fury he almost killed a villain named Darksied, whose body he threw to the masses below. “You’re free.”
What happened next astounded Kal-El
The oppressed masses gingerly gathered up Darksied and carted their leader off–their oppressor was their hero.
Go figure.
Not to just cast shade on good Chinese scientists but I bet all these proposals have already been out in the wild.
The real sad thing is that China will more than likely start the process and thus set the standards.
Instead of multiple missions to progressively set a GPS-Internet system around the Moon, why don’t they just launch their Starship with dozens of Starlink-GPSs and be done with it? Oh yes, they have no Starship (fleet). Point being, we have little to worry about.
They don’t have Starship–yet.
These guys are willing to drop cores on their own populace–the polar opposite of Green fools who would put obstacles in Musk’s path.
Imagine Elon defecting to China—
They’d give him his own Mittlewerk Archipelago
And would produce Starships by the gross.
A part fails–they’d be executions.
That’s more frightening than Iran getting The Bomb (the Sampson Option post-Tel Aviv would stay their hands).
Jeff,
I said it two years ago because it was also true then – it’s only gotten worse in the interim. The conventional wisdom back in the late 80s was that we’d have to deal with the Soviet Union indefinitely. Ooops. The PRC is following the same path, but more quickly and after a very late start.
The PRC economy of the past 45 years has been based on making low-cost stuff for foreigners to buy. But, in the rich countries, there aren’t as many foreigners in the prime stuff-buying age cohorts as there used to be and none of them are willing to let what industries they have left be wiped out so the PRC can go on as it has over the past 4+ decades. The PRC, itself, has the same population problem at home – even worse, actually. There is no way its own population can absorb all the goods it now makes for export. Something’s got to give and the PRC has no real leverage to keep neo-protectionism in the West – and elsewhere – at bay.
Ignore all of this if you want to. You, lord knows, have plenty of company in doing so. But the laws of demographics and economics are nearly as inflexible as the laws of physics. Sooner or later, the equations will balance. I think that time will be fairly soon and I also think it won’t be very pretty when it happens.