To send men to the Moon."There is intelligent life in Tokyo." Robert A. Heinlein.

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We want our children to go to the planets. Burt Rutan 6/21/04
Tuckers! Science! Automotive Oddities! Boycott Trek XI! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither. MachineCast

My money's on Japan. 8)

As long as they keep sending my company money for the Japanese projects we are working on, I'll be happy.

While Hypersonicman might get to work on Phoenix (http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=20016), at least I'll get to work on Galaxy Express for the Japanese.

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Don't jump the gun just yet. I hope that the Japanese are talking about their billions in dollars not yen, with the rates the yen has been doing against currency like the Dollar and Euro I might be a little worried. It may happen that they can go to Space like this, they have been the technological giants of asia. However things don't look so rosy now because for the past years all Japan industry has seen is decades of economic stagnation, its been 15 years since the economic bubble burst yet the nation continues to fall into a recession, bad bureaucracy, backward politics and cash cuts. Some of the mebers here on the BABB thought the US Economy and NASA had trouble , yet the Japanese Space faces many worse things. There have been six major failures in the past 6 or 7 years, last year it launch of spy satellites turned into an expensive H-2 fireball, million of dollars down the drain. Years earlier a bad motor sent the communication satellite to be burnt in the radiation belts, Nozomi the Mars craft went Kaput, in 98 the H 2 second-stage went sayonara, then during a second attempt the first-stage H2 engine failed more billions of yen blown up, later a faulty turbine caused their main rocket to explode and Japan was exploring the bottom of the Pacific with its rockets instead of going to Space. Recently they have failed to launch spy satellites over N Korea, and in Feb of this year the country went back into another recession. At the rate Japan is moving its not going to be 2025, India, the Euros, Russians or the Chinese will have built a lunar base long before Japan do. If big changes are made to the agency and the governemnt does some reform on its policy then perhaps it might happen, the problem with Japan is not the technology but the probelms with Japanese bureaucracy, bad internal policy.

lunar base by 2025?
Japanese lunar base by 2025?


Kyodo News agency reported that Japan plans to send up two spy satellites during fiscal 2006 ending in March 2007, citing unnamed government sources.
Noriaki Saito, an official of the Japan's space agency JAXA, could not confirm the report.
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches...n_spysats.html
Japan launched two spy satellites in March 2003, but an attempt to send two more in November that year failed because of a defect in the rocket's booster system.

the problem is that their base will probably be about 2' * 4' and 6 inches deep

Their ambition is admirable, but they've not even put a man in space yet, heck, their main launch platform has only recently acheived something approaching operational reliability.

Ante-ing up 57 billion USD doesn't impress me. Problems don't get solved by throwing money at them, as I often tell the "feed the hungry" crowd. I want to see what cards they're holding to support that bet before I start cheering.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

SELENE the ISAS-NASDA (JAXA) lunar orbiter mission stands for SELenological and ENgineering Explorer

Japan has high hopes for rocket launch
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Space/20...9/1401932.html
...SELENE probe — originally scheduled for launch in 2005, but since delayed — is designed to orbit the moon, releasing two small satellites that will measure the moon’s magnetic and gravitational field and conduct other tests for clues about the moon’s origin...

Japan rocket lifts with satellite
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapc...ket.launch.ap/
..Japan's space agency, JAXA, has an unmanned moon survey mission planned as well.

SELENE is a Lunar Orbiter and Lander, it will carry 13 instruments including imagers, a radar sounder, laser altimeter, X-ray fluorescence spectrometer and gamma-ray spectrometer to study the origin, evolution, and tectonics of the Moon from orbit.
The SELENE launch has been postponed to the summer of 2007 due to budgetary considerations. SELENE will be launched on an H-IIA rocket from Tanegashima Space Center into a 270 km Earth parking orbit with an inclination of 30.4 degrees.

first a few quotes from the article:
"made an abrupt policy turnabout"
"Japan's space program has been stalled lately."
"JAXA announced last month it will delay until 2010..."
"Japan had to abandon a mission to Mars two years ago "
I don't want to badmouth JAXA, I just want to point this out for the next time NASA gets badmouthed.
I think the other space agencies are getting mature enough that they can start to be compared/contrasted. It may get interesting.

Space review must be clear-cut
Keiko Chino / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features...28TDY04003.htm
The Liberal Democratic Party has begun reviewing the nation's space development policy. But are politicians, rather than the bureaucrats who had previously overseen matters, taking the lead in reviewing the country's space ambitions? ....

Japan's space agency has set up a team to send an unmanned mission to the surface of the Moon, possibly within the next ten years.
http://www.ndtv.com/template/templat...86814&callid=1
Keiji Tachikawa, chairman of the space agency JAXA, provided no further details of the composition of the team, but said he hoped the mission would be launched within a decade.


joking or reality ?

http://www.pinktentacle.com/2006/04/...-robot-battles

ROBO-ONE sets 2010 date for space robot battles
At the ROBO-ONE competition held in Tokyo in March, organizers announced plans to begin holding its robot competition in space in the year 2010. According to the recently launched “ROBO-ONE in the Space” official website, the project aims to further the progress of robot technology and boost the value of engineers by embracing the coming era of robotics and space. By taking the battles into space, ROBO-ONE hopes to fuel dreams and create an environment that inspires people to become engineers.

Glad to see more interest in Space.