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Does China Want To Own The Moon?

Although treaties forbid ownership, the powerful nation would have little resistance when laying claim to lunar resources.



By Irene Klotz
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• Within about 15 years, China could have a permanent presence on the moon, and be laying claim to its resources.
• There may not be anything the United States, hobbled by debt and politically polarized, can do to stop China.

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The only flags planted into the lunar regolith by humans was done by U.S. astronauts from the Apollo Program. Will China be next? Click to enlarge this image.
NASA (edit by Discovery News/Ian O'Neill)



By the time U.S. astronauts return to the moon they may need permission to touch down -- from China, which is laying the groundwork for a lunar land grab, says long-time space advocate and entrepreneur Robert Bigelow.
Owning the moon is the first step in a game Bigelow, founder of Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace, calls "Solar System Monopoly."
"This will characterize the 21st and 22nd centuries and beyond. If we ignore this, it will be at our extreme peril," Bigelow said at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight under way this week in Las Cruces, N.M.
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The way Bigelow sees it, China, which has no debt, cash reserves of $3 trillion, technical skills, a long-term strategy and strong national support, will lay claim to raw materials on the moon in about 15 years.
The land grab will occur despite an international treaty barring ownership of extraterrestrial bodies, concludes Bigelow, who points out that China's growing global economic influence will make it less likely other countries will object to its lunar expansion.
"This isn't going to start World War III," Bigelow said.
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There's several reasons why China might want the moon, not the least of which is its trove of mineral resources that include water and helium-3, a potential fuel for fusion energy reactors. Laying claim to the moon also would have a powerful psychological impact, displacing America's Apollo forays and catapulting China's international status in one fell swoop.

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"Nothing else China could possibly do in the next 15 years would cause as great a benefit for China," Bigelow said.
With the United States straddled by debt and political gridlock, Bigelow thinks the first round of the game is already lost. But there's still time to give China a run for its money on Mars.
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"Hopefully this will produce the fear factor necessary to motivate Americans," Bigelow said.
China, which is not a member of the International Space Station program, last month launched a test module for its own outpost in orbit. A capsule to robotically dock at the module is scheduled to be launched in November. That will be followed by human missions in 2012.
In addition to a small space station, China has announced plans for a lunar base by 2020.
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"They're serious about what they're doing," said Mark Sirangelo, who oversees Sierra Nevada Corp., one of several firms working to develop commercial passenger spaceships for NASA and other users.
"Not only do they have a lot of people and a lot of money focused in on it, but they have a lot of willpower. I think that's one of the things that we in this country are lacking a little bit right now, the willpower to do the necessary things to make us successful in space."
SCIENCE CHANNEL: Lunar Geography Game

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Discovery News > Animal News > Why Spiders Will Always Find You
Why Spiders Will Always Find You

Spiders are among the most vibration-sensitive organisms in the world, second only to cockroaches.



By Jennifer Viegas

• Hungry spiders can detect the quietest movements and air flow shifts.
• Spiders can also see and smell individuals that may cross their paths.
• Spiders will only spring into action if the vibrations and other stimuli match profiles of prey or potential mates.

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Cupiennius salei doesn't build webs, but sits and waits for prey to come near. Click to enlarge this image.
Friedrich Barth



Spiders abound this Halloween season, but for those who wish to slip past unnoticed by a real spider -- good luck. New research has found that spiders are second only to cockroaches when it comes to detecting vibrations.
Hungry spiders can detect the quietest movements and air flow shifts. Stimulus forces in the .01 near-undetectable range are enough for spider stimulation, according to a new published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
In fact, a spider's entire body is built to detect almost anything and anyone that might cross its path.
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"The spider has more than 3000 strain sensors embedded in its exoskeleton at many different locations, but most of them are on the legs and the compound organs, like the vibration receptors, are near leg joints," co-author Friedrich Barth, one of the world's leading experts on spiders, told Discovery News.
Both he and lead author Clemens Schaber are neurobiologists at the University of Vienna. Along with colleague Stanislav Gorb of the University of Kiel, they used a process called white light interferometry to perform the first ever quantitative examination of the sophisticated micromechanics of spiders. This process combines light waves in an optical instrument, allowing for very precise measurements of the tiniest things, such as force on a spider strain sensor.

DNEWS VIDEO: The longer a male Australian redback spider woos a female, the better chance she won't eat him when they mate.

The spider's sensors consist of minute slits of the lyriform organs that receive information on local movements. The scientists determined that each slit's sensitivity was at the nanoscale level, gradually decreasing with decreasing slit length.
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Schaber and his team focused their investigations on adult females of the large Central American wandering spider, Cupiennius salei, taken from their Vienna breeding stock. Given its size and impressive hunting talents, it's a favorite species for spider studies, and has been analyzed before.
This particular spider "does not build webs to catch prey, but is a nocturnal sit-and-wait predator," Schaber told Discovery News. "Our spider receives vibrations through the leaves of plants. Both on the plant and in the web, spiders (in general) will attack the stimulus source if the vibration amplitude induced is within a certain range and if it contains a biologically meaningful range of frequencies."
"If both parameters are far from being prey-like, a spider will not respond or escape," he continued.
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Spiders may therefore detect the presence of a human or other animal, but unless the invader's movements mimic those of typical prey, the spider will probably not attack. With such a sensitive ability to detect vibrations, spiders would forever be wasting their time on useless hunts, were it not for their ability to fine-tune the incoming sensory information.
Biologist George Uetz of the University of Cincinnati and colleague Shira Gordon also recently studied spiders and found that when certain spiders are in the mood to mate, they drum unique ***y vibrations, preferably on leaf litter, to attract partners. Wolf spiders have a particularly showy display involving leg taps and body bounces.
It takes keen sensory perception for a spider to detect such movements out of the surrounding environmental din.
If a spider doesn't "feel" you, it can also see, smell and taste you. Schaber explained that spiders "have vision, sensitive for low light levels, but at low temporal resolution." Minute chemical-sensitive hair sensors on spider feelers, called pedipalps, can also receive odors. Female spiders release a sort of pheromone perfume that can attract males.
Aside from telling us more about spiders, the research could lead to improved bio-inspired sensors for use in medical, military, business and other possible industry applications.