China's First Spacewalk 148
Smivs writes "The BBC reports that China will launch its third manned space mission in late September, according to state-run news agency Xinhua.
The Shenzhou VII flight will feature
China's first-ever space walk, which will be broadcast live with cameras inside and outside the spacecraft.
For the spacewalk, two crew members will go into the spacecraft's vacuum module. One yuhangyuan (astronaut) will carry out the spacewalk; the other is there to monitor the activity and assist in case of an emergency.
Two types of spacesuits — one made in China, the other from Russia — will be carried up on the flight.
It is unclear why China has opted for two different types of spacesuit.
Spaceflight analyst Dr Morris Jones commented that China might want to test the suits against each other. Alternatively, he said, it might not be ready or willing to fly a mission exclusively with its own suits."
Re:State run media? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good... (Score:3, Informative)
It's much easier laucnhing stuff deep into space if it's built and launched in low gravity. You can build it larger, you waste less fuel for launch and a bunch of other useful stuff.
Re:Whatwhatwhat? (Score:3, Informative)
The correct link is http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/1/hi/sci/tech/7602968.stm [bbc.co.uk]. Don't know how that happened...possibly censored by thr Chinese?
Smivs
Re:Good... (Score:2, Informative)
The first step would be to build a space station in Earth orbit. Okay, let's pretend that's done. Then we need to build a spaceship at the space station. This spaceship would be used to fly from the station out into space or the moon. It would never go to Earth, so it doesn't need to be streamlined. Then we can fly the fuel for it to the space station, where it can refuel. The advantage would be that we wouldn't need to launch the spaceship from Earth's surface every time. It can fly from earth orbit where the station is.
The spaceship would have to go find some fuel sources in space, and resources to build more ships and more space stations. Otherwise these materials would have to be flown up from Earth at great expense. They'd also have to build some space-greenhouses for growing plants for people to eat. And probably space-barns full of space-cows and space-chickens. And space-burger-joints selling squished-up space-cow burgers inna tube.
As for getting us off this planet, it might be possible. If we get some good advances in space travel, the cost of launching something into orbit might get down to $100/kg. That would be a cost of say $10,000 per person, so it's not completely unreasonable. We could launch the whole USA population into space for three trillion dollars! But they'd want somewhere to live, and stuff to eat. That's why we'd need the space stations, space barns, and space burger joints.
Then once we have people living in space for long enough, somebody can invent a hyperspace drive, or else we can build generation ships to fly to the next star over.
Re:State run media? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, but in uncontrolled media markets, there is an incentive to keep that delay as short as possible. If you don't have it as close to live as possible, the next guy will, or some blogger. When the President comes on to give a live address, it has maybe a 5-second delay, not an hour. This is, in part, how some live shows occasionally get into trouble - remember the infamous "wardrobe malfunction" as the SuperBowl a few years back?
When Armstrong stepped onto the Moon, he was live to the entire world.
Re:Smart testing (Score:5, Informative)
One major difference? You joke surely;
1. The engines were on the stack, not the orbiter. The stack could (and did) fly without the orbiter at all
2. There were four boosters instead of two.
3. The boosters were liquid, not solid fueled
Even the link you provided as alleged evidence that it was just stolen technology acknowledges these very major differences.
Re:I know what they're up to... (Score:3, Informative)
You mean the ISS. Though an attack on IIS would probably be business as usual, after all doesn't it stand for It Isn't Secure ?
Re:An astronaut by any other name... (Score:5, Informative)
As NASA has defined it, only US space-going individuals may claim the title "astronaut." Further, they cannot be civilians, at least according to an article in the latest Wired.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-09/ff_starcity?currentPage=6 [wired.com]
Coincide with "Founders Day" Oct 1 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:State run media? (Score:5, Informative)
Well on the manned Moon mission for the US. If something happened and they couldn't have returned to home, they would have turned off all contact with them and Nixon had a wonderful speech to give about their deaths preprepared to give in this case even if they were still alive but stranded on the moon.
Re:State run media? (Score:5, Informative)
> I doubt that the film is going to be "Live"
The Shenzhou 6 launch in October 2005 was the first to be broadcast live in China, so they may yet surprise you.
After all. if something does go wrong there is little that can be done to hide it. This isn't Leonov's era - telemetry and communications will be under constant scrutiny.
Spacewalk postponed (Score:4, Informative)
I heard they had to postpone the spacewalk until they found new astronauts... Turns out the ones they already had qualified were under-aged. :-)
Re:State run media? (Score:5, Informative)
There were actually extensive plans made for that very contingency. The speech (draft) was written for Nixon by William Safire. In my opinion, it is one of the finest pieces of writing I've ever seen:
"Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.
These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.
These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding. They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.
In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.
In ancient days, men looked at the stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.
Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.
For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind."