Comment by jetison_out_to_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jetison_out_to_ | Hacker News Reader

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jetison_out_to_

Noticed this is the same day as NASA got the Ultima-Thule photos. Was this announced today to overshadow it, like how Uber announced their IPO basically a day after Lyft's?

Want to avoid going off about conspiracy theories or who's more patriotic, just curious how the announcements actually lined up.

This (wikipedia-sourced) AP wire from Oct 22, 2015 when the Pluto flyby happened said they had re-pointed the probe for this flyby, scheduled for Jan 1, 2019, which it did exactly that. So we knew at least 3 years ago the exact date of Ultima-Thule -- spacework requires very good precision*. http://apnews.excite.com/article/20151022/us-sci--pluto-next...

The Chang'e 4 wikipedia page says it was launched Dec 7, 2018, only about a month ago.

So I get launches are well-planned in advance so wheels have been spinning a long time there too, but even so, they clearly must have known the two events would occur right around the same time, the Chinese one just a day or two after the American one.

Is this what a space race feels like?

Ironically, at the time of landing, there was no live coverage on the state media CCTV's news channel. Instead, it was covering the story of Utlima Thule.

Also you should know that the launch/landing window of a lunar mission does not occur everyday. And it's predetermined by orbital mechanics.

> Is this what a space race feels like?

No.

New Horizons capturing Ultima Thule is not a large enough event to warrant the Chinese feeling like they need to compete with it. Spectator wise, it's a nice event for anyone that likes astronomy. It will be ignored by most of the people on the planet, just as the Chinese landing on the far side of the moon will be. These are not seminal moments in space history.

> These are not seminal moments in space history.

Intercepting a 20 km object in the Kuiper Belt, the farthest body ever explored by mankind, isn't seminal? This also happens to be the first encounter with a planetesimal. It gives us a unique window into planetary formation. This is a very huge accomplishment.

Correct, but the average person doesn't care. They might have read about it and gone "neat", but they have already forgotten about it.

So what? The hell with the average person. You think the average person cares about any physics breakthroughs like gravity waves detection or breakthroughs in any other field? We don't define seminal moments by what the average person thinks about the science.

New Horizons was the most read story on bbc yesterday morning. China’s landing is today.

It’s no Sputnik or Gagarin or Apollo, but experts at Nasa as "a first for humanity and an impressive accomplishment".

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