Sichuan:" Thank you, China"

     April 12th 2008, this is the date that the whole China nation will never ever forget, the occurring day of the Sichuan Wenchuan earthquake. It is absolutely a tragedy for the whole country even the whole world, but on the other hand, the action and measures that the government made reduce a lot of damage in terms of people, construction, economy etc. , making the incident way lease tragic. Therefore, the whole Sichuan city have to thanks its own country.

    

Rescuing

      First, let's take a in depth review of the Sichuan Earthquake in terms of the technical aspects. The accurate occurring time for the Sichuan earthquake is 14:28 local time (06:28:01 UTC), April 12th 2008. The epicentre is located at the coordinate: 30.986°N, 103.364°E, and the focus is 19 km (11.8 miles) under the surface of the Earth (horizontal +/- 5 km (3.1 miles). The magnitude of this earthquake is 7.9.(Based on USGS). This quake was caused by the contact of the Indian-Australian and Eurasian plates which is a convergent boundary.(Based on britannica)

Tectonic Information    

    The impact that the Sichuan earthquake made on the country is tremendous, the earthquake notified more than ten city nearby and fatly destroyed Wenchuan city, killing 68127 individuals and injuring 373612 people. In addition, there are 17918 people were considered as missing. Overall, there are 457109765 individuals are affected.    (http://archrecord.construction.com/community/editorial/archives/0807.asp)   

Such a Tragedy

       Luckily, China is already a super power country at 2008 which is capable to take action and immediate measures to minimize to damage of this earthquake. The people's liberation army took action and deployed to helicopter to the disaster area just after four hours, they react so quick under the condition that all the communication is cut due to the disaster. In addition to the massive amount of people's liberation army for rescuing, there are over 100000 individual volunteer from all around the country to join in the rescuing action. Moreover, due to the decent relationship between China and the majority of the other nations, there ares lots of foreign countries have deployed rescue and medical team to help Sichuan out. In this case, China is extremely open-minded and welcome the foreign help also appreciated it. Under the support from the government and the help for other countries as well as volunteer, the outcome of the earthquake is not as bad as people think. (http://archrecord.construction.com/community/editorial/archives/0807.asp)

     Hence, although the earthquake is fatal, the whole country should glad that the support from the government is solid enough so that the damage was reduced.  

Downfall of a Legend. BUT I WANT IT BACK

    On July 21 2011, the last generation US space shuttle The Endeavour accomplished its last mission and successfully land on the ground. This means that all the American space shuttle were retired at that point, the most advanced space craft come to a  downfall. So sad isn't it. How gorgeous are those space craft looks, how high tech they are, how capable they are in terms of doing the space exploration. But now, they are gone and disappear in a sudden.

US Space Shuttle Program

 First I want to mention some key history that is related on the NASA space shuttle:
        Between the first launch on April 12, 1981, and the final landing on July 21, 2011, NASA's space shuttle fleet -- Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour -- flew 135 missions, made a significant effort on constructing the International Space Station and space explorations. NASA's space shuttle fleet began setting records with its first launch on April 12, 1981 and continued to set high marks of achievement and endurance through 30 years of missions. Starting with Columbia and then Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour, the spacecraft has carried people into orbit, launched, recovered and repaired satellites, conducted important space data and built the tremendous structure in space, the International Space Station. The final space shuttle mission, STS-135, ended July 21, 2011 when Atlantis rolled to a stop at its home port, NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The US Space Shuttle -- Discovery

Gorgeous isn't it? 

    The space shuttle not only contributes the discovery of the space also pushed the bounds of discovery ever farther, requiring not only advanced technologies but a vast amount of human resource. Thousands of civil servants and contractors throughout NASA's field centers and across the nation have demonstrated an unwavering commitment to mission success and the greater goal of space exploration.

Yo, don't go away from your original topic please.... LOL

     Actually I am not, there is the back side of these tremendous effort that the space program that I just mentioned, it is high risk, human's life, ridiculous amount of capital resource mostly money, etc.

      In this case, the risk of this program is the biggest factor. Due to one of the concepts of the space shuttle which is reusable, however, every mission will make a significant damage on the spacecraft no matter the outer layer or the mechanical portion. Although the technical support team done a massive amount of work repairing it, it still become a extremely high risk action. Thus, two of the space shuttles out of five are explode during the missions and had capture fourteen life. It is extremely ridiculous from my perspective to continue the program just base on this piece of fact.  

                       

The explosion of the Columbia

     Moreover, the cost of this program make it unapproachable for the US，and more ridiculously, it is a contradiction of the whole purpose of the space shuttle program. The US made the reusable space shuttle to make the space exploration more efficient and cost less. But the outcome is opposite, due to that fact that such a space shuttle require high technology,  highly skilled back up technical support and expensive composite material as well, therefore, the program has over the planed budget nearly a few hundred time. Thus the US government has to consider to cancel the program.

     To sum up, me personally love space shuttle as well as the program base on the significant that they made which is unsurpassable by any country, the capability that they have and more and more. On the other hand, I feel sorry for those 14 individual who sacrificed for this gigantic program, they have made a remarkable contribution for the whole planet. However, I want these lovely and superb space shuttle back in the future, I hope when any of the country can be able to reach a certain level which minimizing the risk of space shuttle, they can come up with a space shuttle program and accelerate and pace of space exploration again. 

Visit back the lunar

Since the 70s, the American has never visited the moon which they had discovered again. As a symbol of the victory of the space competition with the soviet Union, the US surprisingly give up investigating the moon from the end of the Apollo Project. The question comes, why American stop visiting the moon, though it is a high valuable place for space investigation and more importantly, the US have all the experience, technology and capital to keep exploring the moon. Some of the experts say that it is due to the possible present of alien on the Moon. LOLL?

     
                                 LOL!!!!


 For some extend in terms of knowledge, this theory might be reasonable. However, if we think about it more in depth, it is ridiculous and lack of proving. 

In this case, I have some other predicted reasons for that which are more reasonable and realistic. 

First, it was financial issues. Do you think the US is that rich? NO!!! They don't have ultimate amount of money. The whole Apollo program which include seventeen times of operation and last for eleven year cost the US government 110 billion dollar, if we convert it into annual cost, it would turns out 11 billion annually. In other word, if the US stop the Apollo Program, they can produce approximately 90 more F-35 B stealth fighter which they are currently hard to afford, or six more Arleigh Burke class destroyer. So, if the lunar landing program is just there to win the Soviet Union, why don't the American use the money to make more arms so that their territory can be more safe. 

Second, the Apollo Program was such a high risk program. The US process too fast on the space discovering industries, there are too much advanced high- tech technology involved in the Apollo Program, as a result, the first operation of the whole program failed fatally, making three astronaut died. 

                               
                                                                    Apollo 1 explosion 

Also, the Apollo 13 aborted its lunar landing operation when it reach around the moon's equator due to major technical failure. Fortunately all the crew are alive because of their high skill of operating the space shuttle.

  
                                                              The Apollo 13 crew

Therefore, the US didn't want to face such a high risk to get something reward which are not quiet significant other then just fame. It is not worthy when it comes to letting people die.

Last but not least, it is the technology. The progress of the technology that are using to discover the space is too fast in the US at that time. Although American have the grasp of those high-tech, it is not solid enough, leading loads of failure. It makes the US become the highest risk country in terms of space program. The American want to reduce this phenomenal, more importantly reduce the risk of the space program in order to give confidence to the citizen of their space discover, they stop the whole program.