SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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 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]."