China's Emergence As A Global Superpower

If it costs 200 million for the first missile, it's a good thing we didn't catch two fish, isn't it? Put 100 of the mofos up there with one vehicle and you're looking at about 2 million each, and I'm certain that the Chinese can bring it in for a lot less than that. And we haven't even taken into account the idea that a lot of this may be built on site. And I'm not talking about a 1500 pound cruise missile that needs to be mostly fuel to travel thousands of miles through atmosphere. You get a lot smaller ratio of fuel to vehicle when you only need delta V for 5,000 mph in a vacuum. This is a lot more like running your car at 60 mph for a few minutes. You can also use much cheaper fuels that are stable at Lunar temperatures. I don't know why you even propose that setup and launch will be difficult, even if someone felt the need to launch 1500 pound missiles. I know by experience that one man can tow 2000 pounds under Earth gravity with a floor jack. A few hundred pounds in low gravity using suitable equipment is a piece of cake, especially when you don't have to do it fast. You don't even have to use wheels if the terrain allows for the use of runners of some kind.

You don't really know, do you, Billy? Also, you're trying to tell me that the difficult is impossible. When you don't really know, you could at least have the grace and courtesy to not be telling me that I am mentally ill and stuff like that. In the 1960s it was possible to put a pretty large payload on the Moon for mere tens of millions of 1960 type dollars, or have you forgotten a device called the Saturn V? It could put fifty tons on the Moon. Who has the most experience with heavy boosters now, and the most hardware? That's right, the Chinese, who place large satellites in geosynch routinely. We had the Saturn V and we let a few of them just rot in place when we could have put materials up there enough for a colony by 1980. Never mind the fine details, we've been good enough to figure out how to build workable habitats on the moon since 1970 from materials that could be delivered by Saturn V in fifty ton lots.

Using the rule of one half of mass times the velocity squared, it takes less than four percent of the fuel to land a mass on the Moon or to take off from the Moon. Unless you know a way around that rule, and it is supposed to be absolute, I'm using it. This means that if you get your payload to where it crosses over and starts falling into the Moon's gravity well, it's pretty safe to bet that it takes not much more than four percent of its mass in fuel to decelerate it to a safe stop. That's a pretty rough ballpark figure, but even taking four times as much leaves you with over 80 percent payload. So suppose you put together a 40 ton vehicle that sits on top of a Saturn V booster and want to fuel it so that it can land on the moon and return to near Earth space. You have fuel to spare if 20 percent is fuel.

The Moon is great. It has just enough gravity to hold things down. It's easy to launch things from.

The biggest thing that the Chinese will do is that if they start such a program, they will finish it. If they simply say that they are going to put one million pounds of hardware on the Moon by a certain date, they will complete that program unless an external force stops them. This would easily include everything they need to build their first shelters and mass drivers. We had an internal force called Richard Milhouse Nixon, and we all know what he's like. He became China's gofer shortly after leaving office.

It's just the right balance of terror. We would be unable to justify a nuclear confrontation if China simply declared that it owned us. We wouldn't have much luck with military attacks. They would gain the ability to detonate over any stationary target with whatever they cared to use, and if they used it judiciously, once again, we couldn't justify launching all of our missiles. Nothing we could do would even slow them down. We would be completely demoralized by the ability to drop missiles on us, any time anywhere. Not that I think we aren't already demoralized.
 
And one thing that I didn't think of earlier is the fact that it takes a billion dollar plus aircraft carrier to bring that Tomahawk close enough to the target to hit it. The aircraft carrier moves slowly and requires huge support. From a lunar colony every point on Earth is the same distance. A launch vehicle costing maybe a hundred million dollars can put dozens of missiles within reach of every point on Earth? Suddenly it begins to look a lot more economically feasible, especially for the enhancement in results. The shielding to make the missile able to survive reentry has already been worked out. It can be made of basalt mined on the Moon.
 
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China might have pushed us back to the 38th- but..

1) They couldnt go any farther
2) They lost over 1,000,000 troops

Hardly a victory in any sense of the word.

China is starting to have severe social problems. Communism and Capitalism just do not work together. While they may become a great country, dont expect it with the current form of government.
 
MetaKron said:
...Never mind the fine details, we've been good enough to figure out how to build workable habitats on the moon since 1970 from materials that could be delivered by Saturn V in fifty ton lots...
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Saturn V did not put 50 tons on the moon - it can not. It put the LEM on the moon. I doubt that the LEM was more than two tons, but you are wrong by at least an order of magnitude.

Hint - If you want to build man military base. Consider doing it at or near the moon Earth / Lagrangian point then you need essentaill no fuel either to keep the fall to moon from destroying every thing or for blast off from the moon. This may be much more feasible than landing on the moon, building mand base there etc. but this idea I think has been explored and rejected as also inferior to Earth based attack system.

BTW Please give reference to your 4% rule's derviation. I do not know it and suspect it is grossly in error, but could be wrong. I want to see the derivation. thanks.
 
MetaKron said:
And one thing that I didn't think of earlier is the fact that it takes a billion dollar plus aircraft carrier to bring that Tomahawk close enough to the target to hit it. The aircraft carrier moves slowly and requires huge support. From a lunar colony every point on Earth is the same distance. A launch vehicle costing maybe a hundred million dollars can put dozens of missiles within reach of every point on Earth? Suddenly it begins to look a lot more economically feasible, especially for the enhancement in results. The shielding to make the missile able to survive reentry has already been worked out. It can be made of basalt mined on the Moon.
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Air craft carries can not launch Tomahawk missiles, directly - They can be launched by planes that can land on an aricraft carrier, I think. Subs small distroyers etc, especially they Aegis class modern escorts lanch Tomahawks. Aegis is about 50 strong.
 
Saturn V puts 45-50 tons on the moon

Some of the references say 45 tons, some say 50 tons, and there were plans to augment with solid fuel boosters. I looked it up before I said that. The Saturn V was about 99 percent fuel.

That was in 1960. By now even China ought to be able to build bigger boosters, again in part because they must have the plans from back then.

The Moon is better for many reasons. One of these is because it is not more difficult to work under gravity. It is easier. It is easier to design the shelters. People won't lose nearly as much muscle and bone mass under Lunar gravity, and will be familiar with walking upright. They can dig under the soil for storm shelters. They can mine the soil for building materials. I also have this theory that they can prospect for CHON meteors that have landed on the moon to get their carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen. Also, a large habitat in space is easy to find on radar. A large habitat on the moon is very nearly impossible to locate unless you already know exactly where it is, and even more so if buried.

I am going with the fact that it takes 4 percent of the energy to accelerate an object to 5,000 mph vs accelerating it to 25000 mph. I am painfully aware that it doesn't actually have to be traveling at 5,000 mph when it crosses the Earth-Moon boundary. This is a difference in gravitational potential energy. How far down the well are we launching from? I didn't scratch out any ballpark figures for fuel before. 99 percent fuel to get up there means that the fuel weights just about 100 times as much as the payload. About four percent of that would be to lift the payload down to a soft landing. So I didn't get it quite right. It looks like the fuel should weigh about four times the payload, except that the relation is really nonlinear. The fuel needed increases faster than the amount of energy you have to impart to the payload because you also have to move fuel. This is doable, especially if fuel can be manufactured on the moon, and it can be less efficient fuel. If they can put mass driver launchers up there, they won't need to put much fuel in the missile and they will be able to fling larger objects.

So with the Earthbound missiles you need to build at least as good a missile and it has to be launched from close to the target. The plane that launches it costs milliions of dollars and has to be carried there by an aircraft carrier that costs billions of dollars. The aircraft carrier takes hours or days to reach the place that it can launch from, so we can pretty much rule out an instant response in kind if China launches from the Moon, and hope they can't hit moving aircraft carriers, which doesn't seem like a really good hope. Such missiles are best used for precision attacks on hardware if this can be done.

We will be a lot worse off if the missiles can be constructed from Lunar materials. The brains for the missiles can be made on Earth and weigh very little. One launch can put thousands of such brains on the Moon easily along with food and everything else. If they can rely on GPS they can be very small boards these days. Then they can build the missiles to arbitrarily large sizes and launch. That's the nightmare. It's bad enough if they have to ship everything up there to be able to disable every bit of military hardware we have. They can do that too.
 
And when you say that it takes 25 times as much energy to accelerate to 25,000 mph instead of 5,000 mph it really does sound badly wrong, but that is what the kinetic energy formula says. I haven't investigated to see if the rocketry formulas say different outside of using fuel to move fuel, but the first assumption would be that this law, the kinetic energy law, cannot be worked around. I won't shut the idea out completely, but on the face of it it is an outrageous idea and at best has to be carefully investigated before I flap my gums anymore about it.
 
Dude, it's already over. The Chinese are gonna invade and the USA lacks the will to repel them. The US Army in Korea was a LOT different from the US Army now!
 
To Metatron:
It was necessary to burn 2000kg of fuel, 44% of the LEM’s assent stage total weight, just to get up and rejoin the command module orbiting 112km above the moon surface. The LEM did not have enough fuel to return to Earth. -See First reference. For many more details about both descent and assent stages - See second reference.

I again ask you for some reference to your “4% rule“ (or did you made it up?) I suspect that you did not understand. There was a lot of fuel at Earth launch. (In Saturn V rocket, Command Module that orbited at 112km above the moon surface, and the LEM tanks, etc.) so 4% of the total fuel at Earth launch is probably about right.

From http://www.melbpc.org.au/pcupdate/2103/2103article12.htm

The LEM assent stage:
“With a mass of 4500 kg and engine thrust of 1364 kg.wt, the acceleration was again 0.3 earth g or nearly 2 moon g, so it lifted off gently and rolled over to a shallow climb angle. On reaching initial orbit, 2000 kg of fuel had burnt, bringing the mass to 2500 kg, so acceleration would have built again to 0.5 g.”
Reprinted from the March 2001 issue of PC Update

From http://www.answers.com/topic/apollo-lunar-module

Ascent Stage:
Crew: 2
Crew cabin volume: 6.65 m³ (235 ft³)
Height: 3.76 m (12.34 ft)
Diameter: 4.2 m (13.78 ft)
Mass including fuel: 4,670 kg (10,300 lb)
Atmosphere: 100% oxygen at 250 mmHg (33 kPa)
Water: two 19.3 kg (42.5 lb) storage tanks
Coolant: 11.3 kg (25 lb) of ethylene glycol/water solution
RCS (Reaction Control System) Propellant mass: 287 kg (633 lb)
RCS thrusters: 16 x 445 N; four quads
RCS propellants: N2O4/UDMH
RCS specific impulse: 2.84 kN·s/kg
APS Propellant mass: 2,353 kg (5,187 lb)
APS thrust: 15.6 kN (3,500 lbf)
APS propellants: N2O4/Aerozine 50 (UDMH/N2H4)
APS pressurant: 2 x 2.9 kg helium tanks at 21 MPa
Engine specific impulse: 3.05 kN·s/kg
Thrust-to-weight ratio: 0.34 lbf/lb (3.3 N/kg)
Ascent stage delta V: 2,220 m/s (7,280 ft/s)
Batteries: 2 x 296 A·h silver-zinc batteries
Power: 28 V DC, 115 V 400 Hz AC
Thus the thrust was less than the weight on Earth, but enough on the Moon.
Descent Stage:
Height: 3.2 m (10.5 ft)
Diameter: 4.2 m (13.8 ft)
Landing gear diameter: 9.4 m (30.8 ft)
Mass including fuel: 10,334 kg (22,783 lb)
Water: 1 x 151 kg storage tank
Power: 2 x 296 A·h silver-zinc batteries (secondary system)
Propellants mass: 8,165 kg (18,000 lb)
DPS thrust: 45.04 kN (10,125 lbf), throttleable to 4.56 kN (1025 lbf)
DPS propellants: N2O4/Aerozine 50 (UDMH/N2H4)
DPS pressurant: 1 x 22 kg supercritical helium tank at 10.72 kPa.
Engine specific impulse: 3050 N·s/kg
Descent stage delta V: 2,470 m/s (8,100 ft/s)
Batteries: 4 x 400 A·h silver-zinc batteries
 
I have already made a revised explanation of that. It takes about four percent of the energy to reach lunar escape velocity. A way to convert that to a comparable ballpark figure is to look at the fact that the Saturn V was 99 percent fuel. That means that the fuel weighs 99 times as much as the payload. Keep the payload's weight the same and figure out what 4 percent of the fuel is. It comes out 3.96 times the weight of the payload. However, when 99 percent of the weight of the vehicle starts out as fuel, the first 1 percent of the fuel pushes an average of 98.5 times the payload, the second 97.5 times the payload, and so on. There is also the pull of gravity in addition to the mass. The figures you just put up point the way. It takes about half of the weight of the vehicle in fuel, or a one to one ratio of fuel to payload to lift a craft from the moon. I made some erroneous calculations before, but I think I've straightened them out pretty well. So now we have our hypothetical Chinese having to overcome the tremendous engineering challenge of building a rocket to deliver a payload to Earth using approximately as much fuel as payload. A lot depends on whether they can either ship or make rocket fuel in ton quantities. I hope they have a hell of a lot of difficulty making refined metals there.

We just had a probe make a soft re-entry after hitting the Earth's atmosphere at 29,000 mph today, so once again, no doubt that it's a solvable problem.
 
MetaKron said:
You also have the possibility of a launcher that can plant meteor-like objects on any spot on the Earth with only a few feet of error, virtually unlimited power and available mass, and almost no chance of retaliation....The ability to launch let's say 50,000 missiles that depend on kinetic energy alone for their killing power is not that farfetched.
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I really don't have much to say about this except that it is a very interesting hypothesis as to why China wants to establish a space station on the moon by 2015. If they then established missile launching sites on the moon, clearly they would achieve world military domination in short order. There's no use even talking about the speed, thrust or energy required to launch and attack a missile at any site on Earth as we're talking 10-15 years from now: pace of new technology. So the question is, what do we know, or what and how can we find out about China's intentions for establishing a lunar space station? Perhaps someone can google it and see what their reasons are?

JessupMD said:
One thing about America, we are oblivious to the fine points of human nature. Consciously we think material wealth is our greatest achievement even though culturally we are so dependent on notions such as "freedom". You'd think that nobody else on earth is free.

Any human's sense of well being relies on ideas, such as religion, cultural identy, and a sense of spiritual attachment to the soul of the land. These make our lives liveable as much as the other essentials such as food and physical safety.
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This is another interesting post, but I'm not quite sure how to respond to it. Even though Chinese spiritual beliefs were surpressed during the Cultural Revolution, and many atrocities were committed during this period, Chinese spiritual beliefs are strongly reemerging today, and have remained intact on Taiwan. Yet, even though these spiritual religuous beliefs have respectable merit, and are a foundation for Chinese "spiritual attachment to the soul of the land" (this is statement is very well put), their spiritual beliefs would be condemned by almost all Americans as superstituous nonsense. This is our stupid ignorance of other cultures!

I might add to this excellent insight that ancestrial worship and superstition are an integral part of Chinese "spiritual attachment to the soul of the land" AND to the continuity of it's cultural heritage and people. The word China "Zhong Guo" means "center or middle land." Many Chinese believe that if they die and are buried overseas, their spirits will never rest until their bodies are returned and reburied in the Chinese homeland: the center kingdom. Such a belief, although fading - as superstitions may fade in modern times - nevertheless should be respected as a legitimate important belief. Are Americans capable of understanding the importance of these differences in cultural, religous, and spiritual beliefs in different international cultures? I think not.
 
MetaKron said:
....However, when 99 percent of the weight of the vehicle starts out as fuel, {at Earth launch}.....It takes about half of the weight of the vehicle in fuel, or a one to one ratio of fuel to payload to lift a craft from the moon. I made some erroneous calculations before, ... A lot depends on whether they can either ship or make rocket fuel in ton quantities. ...We just had a probe make a soft re-entry after hitting the Earth's atmosphere at 29,000 mph today, so once again, no doubt that it's a solvable problem.
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Good to see that you are becoming a little realistic. Yes, it is technically feasible to launch an attack from the moon, but one never chooses the most expensive alternative to accomplish any particular goal. You need to becomes realistic about this also.

I will not argue with your new numbers, but lets understand them better than you seem to (using representative numbers):

Your "rock" to hit USA (or China)= 100 lbs
Heat shield mass loss in Atmosphere = 10 lbs
Fuel needed for moon launch = 110 lbs
....Sub total (delivered to moon) = 220 lbs is 1% of Earth Launch (99% is fuel)
Earth launch mass = 22,000 lbs (To be kind to you, I forget about the cost of the Saturn V rocket or the ground crew that launches it etc. - i.e. I neglect the major cost of the launch!)

Thus for every pound delivered to target, you need approximate 220 pounds of fuel, if moon is used. (To be kind to you, I am also forgetting about the food for the men on the moon, the cost of setting up launchers, etc. - I.e. this is the more expensive part, but harder to estimate as I do not know how many years they are there, etc.) Your whole concept is ridicules!!!!

If Tomahawk missiles is used to deliver 100 lbs (thru a particular window in the target building) perhaps 50 lbs for flight to most of the major costal cities, but let assume we fly 500 miles for a more inland target.

I do not know exact numbers, but think the Tomahawk missiles (air frame only weight of ~200 lbs) can deliver about 800 lbs warhead, and will burn about 150 lbs of cheap fuel (kerosene) flying 500 miles subsonicly at very low at altitude when needed to avoid radar detection. I neglect the KE of the 200 lbs of air frame compared to 800 lb warhead. 150 / 800 = 0.1875 lbs of fuel / "useful pound" delivered to target. thus to deliver 100 lbs to target requires 18.75 lbs of fuel. As most if not all important Chinese targets are less than 500 miles from sub's potential launch site, I will claim only 18 pounds required per hundred pounds delivered 500 milles.

Approximate* fuel weight ratio advantage to Tomahawk:
22,000 / 18 = 1,222

Now compared to kerosene, the cost of rocket fuel is at least 5 times more expensive, so:

Approximate* fuel cost ratio advantage to Tomahawk is: 6,111

Also note that without ability to execute controlled terminal flight the "atmospheric skipping" (dipping into and out of atmosphere to loss energy necessary to avoid excessive mass loss burning up as meteor does) will introduce, at least 500 miles mean error in the impact point. Also even if this problem (slowing down to only "red hot temperature" instead of vaporization temperatures) were "magically solved", the buffeting forces upon supersonic re-entry are not predictable so you still need something like Tomahawk's GPS guidance to have a 50/50 chance of falling within the city limits. I will only estimate the weight effect of this guidance, aerodynamic "wings" or small thrusters upon the Earth launch 22,000 lbs of fuel as making the much more accurate Tomahawk approximately SEVEN THOUSAND TIMES LESS EXPENSIVE. If the items I "kindly forgot about" were included, I am sure your ridicules "shoot from the moon" concept would be less accurate, and cost 70, 000 times more! - Get realistic about this also.
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*I did not bother to compare the energy delivered to target, which is what one is really interested in. I will leave that as an exercise for you. Be realistic, if you do it. I.e. use some supersonic speed to calculate your KE but remember that your mass (I would suggest copper as it has good thermal conductive so entire mass will be at approximately same temperature, instead of just vaporizing the outer layers of the mass) can not get more than red hot during the atmospheric transit time. (Well before it burns up, it will get soft and break up as most big iron nickel meteors do. - Have you seen one, with all the evidence of boiling, flow, etc.)

Once you have your KE, compare that energy to the chemical energy released by 800 pound on high explosive. If you are realistic about how fast your "rock" can go without softening and breaking up during atmospheric transit, I think it will turn about to be about the same, but I am just guessing. (Do not suggest that your 100 lbs can also be High Explosives - they will just “cook off” during reentry.)

PS that "probe" was soft landed by parachute. - Even the Chinese air force, with a couple of days warning, (They too monitior the heavens with radars looking for new space craft.) can shoot up a parachute system, but I assume you do not want a "soft landing" so I don't know why you mention this. - However, it is worth noting that with your "shoot from the moon" concept, the leaders will have lots of time to go to a country hideout, order high alert state for counter strike on US, get all airplane airborn at time of impact, etc. With Tomawk they do not have time to get out of their chair!
 
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Metatron has not replied. Perhaps he is becoming more realistic, under the pressue of overwhelming facts.

A relative new member sent me a PM asking for my comments on:

http://english.epochtimes.com/news/5-9-11/32195.html

I know nothing of the epoch times. It seems from this one article that they do have an agenda, wrt China at least. The Chinese dissidents clearly have reasons to want support in their anti-mainland, pro-Taiwan positions and perhaps in some cases a little vengeance for wrongs they no doubt have suffered simply for trying to obtain some of the liberties many take for granted, without realizing how fortunate they are to have them, still when reactions to 9/11 are making national leaders violate constitutional rights of citizens.

In summary, I am not persuaded that China has any intent to lose the victory they are winning economically by initiating war, but do think they feel threatened by US policy of "regime change" etc and want capacity to defend themselves.
 
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MetaKron said:
I'm sorry, Billy T, when did you post any overwhelming facts?
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Post at 37 past hour which contains math derivation of:

"...much more accurate Tomahawk approximately SEVEN THOUSAND TIMES LESS EXPENSIVE. If the items I "kindly forgot about" were included, I am sure your ridicules "shoot from the moon" concept would be less accurate, and cost 70, 000 times more! - Get realistic about this also."
 
Charles Schwab's translated (from my local paper of two days ago, I think):

"Brazil's EMBRAER on Wednesday {17Jan05} said its Chinese joint venture
obtained a contract to sell five planes to China Eastern
Airlines Wuhan. The value of the deal was not revealed, but at
list prices would surpass $100 million. Deliveries will run
between November 2006 and June 2007. "The new board of China
Eastern Airlines Wuhan approved the purchase of five ERJ 145 LR
(planes), of 50 seats, from Harbin* Embraer,"

I think this is the first firm order for the new factory. By 2010, China will not need to import aircraft from USA and Europe. Aircraft currently are a large part of US sales to China.

Also from my local paper (one of world's best, but typically a day late):
China" reserved closed 2005 at US$818.9 billion, only slightly below Japan's 846.9

In 2006, China will have more than Japan and exceed one trillion dollars. -that can buy a lot of oil at $100/ barrel, when they want to destroy US economically.
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*A reminder and suggestion for Metatron:
Harbin is one Chinese city, with high technology, more than 1000 miles closer to US than any point on Taiwan. You said that China wanted to invade Taiwan to be closer to US for ICBM launch!
You should not just make up erroneous facts. When you are wrong, the best policy is to quickly admit it, not continued for weeks to defend ridicules claims, like launch from the moon etc. Tomahawk is much more accurate and tens, if not hundreds of THOUSANDS times more economical. Hard to find anyone who would defend such a stupid “moon launch” plan for so long, as you do.
 
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A little more pressure on Iran, and they will start selling oil in Yuan, then US is really in trouble as there will be little need for China to hold dollars. It is agood deal for Iran to acquire Yuan if the US finally gets China to increase value of the Yaun.

You know it is getting hard to control the world when you (US) is going into debt so rapidly and you need rest of world much more than it needs you (US).

Just a small example:

In a few weeks Brazil will select its high definition / digital TV standard. All of South America has agreed to follow Brazil´s lead as the three competing systems (US´s, Europe´s and Japan´s) are not compatible. Many billions in sales are at state.

GWB has made US very unpopular around the world. I do not think the US has a chance. I bet on Japan - they need imported food. Brazil can boost bi-lateral trade by chosing the Japanese system. Brazil, and much of the world, is rapidly learning that they do not need the US.
 
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