Chinese Astronauts Reach New Space Station For Three-Month Mission (nbcnews.com) 54
For the next three months, three Chinese astronauts will live on a cylinder-shaped module measuring 16.6 metres by 4.2 metres (54 feet by 13.7 feet) while carrying out further construction work for China's orbiting space station.
It's the first time in five years China has sent humans into space, reports NBC News. : Shenzhou-12, or "Divine Vessel," is one of 11 planned missions to complete construction of China's 70-ton Tiangong or Harmony of the Heavens space station that is set to be up and running by next year... China has long been frozen out of the International Space Station, or ISS, a project launched 20 years ago that has served as the ultimate expression of post-Cold War reconciliation between Russia and the United States. American concerns over the Chinese space program's secrecy and connections to its military were largely responsible for that. But the aging ISS that hosted astronauts from the U.S., Russia and a number of other countries is set to be decommissioned after 2024. As broader U.S.-Russia relations deteriorate, Moscow has hinted that it may withdraw from ISS cooperation in 2025, meaning China could be the only country with a functioning space station.
Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, also signed an agreement in March with the Chinese National Space Administration to build a base on or around the Moon, which they will call the International Scientific Lunar Station.
"All the firsts that the U.S. and the USSR did in the Cold War, China is just ticking them off," said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "Now they're at the point where they're starting to think, 'OK, we're not just copying the West anymore, we're going to start doing our own thing'. And that's going to be very interesting to watch."
It's the first time in five years China has sent humans into space, reports NBC News. : Shenzhou-12, or "Divine Vessel," is one of 11 planned missions to complete construction of China's 70-ton Tiangong or Harmony of the Heavens space station that is set to be up and running by next year... China has long been frozen out of the International Space Station, or ISS, a project launched 20 years ago that has served as the ultimate expression of post-Cold War reconciliation between Russia and the United States. American concerns over the Chinese space program's secrecy and connections to its military were largely responsible for that. But the aging ISS that hosted astronauts from the U.S., Russia and a number of other countries is set to be decommissioned after 2024. As broader U.S.-Russia relations deteriorate, Moscow has hinted that it may withdraw from ISS cooperation in 2025, meaning China could be the only country with a functioning space station.
Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, also signed an agreement in March with the Chinese National Space Administration to build a base on or around the Moon, which they will call the International Scientific Lunar Station.
"All the firsts that the U.S. and the USSR did in the Cold War, China is just ticking them off," said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "Now they're at the point where they're starting to think, 'OK, we're not just copying the West anymore, we're going to start doing our own thing'. And that's going to be very interesting to watch."
Futurama (Score:1)
Re: joke (Score:2)
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One spy at a time (Score:4, Funny)
Re:One spy at a time (Score:4, Interesting)
China is currently the only nation with their own space station in orbit.
As for stealing ideas, the ISS is basically technology transfer from Russia to the United States. All those core Russian technologies that were needed to make it work have been studied in detail by NASA and knock-offs have already started to appear.
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Does that give you a boner?
What is it with RWNJs and their homoeroticism?
Better for the human race (Score:3)
Perhaps this is better for the human race... double the chance of us getting off this planet long term?
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Well, maybe, maybe not, but it's all a journey, and progress to get of the planet.
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well maybe not.
looks that my comment has been downvoted. i would be glad if anyone actually pointed out a few really groundbreaking findings done in the iss in the last decade that absolutely required maintaining that luxury metal cabin complex in space. i'll be waiting :-)
i mean, ok, it's still cool and money better spent on that than in waging wars, and it does somehow make the industry grow, but at what price? for now the only real outcome is that some people have shown that it can be done. repeatedly.
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I think the downvotes are more about the short-term-ness of your comment.
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I think the downvotes are more about the short-term-ness of your comment.
well, they might want to listen a bit to e.g. freeman dyson, a man notorious for his long vision into the future.
as he himself explains he was actually in the committee of advisors to select potential experiments for the iss, and i guess he has a very informed opinion about it. it's hilarious. you can listen to him here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
(talk about space stations is only first 10 minutes or so, but the whole thing is brilliant. enjoy).
Re: Better for the human race (Score:2, Troll)
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Chinese isn't a race.
As for them being women, the number is already above zero, so I imagine it will only grow. Of course, to survive an extinction event, we'd do better if they we not on the planet...
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There is no chance of "getting off" of this planet. There is a chance to send some people to a massively less habitable planet (even with worst-case climate change) in a meaningless stunt.
More context (Score:5, Informative)
A few important details entirely missing in the linked articles, but was widely emphasised in the live-broadcasted launch and docking.
1. The launch was done on a +/- 1 second window. I.e. it either launch exactly on time, or would be aborted. Obviously, they could work out the next window if aborted, but delaying a few seconds/minutes is not an option.
2. The reason for #1 is so that the crew would be on exactly the right orbit to quickly dock with the space station. The crew docked with the station just 6.5 hours after launch, as compared to, for example, 23 hours taken in April by the SpaceX launch to the ISS.
3. The docking was fully automated, it was live broadcasted and completed in less than 30 minutes. This was already done once when the cargo module was sent up some weeks earlier, also live broadcasted. It was claimed that it could handle docking from any direction/orientation.
4. They even already had the next rocket (Shenzhou-13) on stand-by, ready to take over in case Shenzhou-12 has any problems. Future missions will follow the same practice, i.e., SZ-14 will be on stand-by when SZ-13 launches.
Not sure about #1, but #2 and #3 are definitely no simple feat for a brand new space station.
And don't forget that in the last 6-7 months, they had also returned samples from the moon and landed a rover on Mars. How many things still remained that the Chinese had not done yet?
Much more details from these videos with English subtitles:
the launch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
the docking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
first entry to the station: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
the docking explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: More context (Score:3)
Basically the main missions I can think of are anything relating to going past the asteroid belt. The big missions would be Voyager. With what they are planning in other regards, I think it's likely we will see China out performing NASA in different ways within years. The biggest questiosn is what missions will be accelerated by SpaceX and how soon before China has a similar reusable strategy.
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Does China really need a reusable strategy?
Its main purpose for SpaceX is to be commercially competitive - China doesnt really need to be commercially competitive (the US government isnt going to allow most of the commercial market to fly a satellite with any US-originated tech on it on a Chinese booster, it simply isnt going to happen), so the cost of their launches are going to be an internal government thing.
Re: More context (Score:4, Insightful)
Does China really need a reusable strategy?
Yes. Money is still money, and even China doesn't have an endless supply. We're talking about tens of millions of dollars PER LAUNCH.
Additionally, space launch is a global market. The US government would never use China to launch their satellites, but that wouldn't stop other countries from doing so. SpaceX can undercut everyone globally, for now and years to come.
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Sure, China doesn't have an endless supply, but they have more than enough surplus that they don't need to worry about it any time soon - and you make it sound like "tens of millions of dollars PER LAUNCH" is a lot, when government programs in the billions fail all the time and are written off (see the US Navys rail gun story currently on Slashdots front page). China will get to reusability later on, for sure, but right now they simply do not need it to achieve any of their goals.
And yes, space launch is a
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China is launching a lot more satellites than you post would suggest. There are a lot of countries that are seeking more business with China including virtually all the Asian market. As it turns out China produces satellites too and while the US is still the leader in this sphere of technology, China is quickly achieving parity.
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Reusable implies capable of landing, capable of landing is necessary for missions to Mars.
I assume China will be on Mars, with a sustainable base, a few years after Elon with SpaceX.
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I assume China will be on Mars, with a sustainable base, a few years after Elon with SpaceX.
Shirley you mean before, not after.
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No, I don't think - if Elon is halfway right - with his thinking, that they can be faster.
But pretty close perhaps.
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And why did some idiot mod my parent post troll?
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Broke a cardinal rule. You said something good about China, so you must be a shill, 50 cent army, wumao, or all of the above.
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China is a great country, and has great people.
Only its government sucks :P
Perhaps in 200 years that way of governing is gone ... lets see and hope.
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I wrote a more thorough response to this but closed it before I saved it. ;)
The gist is all governments suck. All have different levels of corruption and there are no good metrics to even measure corruption well. Americans for example might like to talk a lot of shit about Wuhan but if the same thing happened in America it likely would be little different except for the lockdown. We can even look at the US response to aptly say most in government would of called it a "flu" and whistle blowers would like get
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Winner winner chicken dinner. While re-usable rockets clearly have a huge commercial role, they are essentially an absolute for any significant human presence on other planets or moons. China achieving this before Russia would be very significant and if they can achieve it before the US well that would be rather crazy. That alone would give them huge influence for getting other's to seek more business within the space industry which is also being discussed in this thread.
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I do not believe russia has any ambitions to got the moon or Mars.
And definitely not the resources.
China certainly wants to go, but I guess, if nothing war like is happening on the planet, they will need a few decades longer than Elon.
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China and Russia are working together to build a lunar base.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/0... [cnn.com]
I saw this a few other places, maybe even on \.
2030s is the plan and I would expect a decade later they can be looking at substantial plans for Mars. Personally, this is probably a more logical series of actions. First figure out the supply chain and work out the kinks on the moon where you have more launch windows and quicker transit times. From there take your lessons learned to establish a presence on Mars.
This i
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Such debates remind me of what happened during the age of exploration.
China through mainly state funds in the early 1400s funded exploratory expeditions, using ships with sizes and technology that Europe wouldn't employ for the next few hundred years. In the end after a few decades these expeditions stop largely because the state could not see any benefit to them.
The difference though is that Europe after being cut off from East Asia due to the blockade that was created when the Ottomans took over the Midd
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To be fair to China, they didn't just casually defund ocean exploration. By the mid-1400s, they were dealing with large-scale Mongol incursions. In 1449, Mongols captured the Ming emperor. There was a war with Korea. Then there were the Manchus who invaded and eventually conquered all of China.
Europe had the advantage of political fragmentation. So wars in Italy, France, and Germany didn't drain resources from explorers in Spain and Portugal.
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When the Hongxi emperor came to the throne he fully cancelled the expeditions citing the costs. That was in 1424. Although the next emperor Xuande allowed one more expedition, which was Zheng He's last. By the 1430s it was over.
The Mongol threat didn't actually become a threat until some decades later, up until the Ming was seen as much more powerful than the Mongols, and it wasn't until the disastrous defeat in 1449 whereby the Ming emperor is captured after personally leading an army, and thus has to a
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5. They use a stick to press buttons they can't reach while in the capsule.
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2. The reason for #1 is so that the crew would be on exactly the right orbit to quickly dock with the space station. The crew docked with the station just 6.5 hours after launch, as compared to, for example, 23 hours taken in April by the SpaceX launch to the ISS.
And the reason for #2 is that their crew module does not have the maneuverability and / or the life support duration to allow a longer path to the space station. It sounds like their margins are razor thin, and there are probably many others we aren't aware of.
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And the reason for #2 is that their crew module does not have the maneuverability and / or the life support duration to allow a longer path to the space station. It sounds like their margins are razor thin, and there are probably many others we aren't aware of.
There have been previous Shenzhou missions that spent several weeks in space, so maneuverability and/or life support duration is not the reason for the short time interval between launch and docking. Indeed, in the previous Shenzhou 9, 10, and 11 missions that docked with the Tiangong 1 and Tiangong2 trial stations, the docking all took place more than a day after launch.
Re: Public in the west doesn't care about space no (Score:2)
I think âoethe westâ care about this plenty. I sure do, and I am glad they are doing space stuff.
I bet if âoeNASA does cool thingâ was on the ballot, it would get plenty of votes. But that is not how things go
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...the public in the West don't give a shit about this stuff any more.
Which is what makes this a perfect time for China to act. The new space race will be Chinese national focus vs. competitive American corporate power. Who will be first to bring back rare earth elements from Pallas?
We shit on ourselves - Smell good now? (Score:4, Interesting)