[HN Gopher] China's Moon atlas is the most detailed ever made
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China's Moon atlas is the most detailed ever made
Author : politelemon
Score : 138 points
Date : 2024-04-25 15:31 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| herodotus wrote:
| A book? A website? If a book, how does one buy it? If a website,
| what is the link?
|
| A search just turns up essentially the article above which seems
| to be a copy and paste of the news release.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| From a phys.org story on the matter, there's a 200MB jpeg.
| https://dx.doi.org/10.12176/03.99.02797
|
| Seems to still be in the process of being proofed.
| lqet wrote:
| Direct link to the JPEG:
|
| https://china.scidb.cn/download?fileId=62b3ceb08e66a93f11a07.
| ..
| nkko wrote:
| Ooo, printing this for the kids room.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Watermark all over. Need to wait for the one after they
| proof-read.
| Figs wrote:
| That looks almost identical to the one from 2022. The only
| obvious differences that I see (besides "pre-proofs"
| watermarked all over it) are in the Geologic Time Scale
| table and the credits on the lower left.
|
| The map itself looks the same as far as I can tell.
| nxicvyvy wrote:
| China propaganda likes to repurpose random shit off
| AliExpress as futuristic AI tech.
|
| Just releasing the news article is enough to preach to
| the choir. They don't actually have to have achieved
| anything new.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I'll just say, I did thirty seconds of research to find
| that jpeg. There seems to be much more out there.
| secabeen wrote:
| Yeah, this article is triggered by the "release" of the
| multi-page atlas, although there's no obvious way to
| purchase it. The JPG of the single plate has not been
| updated since the 2022 release; the pre-print remains the
| only available copy.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| is there a torrent for it? server seems to be overloaded
| letmevoteplease wrote:
| Scaled to 50% (19.2MB): https://files.catbox.moe/egqh3x.jpg
| oefrha wrote:
| In addition to the big jpeg linked in the sibling, [1] shows
| the photo of a pretty hefty tome being published in both
| Chinese and English. I found some Chinese online retailers
| carrying the Chinese version for about $400, but I can't find
| the English version anywhere.
|
| [1]
| https://english.cas.cn/newsroom/cas_media/202404/t20240422_6...
| ConsiderCrying wrote:
| $400, damn. Although, to be fair, that book does look to be
| the size of a hefty fantasy trilogy. If the printing quality
| is up to snuff, it should be a gorgeous and very interesting
| read.
| ammo1662 wrote:
| Not sure where did he find it, but I found the two books in
| taobao, one is about 2500RMB(350USD), the other is
| 4500RMB(620USD), Chinese version only.
|
| As they said, it is "for studying the evolution of the
| moon, selecting the site for a future lunar research
| station and utilizing lunar resources".
| lithiumii wrote:
| Looks like it's 2 books, Geologic Atlas of the Lunar Globe and
| Map Quadrangles of the Geologic Atlas of the Moon.
| keepamovin wrote:
| First you make maps, then you profit. Normally by extracting some
| resources or energy from the area. China is following a classic
| path. The impetus for Artemis becomes more clear! Haha :)
| pjc50 wrote:
| Lunar resource extraction is unlikely to be viable for anything
| other than building on the moon - ever. The quantities of
| energy involved are simply too high.
| powerapple wrote:
| Imagine if we can send garbage to the moon and keep the earth
| clean, the ship returns with minerals.
| hnbad wrote:
| You can send 50kg of garbage into orbit for $300k with
| SpaceX. I don't think sending it to the moon would be any
| more cost efficient (quite the opposite). Plus with the
| kind of garbage where you might find that cost acceptable
| (long-term radioactive waste, extreme biohazards) those are
| the kind of stuff you don't want to have to end up
| detonating in the air if the rocket malfunctions.
| Zambyte wrote:
| Why would we aim for the moon instead of aiming anywhere
| but the moon?
| powerapple wrote:
| I guess it is where it is close, and I don't really care
| too much about it. I like Bezos idea of space rather than
| Musk's: use Moon as a production base or something, let's
| move the bad stuffs pollution, garbage, nuclear waste) to
| the moon.
| Zambyte wrote:
| What I mean is: if we're sending undesirable things like
| garbage into space, why do we want it on the Moon? Why
| not just launch it out of the solar system, or into the
| Sun? There doesn't seem to be a good reason to favor
| putting it on the Moon.
| inkcapmushroom wrote:
| Once you get into an orbit of the Earth, you are "halfway
| to anywhere" [1] in terms of fuel costs. Getting out of
| the Earth's gravity well is the hard part, once you're up
| there you might as well put the trash much further away
| than the moon. Especially because if we're shipping
| trash, we can just set and forget it on a trajectory to
| the dump site, we don't need to worry about it taking a
| long time or to land safely.
|
| [1]https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/surfaceorbit
| .php
| lettergram wrote:
| I highly doubt that's true, sending it back to earth is
| fairly cheap. Getting stuff to the moon can be expensive, but
| there will def be certain resources worth sending back. For
| instance, 10Kg of gold is worth $750k. Probably could just
| send that back with a few astronauts.
|
| That's not to include the possibility that there's certain
| manufactured goods that could be cheaper or only possible to
| produce at lower gravity.
| hnbad wrote:
| There's a big difference between simply shooting stuff at
| Earth (or even simply off the moon into space) and actually
| sending it back. Yes, SpaceX charges $300k for sending 50kg
| to SSO as a rideshare but that's with all the
| infrastructure and logistics already in place.
|
| Landing on the moon is a very different endeavour than
| simply reaching Earth orbit from Earth. In order to refuel
| and reuse rockets on the moon, you'd need to build out all
| the infrastructure for doing so first, not to mention the
| resources necessary for continuous operation. Even getting
| running water on the moon would be a huge logistical and
| infrastructure challenge, let alone operating a launch pad.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| > Landing on the moon is a very different endeavour than
| simply reaching Earth orbit from Earth. In order to
| refuel and reuse rockets on the moon, you'd need to build
| out all the infrastructure for doing so first, not to
| mention the resources necessary for continuous operation.
| Even getting running water on the moon would be a huge
| logistical and infrastructure challenge, let alone
| operating a launch pad.
|
| Anyone that wants to intuitively understand these
| challenges can simply play Factorio's Space Exploration
| mod (https://mods.factorio.com/mod/space-exploration).
| greenavocado wrote:
| One does not simply obtain gold from the ground by picking
| it up as it lies around
| keepamovin wrote:
| I thought the whole thing was He3 makes it viable.
| zokier wrote:
| As if NASA hasn't been making maps of space objects since the
| Apollo days or even earlier.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Yeah, the plan is to snuff out the indigenous people there.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Hehehehe! :)
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Does anyone know if the raw data behind these maps is available?
| I'd love the actual high-res elevation data for use in a moon
| simulator
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I started with NASA's "CGI Moon Kit" [1] to do my little voxel-
| based moon game, Mooncraft2000.
|
| Higher-resolution data would have been cool - but at some point
| the enormity of the data would probably mean I would have to
| stick to a small area of the Moon lest I fill my little server
| with tiles, ha ha.
|
| I was also trying keep parity more or less between the
| resolution of the elevation data and image data since those
| voxels have a color in addition to an elevation. I suppose you
| could add noise to fake that though. (I did end up using
| Blender to pre-process the color data and bake in the shadows).
|
| [1] https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4720
| nekopa wrote:
| Great game BTW!
| zokier wrote:
| CNCA data: https://moon.bao.ac.cn/ce5web/moonGisMap.search
|
| NASA data: https://imbrium.mit.edu/
| (https://pgda.gsfc.nasa.gov/products/54), more generally
| https://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/dataserv/moon.html
|
| JAXA data:
| https://darts.isas.jaxa.jp/planet/pdap/selene/index.html.en
| sans_souse wrote:
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/The_geol...
| Figs wrote:
| That's the one I mentioned before from 2022.
|
| Note the date in the metadata:
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_geologic_map_of_...
|
| i.e. 15 June 2022
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Being in the U.S., I am isolated from China and the zeitgeist of
| its people - but I'm getting little hints that the Moon may very
| well be in the forefront.
|
| With this "mood", Chinese astronauts on the Moon seems inevitable
| now. And I don't say that with dread, it's just more of an
| awakening I am having to a future that I had not thought much
| about until very recently. I think in fact I look forward to it
| because I suppose I want a technological rival to also draw the
| U.S. back to the Moon.
|
| I'm not sure why though. My child-brain has never even questioned
| the validity of pursuing space exploration. But I guess as I get
| old now and see the Earth itself heading into dangerous territory
| I can kind of understand the naysayers that may have not been as
| enthusiastic as I was as a kid about a future that follows a
| timeline similar to Kubrick's "2001".
| pc86 wrote:
| Imagine how different, and worse, the world would be had
| explorers not ventured across the sea just to see what was on
| the other side. We should explore for exploration's sake.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >had explorers not ventured across the sea just to see what
| was on the other side
|
| I mean, they mostly did it to establish trade routes and
| exploit previously untapped natural resources, not out of a
| mere spirit of exploration.
|
| And even if the explorers themselves did it out of a spirit
| of exploration, the ones funding their expeditions generally
| had other motives.
| pc86 wrote:
| Then let's explore for the riches that could be (are)
| there? If that's the motivation some people need, so be it.
| We're undoubtably in a better place as a society now than
| we were in the 1200s so it stands to reason that exploring
| the solar system and beyond would stand to put us in a
| better position come 3200 or 4200 than if we simply
| languish here.
| psychoslave wrote:
| It's not like everything looks absolutely better today
| than it was for anyone anywhere in 1200s. For one thing
| there wasn't the anxiougenous messages broadcasted
| continuously h24 about massive extinction and global
| warming well on their road.
|
| This is not saying all is darker, and denies the many
| benefits that social and technological progresses thhat
| can be hand picked.
| Isamu wrote:
| The Tiangong space station is seen as an important step towards
| manned moon missions.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong_space_station
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| This isn't authoritative in the slightest, but having lived in
| China I got a general feeling that Chinese see themselves as a
| third world country that's kinda backwards and trying it's best
| to catch up. This was my sense talking to normal people that
| sell noodles and whatnot. There is a kinda separate ultra
| nationalist crowd that probably see things different, but they
| don't really represent the majority. I think landing on the
| Moon is symbolic of that zeitgeist of "catching up" with the
| West and Japan
|
| By contrast Indian colleagues seem extremely nationalistic - in
| a way that's a bit scary
| dotnet00 wrote:
| My impression as a not particularly nationalistic Indian is
| that most Indians also see India as a third world country
| that's kinda backwards and is trying to catch up, the problem
| is that they also get overly defensive when someone else
| implies something similar.
|
| I've had so many people turn from crticizing every aspect of
| the country to arguing that India has all the quality of
| life, freedom and opportunity of a western country over the
| tiniest of comments from me.
| aurareturn wrote:
| When I visited China late last year, I spoke to the people
| there on what they thought about the US and the current trade
| war.
|
| Almost everyone I spoke to said that they think the US is a
| very advanced country and admire the US. They have no
| interest in changing or influencing the US to be more like
| themselves. They see this trade war as just "what politicians
| do". They seem to have an understanding of why China is doing
| what it needs to do and why the US is doing what it needs to
| do. It's nothing personal for them.
|
| In contrast, most Americans I've interacted with see China as
| more of an enemy, a sort of hateful resentment towards China,
| and ideologically incompatible with any of their own beliefs.
| It is much more personal for Americans. Americans want China
| to be more like themselves. It shows on HN comments as well.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| So this may be because Americans think of China as China's
| political system. When they think "Chinese" they think Xi
| Jingping.
|
| How many Chinese people think of America and go "Joe
| Biden"? I'd bet more of them think "Brad Pitt" or something
| along those lines.
|
| My point is, Americans may see Chinese people as their
| political system. While the Chinese see Americans as their
| culture: movies, tv, music etc.
| aurareturn wrote:
| In the past, on Hacker News, I've had to explain to
| commenters here that the level of anti-China propaganda
| in the US is magnitudes higher than any anti-American
| propaganda in China. Most don't believe me because they
| assume that China must be deploying the same level of
| anti-American propaganda as the US deploys the opposite.
|
| In 2024, if you go to a coffee shop in China, you'll very
| often hear American music. If you go to a movie theater
| in China, you'll very often see viewings for Hollywood
| movies. If you walk around the street, you'll see many
| clear American logos like Starbucks, McDonalds, KFC,
| Apple, Walmart, Ford, Microsoft, Tesla, etc.
|
| If you walk around the US, you won't see many Chinese
| brands, if at all. In fact, even if a Chinese company
| operates in the US, they have to hide the fact that
| they're a Chinese company. American cafes won't play
| Chinese music. AMC isn't showing Chinese movies.
|
| Furthermore, in a democracy, in order for politicians to
| win elections, they have to have a popular opinion. The
| US media has been non-stop anti-China for a long time
| now. Therefore, the popular opinion is "China bad". In
| order for politicians to win an election, they must be
| "China bad" as well. It's a cycle really. It's almost
| political suicide for a politician to even have a
| moderate view on China. It's also hard for any American
| media to have moderate views on China nowadays.
|
| To me, it's not surprising at all that Chinese people in
| China do not hate Americans the same way Americans hate
| the Chinese.
|
| On Hacker News comments, I've been accused of being paid
| by the CCP more times than I can remember just because
| I'm not automatically "China bad".
| bllguo wrote:
| yes, there is a widespread awareness that this is all
| _realpolitik_. in the western public, everything is a moral
| struggle between good and evil, where the west is the good
| guy _de facto_
|
| to add on to this - far more chinese people visit the west
| than the other way around. many study english. there is
| significantly greater understanding of their counterpart's
| systems in china than in the US or europe. the US has
| trouble recruiting people who are even literate in
| mandarin, FFS, to say nothing about familiarity with the
| culture (even more incredibly, nobody questions reporting
| or analysis on china produced by these illiterate people!)
| bllguo wrote:
| in the major cities at least, there is significantly growing
| awareness atp that domestic infrastructure, technology, etc.
| is simply better than in the west. people meme about western
| cities as being comparable to villages
|
| however
|
| 1. they certainly do recognize areas where they are "behind".
| more interesting than technologies (ex. space, hn's new pet
| topic in semiconductors _eyeroll_ , etc.) are things like
| recognizing mental health concerns and better working
| conditions
|
| 2. there are obviously still millions upon millions of people
| not in the major cities, for whom life has improved but
| clearly hasn't reached western standards
|
| i dont think the spirit of what youre saying is wrong, but
| the inferiority complex youre implying is fading _fast_
| dotnet00 wrote:
| While it's inevitable that if China continues on its current
| trajectory, it'll eventually become the second nation to put
| people on the Moon on the back of its own tech, it still
| doesn't feel like their efforts are as heavily directed towards
| that goal yet. Even the US's poorly funded (besides SLS) and
| half-hearted (from Congress) Artemis program feels like an
| urgent rush to the Moon in comparison.
|
| I wonder if these impressions are different for those less
| isolated from Chinese spaceflight efforts?
| T-A wrote:
| Are you aware of this?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Lunar_Research_S.
| ..
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Yes I am aware of it, but Russia has been talking about
| doing big stuff for decades now with mainly a rapidly
| decaying space industry to show for it, and none of the
| other partners are exactly notable space industry
| participants either. So it just looks like a way to appear
| to be competing with Artemis without having to actually put
| in the same kind of effort.
|
| I get the impression that it'll fall apart once Artemis
| starts doing crewed lunar landings and China will just have
| to do its own independent thing. Kind of like the initial
| claims about Russia participating in China's space station,
| where it turns out that Tiangong is in an orbit that Soyuz
| can't even reach from its current launch sites. Then Russia
| claimed to be building their own space station for post-ISS
| activities, only to later downgrade further into a station
| that is not always occupied.
|
| Put differently, it seems even less serious than when any
| US official uses 'sustainable' and 'SLS' in the same
| sentence.
| T-A wrote:
| I agree about China's partners. Russia may have some
| legacy technology to contribute, the others are
| lightweights. That aspect of the program is mainly about
| politics.
|
| The Chinese space program however looks serious enough.
| Some recent press:
|
| https://thediplomat.com/2023/10/long-march-9-rocket-will-
| be-...
|
| https://www.space.com/china-names-spacecraft-astronaut-
| moon-...
|
| https://spacenews.com/china-to-debut-large-reusable-
| rockets-...
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Those are much more convincing about their seriousness,
| thanks!
| throwaway199956 wrote:
| Even it looks like they will be within weeks launching a
| second lunar sample return mission.
| greenavocado wrote:
| I can't wait for China to release photos of the location of the
| American landing on the moon.
| surfingdino wrote:
| Be patient, it takes a while to get it done in ink.
| downrightmike wrote:
| I'd say that the world has always been shit, and exploring is
| something humans always have done.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Consider the diversity of the US population, and multiply by 4.
| tpl wrote:
| Hopefully all this moon activity stays peaceful. What a complete
| failure combat on the moon would represent. Very interested in
| the Chinese mission to the South Pole of the Moon. Hopefully they
| find usable water.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Is there a AVIF copy?
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