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At a time when space exploration has become a competition between world powers, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) plans to send an unmanned probe to Mars by 2021, which will be the Arab world's first mission to another planet.
A new UAE Space Agency will be created to coordinate the UAE's growing space technology sector and to supervise the mission. The mission will be led by Emiratis and will expand the nation's human capital through knowledge transfer from international partners, as well as increasing human knowledge about space exploration and distant planets.
"The UAE Mars probe represents the Islamic world's entry into the era of space exploration. We will prove that we are capable of delivering new scientific contributions to humanity," UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan said in a statement Wednesday.
Do you think this is likely? I do not know of any country which was able to launch such missions in only 7 years.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday July 17 2014, @02:08PM
True enough.
Of course, an argument could be made that NASA's efforts to put a man on the moon were largely pointless, because they never followed it up with anything long-term. No moonbases, no asteroid mining, the US just kind of got bored and wandered off, leaving the technology and know-how to rot. I can imagine the UAE doing something similar.
I guess it was worth it just to prove that it can be done, if nothing else.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Spook brat on Thursday July 17 2014, @02:31PM
What putting a man on the moon proved was that we could place a payload wherever we wanted in the Human sphere of influence. The conclusion I draw from lack of further interest/funding is that once the Cold-War point of "imagine that this was a bomb" had been made for Russia to see, the actual mission was accomplished.
EF's heavily-downmodded joke about the Arab space race was actually on topic. Honestly, if the North Koreans put an honest effort into manned orbital spaceflight they'd be worrying us a whole lot more than they are with their ineffective missile launches. Military analysts will be watching news of this closely to see if we need to start caring about ICBMs being launched out of the Persian Gulf.
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday July 17 2014, @03:38PM
You don't need to get to the moon to prove that. Just have John Glenn kick a nuke out the door during one of his 3 orbits and you can save the next 7 years' worth of effort and money.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 17 2014, @07:01PM
(Score: 1) by Lemming on Thursday July 17 2014, @02:45PM
The Apollo missions brought us a lot of technology and know-how which is usable not only in future space missions, but also in our daily life. For example, the Apollo program pushed the development of computers and microchips.
Some links:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135690/NASA_s_Apollo_technology_has_changed_history [computerworld.com]
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/80660main_ApolloFS.pdf [nasa.gov]
(Score: 2) by khallow on Thursday July 17 2014, @05:51PM
Integrated circuits and microchips would have been pushed anyway even if the federal government had done absolutely nothing. (And where's the word about the far bigger contribution from the US military?) Banks for example were huge early adopters.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday July 17 2014, @08:12PM
And the UAE hired all of the laid off space techies.
This, like much else in the UAE, is a thin Arab wrapper around hired western expertise.
Not that they have no scientific training, they send all their favorite sons to prestigious western universities.
But they have no expertise in this area, since its not taught in universities.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday July 18 2014, @06:27AM
Uhhh...I thought that like their guns they bought their experts from the former USSR? After all that is where Iraq and Iran were/are getting their nuclear tech from and if you want to build a dependable cheap rocket to get from point A to point B you really can't beat Soyuz or Russian rocket motors, they aren't pretty but like most Russian military gear its built like a tank and tough as hell. Seeing as how we couldn't come up with anything worthwhile after Apollo* you really can't blame them for going with the former USSR where the track record is better.
*.-if you look up the original mission statement for the shuttle it failed every single metric in its design goal, instead of being a quick reliable "space truck" with a large payload, cheap to use, and replaced rapidly with new designs you got a slow easily damaged ship with not enough payload to carry most of the military loads, cost a mint, and was kept on more than 20 years after it was supposed to be put out to pasture. Now I don't know about you but I would call that a fail in my book.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday July 18 2014, @11:15PM
It's also a "Flying Brick [metacafe.com]."