Comments by "Peter Lund" (@peterfireflylund) on "South China Morning Post" channel.

  1. And the US wasn’t wrong…
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  2. The money from the car and the apartment won’t go far if he has 100 employees to pay...
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  3. The whole world did -- and then forgot it again because it happened so long ago and it really isn't anything special anymore. The US has had massive radio antennas like this for 50+ years. The same with the Soviet Union (then)/Russia (now). The same with ESA. There are even commercial networks like this you can buy time on. Which brings me to the next point: China needs more than just a bunch of these antennas in Northern China. The problem is that the Earth rotates... So they really need at least three groups of big antennas spread around the globe. The US has that. Russia has that. ESA has that. Several commercial companies have that. They were used for the Apollo missions, for the Soviet robotic missions to the moon, for the missions to Mars and Venus, for the Voyager probes, for New Horizons (the probe that flew by Pluto in 2015), for the many asteroid and comet missions from the US, Europe, and Japan, etc, etc... NASA/ESA/ROSCOSMOS (Russia/ISRO (India) currently have active observation satellites in orbit around Mars -- how do you think they communicate with them? So: they aren't really anything special. Everybody else already have them. China doesn't have enough to be self-reliant. China could just have bought antenna time commercially or they could ask NASA/ESA/Russia nicely about borrowing their antennas -- which they will have to do anyway. Full networks (NASA/ESA/Russia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Deep_Space_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESTRACK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Deep_Space_Network Small networks, basically a single station each + borrowed/rented stations (India, Japan, China): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Deep_Space_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISRO_Telemetry,_Tracking_and_Command_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuda_Deep_Space_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Deep_Space_Network Satellites around Mars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mars_orbiters
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  4. China kidnapped some Canadians. Little miss “I use iPhones” was not kidnapped. She had committed crimes.
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  5.  Hao AnKang  no, that's not really the point of those antennas. The point is communication. The Earth rotates... that's why you ideally want 3 (or more) antenna stations. The size of the antenna makes it easier to "shout" and "listen" across the vast distances. The 18m antenna might not be enough. The 35m antenna probably is -- if China can accept a lower data rate when using that antenna. That's why NASA has had such a network for almost 60 years. Same with the Soviet Union/Russia and ESA. India and Japan operate smaller networks. There are also commercial networks available -- you can just buy the antenna time you need.
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  6. Africa is poor because it is full of Africans. Look at South Africa: that country is a lot richer just because it has 4 million whites and had them running the country until the 90’s.
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  7. The average IQ of Africa South of the Sahara is around 70. Rich countries are simply not possible with level of human capital.
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  8. The US. They already landed a rover on Mars in 1997. They have landed three more since, with a fourth expected to land in ten days. (And the US has had antennas like this for almost 60 years. How do you think they talked to the Apollo astronauts? How do you think they got those gorgeous pictures from the Jupiter/Saturn flybys by the Voyager probes? Or those from the Pluto flyby by New Horizons in 2015?)
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  9. It was always a purely fictional problem. Only China and Greenpeace pretended there was a problem. (And China pours lots of radioactive water into the sea, actually.)
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  10. That was a really flimsy fence :( — a proper one would have saved everybody, despite the woman’s best intentions.
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  11. And talk to the 6 active satellites already in orbit around Mars.
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  12. I think he is from the coastal area a bit North of Shenzhen. Notice how he said something like “Bitsubishi”? He actually said a mix of b and m. That is a recent innovation in the local dialect of that area.
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  13. "We saw it first! It has been part of China since ancient times!"
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  14. You are a very evil person.
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  15.  @hazadus3  except when politicians can force the banks to do so... as they can in China (and many other places). Politician’s control of the regional banks (“cajas”) was one of the causes of Spain’s building bubble in the early 2000’s.
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  16. More. Almost 60 years. Deep Space Network is from 1963.
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  17. Like China does? Yeah. Japan, on the other hand, pours water in the sea that has practically zero radioactivity. If you believe otherwise, you have fallen for the propaganda of China and Greenpeace.
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  18. Huh? The already has a couple of satellites in orbit around Mars. Russia, India, and Europe also have at least one each. If anything, China is a bit late to the party... It will be really interesting if China manages to land their rover on Mars. Congratulations to them if they do and it works! It will mostly be a publicity stunt/national pride stunt for China -- but the rover does have an interesting ground penetrating radar that almost certainly will give us some new scientific data. The rest is basically just gopros on a Lego rover. We probably have most of the data we can expect to gather with that. There is a US rover en route to Mars right now, btw. It is expected to land on Mars in 10 days. The Chinese rover is not expected to land until May. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mars_orbiters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_rover (there is a list of Martian rovers, present, past, and future)
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  19. Did the Plaza Accord force zombie banking, massive (crazy!) subsidies, and a huge property bubble on Japan? Remember that South Korea also has zombie banking and crazy subsidies. And China has all three + the burden of the CCP and all the SOEs.
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