China Launches Space Station Laboratory Module 178
wisebabo writes with news from CNN that "China's first space laboratory module launched Thursday, according to state-run media, an important milestone in China's plan to build a space station." The module, known as Tiangong-1, features sleeping areas and exercise equipment. Writes wisebabo: "In another universe (Arthur C. Clarke's 2011), it would be on its way to Europa by now. Anyone know what orbital plane/altitude it's at? Can it be reached by NASA/Soyuz? Are the docking ports compatible? How about the air pressure/breathing mix?"
Good or bad neighbors with the ISS? (Score:4, Funny)
Will they make sneering faces at each other? Rude hand gestures? Will they "haze" the other space station? Teepee their solar collectors in the night? Will the ISS astronauts pop in from time to time to borrow a cup of sugar? Host a friendly neighborhood barbecue?
Re:Good or bad neighbors with the ISS? (Score:5, Funny)
Have you learned nothing from how chinese immigrants behave in other countries? Now the guys up in the ISS finally can have cheap take-out and dry-cleaning!
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Space program is (effectively) a part of military in all countries that do it. These technologies are so obviously dual-use that it would be a waste to do things differently.
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if you have a space program that relies on private entities then the space program is doomed.
SpaceX [spacex.com]. Discuss.
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SpaceX isn't a space program, it's a launch service. It makes sense to be able to deliver stuff to orbit. We do this all the time and there is a commercial need.
There is less commercial demand for studying embryonic development in microgravity, or launching climate observation satellites or experimenting with solar sails.
The two can coexist, and even benefit from one another, but SpacX is *not* a space program by the traditional definition.
Clarke's naive miscalculation (Score:3)
"In another universe (Arthur C. Clarke's 2011), it would be on its way to Europa by now.
Clarke naively believed NASA and the U.S. government when they said that the space race WASN'T just a Cold War pissing contest. He never figured in the possibility that once the U.S. had the capability to plant the Stars and Stripes on the moon that funding would be slashed.
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<quote><p>"In another universe (Arthur C. Clarke's 2011), it would be on its way to Europa by now.</p></quote>
<p>Clarke naively believed NASA and the U.S. government when they said that the space race WASN'T just a Cold War pissing contest. He never figured in the possibility that once the U.S. had the capability to plant the Stars and Stripes on the moon that funding would be slashed.</p></quote>
All the better. Bring on a new pissing contest. Good on C
military equipment (Score:3, Informative)
A few years ago the funding would have come as soon as China would start adding their military equipment there, too. Ironically, however, now China will just pull the financial rug under the US, or just squeeze those hairy a bit harder.
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This is as tired of an argument as "they hate us for our freedom."
What China and the US have is the economic version of mutually-assured destruction.
China will be pulling no rug out from under the US. They're as fucked as we are.
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They're as fucked as we are.
Why? They have all of Latin America, India and Africa to sell to. It doesn't take long for those countries to catch up the US when economic growth in the US is virtually nil. The US by no means has the largest population in the world, so its economic importance can only shrink over time as others grow. Haven't you noticed how China has been very active signing trade agreements all over South and Central America lately? And with none of those bullshit "sign here but also you have to change your laws to match
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We've asked them not to, it kind of buggers up trade over here. But it keeps their workers undercutting ours, and China is riding the gravy train of manufacturing, so they're sticking with it. So even when our currency takes a hit and looks like a terrible investment, China still buys up our debt. Because if our dollar really tanks, theirs will too.
Eventually they'll have to unpin it. Their currency will then suffer some massive fluctuation as it corrects itself
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I can only speculate, but it's possible China couldn't work with ISS if they wanted to.
NASA is now prohibited by U.S. law from cooperating with China [spacepolicyonline.com] in any way shape or form.
ISS is not an entirely NASA program, but NASA is the lead agency. However I have to believe that China was planning this before this law was passed.
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In Arthur C. Clarke's 2010 (not 2011), which was written before the cold war ended, the cold war was still going on into 2010 and they where still pissing away.
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Exactly. Part of the point of the story was the fact that the situation around Jupiter led to some (tense, somewhat hostile) partnerships between the US and the USSR.
In the book there was a three-way cold war between USSR, China and the US.
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War is great for technological development, not so great for all the killing people. The nice thing about the Cold War was that we had all the technological development without that much killing (of course, millions died in the proxy wars). However, the risk of global nuclear war was worse then the benefits of technology.
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In most of the sci-fi featuring near-future space travel in the era before we actually went to space it was rare to find an author who even considered that it would be a government monopoly that got us there.
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And, bizarrely, this mistake is repeated by modern libertarian/neoliberal space advocates, who are certain that SpaceX and Bigelow can beat the Chinese without any government help at all. This is nothing but fantasy.
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Oh, no, I, missed, a, comma.
(You missed an entire word, though.)
(And you are garbage.)
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Funding was slashed in 1968-'72 because of the increasing cost of the Vietnam War and costs of implementing LBJ's Great Society program. The Democratic Senators who had the power to cut NASA (like Mondale), went out of their way to go after it's funding for the Great Society programs. By the time Nixon took the White House, he ramped up Vietnam to force the North to the peace talks (which worked by late 1972) and the Democrats hated him, so there was very little he could push.
We are lucky Congress didn't cl
Good for them (Score:3)
The Chinese seem willing to spend the money on space tech. Someones gotta carry the flag. Unbelievable how long it's been since people were walking the moon.
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
The states had the money, too.
But they just spent it on more important things:
-Liberating oil in Irak.
-Molesting the terrorists out of our shorts.
-Covering rich people for bad bets in the stock market
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No. The U.S. Federal Government had the money too, not the "States". There is a difference.
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Soviet Union spent most of its budget on welfare (being a socialist state and all), which didn't prevent it from having a developed space program.
China also has state welfare programs such as unemployment insurance and medical care.
You do need a healthy population for it to be productive, and you do need it to be productive to provide the industrial base for space exploration. The problem isn't with social welfare as such, it's about doing it right.
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And lo, their economy was decimated.
Are you seriously saying that it was social welfare that decimated Soviet economy? Rather than, say, the fact that 75% of it was either direct manufacture or backing infrastructure for the military industrial complex?
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There is a historical precedence for going somewhere and then not going back for a while.
The first English colony in North America was established in 1585 at Roanoke, a second voyage there in 1590 found it missing, there was not an attempt by the English to colonize North America again until 1607. And going to North America from western Europe was much, much easier than going from the Earth to the Moon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Colony [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_colonization_of_No [wikipedia.org]
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I suppose that makes sense. Pioneering journeys can be expensive.
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If mankind had been as prissyfooted as Homo Americanus, we'd still be sucking our thumbs in a South African cave peering out at the scary ungulates. Somewhere we lost our cojones big time.
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Actually, the Vikings [wikimedia.org] predated the English by quite a bit (6 centuries), but yes, economic colonization often takes decades to centuries.
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So, no second attempt for 17 years. Whereas no-one has been to the moon in nearly 39 years and it looks like even if someone sat down and planned out and funded a mission tomorrow, it would still take a decade to actually happen. So, best case scenario is looking like 50 years from the last Apollo mission to the next moon landing.
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Not Really
As a % of nominal GDP, China spends about the same as most ESA member states (0.02% by my calculation) compared to the real big players USA (0.13%) and Russia (0.26%)
Don't ask me for a reference. I literally just worked this out myself from numbers off wikipedia (which are themselves well referenced enough). If you are skeptical, just repeat the calculation.
China isn't especially focused on space travel, or manned space travel - its just a big economy, and its found a way to do manned spaceflight
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It's big and getting bigger, so you can see why I'm hopeful. Plus they seem to like the international spotlight (olympic games were huge for them), so perhaps they'll keep spending on space.
With the US, you just get the feeling people are tired of science. You don't the sense of wonderment about the world. Science seems to be a declining form of entertainment. All simply a vibe I'm getting, of course, nothing I can document.
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There, fixed that for you.
Seriously, most of the posters on Slashdot are worse than the worst Tea Partiers when it comes to exaggerating facts and events in order to work themselves up into a panic. The fact is, China has just enough of a space program to show the world that they are a Serious Nation and a World Player - and not a Yuan's worth more. They aren't going to the Moon anytime soon, and at the
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Mate, if you spend money on goods and services from China, that money isn't yours anymore. It may have come from you, but you swapped it for iPhones.
Anyway, I'm not a taxpayer in either state. I just want to see someone carrying human technology forward.
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Trade imbalance? No, not unless you're displeased with the price you paid for Chinese goods, in which case, you shouldn't have paid that price. As long as you're paying the price that a good is worth to get the good, there is no imbalance.
The nice thing about a currency economy is you can trade magical pieces of paper that hold value for real physical objects and services that have value. Dollar bills and numbers in computers are nice and all to have, but they are worthless unless you can exchange them for
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It is quite possible to populate the moon. You are just an ignorant jerk who prefers to poo poo everything everyone else pushes for.
No air? Bring some up or make it there from the plentiful water in the poles
No water? Bull shit, we have found enough water on the moon for a base
No soil? What exactly is the moon made of than?
No magnetosphere? So what? Build the habitats underground, and the food production areas in domes.
It benefits many things on Earth, and would provide more living space, and the abil
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it benefits no one.
I know a few astronomers who would give their right testicle to be able to put a telescope somewhere where there is no air and no magnetosphere. And preferably on the far side of the moon to get rid of light from that pesky blue thing in the middle of the sky. Don't write off a "moon base" just yet, there are legitimate uses.
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docking port (Score:3)
Are the docking ports compatible?
I read many years ago on Chinese media (can't find the source anymore) when they first launched Shenzhou that the docking port is imported from Russia for the explicit goal of compatibility with other vehicles as the Russian design is now the de factor standard.
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Are the docking ports compatible?
I read many years ago on Chinese media (can't find the source anymore) when they first launched Shenzhou that the docking port is imported from Russia for the explicit goal of compatibility with other vehicles as the Russian design is now the de factor standard.
Yes. Same one as on the Shuttle and ISS [wikimedia.org].
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There are several standards right now:
- Russia and Europe (Soyuz, Progress, and ATV) use SSVP, which is high impact so I can see why the Chinese avoided it.
- The Shuttle used APAS, which is what the Chinese are using to be compatible with ISS. (Originally developed for Soyuz-Apollo, so the Russians have it, but aren't using it.)
- The Japanese HTV and current US vehicles (Dragon, Cygnus) don't dock, they berth on the CBMs
- Commercial Crew will use ILIDS which is compatible with the actual standard, the Inter
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Russia distrusts China more than they distrust America. They are bloody neighbours too, so are more likely to have a conflict than Russia-USA or USA-China.
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Doesn't stop Russia from selling [blogspot.com] its latest and greatest weapons to China.
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The Type 99 is probably not a match for the M1A2, but my impression is that it's at least equivalent to the T-90 - and why wouldn't it be? The T-90 has been around for a while and sold widely, and the Chinese have had plenty of time to examine it and steal its best ideas. It's also a good 7 tons heavier and you'd think the Chinese were doing something with those tons. Neither tank has much of a combat record, really, with the T-90 only having some anti-infantry activity in
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That is because of a war between Russia and China the Russians know their only survival will be tanks and as a last resort nuclear strikes.
Tanks without infantry and air support are dead meat on modern battlefield.
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De Chinese Factory...
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Orbit (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Orbit (Score:5, Interesting)
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Helpful, but can you get us the Kepler elements?
first step (Score:2)
China has begun its own effort to construct a space station that will one day look like this....exactly like this.
http://nationalspacestudiescenter.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/space-station-iss.jpg [wordpress.com]
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Can it be reached by NASA? (Score:5, Funny)
Can it be reached by NASA
Unfortunately, no. NASA doesn't currently have a man-rated vehicle that can exceed about 60,000 feet.
The DOD can probably deliver a decent size payload to it, but their craft aren't exactly designed to dock in a diplomatic way.
Funny? (Score:3)
Slashdot needs a "Sad but true" moderation option. :/
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Exactly. We should have a "enter your own" mod option...
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NASA is mostly not in the manufacturing business. Pretty much all NASA hardware has been made by for-profit, publicly traded enterprises and their for-profit subcontractors. There's nothing new to what NASA is doing, except that they are looking for contractors who are leaner and not as wasteful as the legacy big boys.
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Their new goal is to let Commercialization take to cost to explore space for profit. Once it happens they plan to jump on as customers.
I'm not sure I'd look at it that way.
I don't see any reason for the US Taxpayer to fund research and development of rockets that will transport people from the ground to LEO. We've spent 50 years doing that. I think that technology can easily be distributed to the private sector and let them compete with each other. It lowers the cost of getting into LEO and the ISS. That's a good thing.
Remember that part of the legacy of the Space Shuttle was that it was going to carry commercial and government payload
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Why would the DOD bother to de-orbit a civilian space station in a deniable way?
If they had any interest in doing that sort of thing they'd be doing it already on unmanned satellites. I doubt that they're going to start killing astronauts just to put a damper on space exploration.
And if they just wanted to destroy the thing they don't need some fancy spacecraft - a good old fashioned missile would do the trick.
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A missile that can reach space and a spacecraft are the same thing.
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Yes, but a missile that can reach space and a "X37b" are not the same thing.
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It's possible that the X37b could be refitted with docking equipment, though it's not manned.
That's unlikely for proper docking, with the port used by the Chinese; APAS looks like it could have problems fitting into the cargo hold of X-37B. And if it would fit, that would be one heck of an exercise in futility (with docking port most likely taking most of space and mass allowance; well, since there would be no need for hard, hermetic seal, I imagine it's possible to come up with much more basic, "dock only" version of APAS ...maybe folded one, deployable ...overcomplicated; and for what?). Oh, wait
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1. Note, I was laughing in that bit mostly from a possible overcomplicated folding version, probably required to fit into
Looks familiar (Score:3)
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Wouldn't be the first time the Chinese have borrowed space technology from the Russians; the Shenzhou spacecraft is awfully similar to Soyuz. On the other hand, physics are physics, regardless of what country your in, so and there really are only a few useful hull configurations. No one is surprised when a fighter jet looks like externally similar to a Russian or American one.
By the way, the Salyut design is still alive and well. Zvezda, the ISS service module, is a direct decedent. Salyut 6, which you
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Its dimensions are somewhere between Progress [wikipedia.org] and Salyut, which makes sense given that it's currently being used like Salyut as a testbed, but will eventually be used like Progress as a resupply craft for a larger station.
Anyone else... (Score:2)
...thinking of the Chinese space station in World War Z?
wow. China is steeping up all right. (Score:2)
At the same time, they are gearing up to attack Vietnam and the phillipines, and warning India to steer clear of Others properties that China wants.
Here the party demands war [washingtontimes.com] and here they warn india to steer clear or be attacked as well [the-diplomat.com]
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I still think a small satellite with a couple solid state lasers could effectively nudge space junk into the atmosphere without being a threat to other space fairing nations.
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I don't think you understand (perhaps respect is the better term) the relative velocities involved.
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Ok, so help me understand or respect how the relative velocities will make it so that they cannot be nudged with a little uneven heating.
I would figure that the faster it's going the less of a nudge it would need.
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The problem would be tracking the debris accurately enough... you have to hold the laser on-target continuously for long a long enough period to cause the desired effect, and unless you are in a similar orbit to the debris, you won't have very much time to do so at all.
The kinds of orbit changes required to line up with such debris is also very expensive (in regards to expended fuel) if you plan to do so to help mitigate that first problem.
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I would figure that targeting would occur using a mirror so it's not like you would have to maneuver the complete craft, and one would hit the junk each time it came around till it no longer comes around.
Also the further away from the junk you are the easier it would be for the mirror to target the junk.
I'm mainly looking at the really small space junk for this, not like knocking satellites out of the sky. Paint chips, nuts, and bolts. Little nudges.
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That actually makes it worse - you can't detect them until they are close, and any (read: most) that does not share your orbital elements is only going to be in the vicinity for a very very short time (a second or two). Meanwhile, you have to detect it, aim the mirror, compensate for (apparent) motion, and keep the laser on target.
Keep in mind you have to damp the mirror, and since you just moved it so abruptly there is going to be some oscillation for a moment after the initial "acquisition" - by the time
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Thanks. You've given me something to think on.
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I am not talking Zeus levels of laser power here.
I am talking Wicked Laser levels of laser power. This isn't going to knock stuff straight out of the sky, just nudge it, and nudge it, and nudge it some more.
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Chinese take-out is an American invention.
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Chinese take-out is an American invention.
Yeah, and as we all know, the Chinese never copy anything from America.
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Really? You think Americans created the concept of selling prepared Chinese food to take it home?
Now I'll concede that "American Chinese food" bares little resemblance to the food served in China but I'd be willing to bet that markets in China were selling prepared food before the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock.
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Is it going to break after 2 or 3 uses like every piece of junk made in China?
Unlikely. That type of junk is reserved for import into US and EU. Chinese keep the good stuff for themselves.
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They keep the good stuff like the melamine "enhanced" baby formula.
I try to avoid any Chinese products because if they'll poison their own children with melamine what would they be willing to do to us.
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Yes, it's quite hard to believe that...
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I should point out that the Chinese response to the 2008 melamine baby formula scandal was three death sentences (two carried out), three life imprisonments and various other criminal charges. So it appears that the Chinese do, in fact, take the poisoning of their children seriously.
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That chart needs a price column...
you just nominated yourself, D'oh! (Score:2)
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Except that if I added one, it would be immediately reverted. I won't do Wikipedia edits until they fix that problem.
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