China's next step

[Fred22]

Interesting article on BBC about China's next space mission. Thought folks might like to read it
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15078569
Cheers
fred

[DaveC]

Interesting article and animation. I am curious to see what the Chinese have learned from watching NASA, ESA and Russian space programs.

[Fred22]

Interesting article and animation. I am curious to see what the Chinese have learned from watching NASA, ESA and Russian space programs.

I'm guessing lots
Cheers
fred

[JStarStar]

Interesting article on BBC about China's next space mission. Thought folks might like to read it
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15078569
Cheers
fred

People need to calm down. China has launched three manned missions in eight years. At that rate, they'll make it to the moon about 2050.

[Fred22]

People need to calm down. China has launched three manned missions in eight years. At that rate, they'll make it to the moon about 2050.

Actually I'm not in the least bit upset I find their program interesting.
Cheers
Fred

[DaveC]

I'm, just glad to see manned space launch programs continuing.

New realspace activity is always of interest. I want to see what they've learned to do better, what failures they haven't learned from, and what new mistakes they make. As well as seeing what new successes they have.

That it is China doesn't really matter to me. I would be following just as avidly if were the US, Brazil or Kenya.

[JStarStar]

I find the program interesting too, but at their glacial rate of operations I am kind of dubious about what exactly they are trying to achieve (and I do not mean that in the ominous-paranoid sense, 'omg what are those crafty devils up to? ).

For instance, if they ever intend to establish a manned station in space on a continuing basis (or, conceivably, participating in the ISS), they are going to have to be able to launch every three months, not every three years. At some point if they want to do that, they have to start actually doing it.

[luke strawwalker]

People need to calm down. China has launched three manned missions in eight years. At that rate, they'll make it to the moon about 2050.

Gee, in that case, probably around the same time WE do... LOL

Later! OL JR

[luke strawwalker]

I'm, just glad to see manned space launch programs continuing.

New realspace activity is always of interest. I want to see what they've learned to do better, what failures they haven't learned from, and what new mistakes they make. As well as seeing what new successes they have.

That it is China doesn't really matter to me. I would be following just as avidly if were the US, Brazil or Kenya.

TOTALLY agree!!! I for one am VERY glad that they're doing it, I wish them the absolute best and hope they're extremely successful! The more the merrier...

later! OL JR

[luke strawwalker]

I find the program interesting too, but at their glacial rate of operations I am kind of dubious about what exactly they are trying to achieve (and I do not mean that in the ominous-paranoid sense, 'omg what are those crafty devils up to? ).

For instance, if they ever intend to establish a manned station in space on a continuing basis (or, conceivably, participating in the ISS), they are going to have to be able to launch every three months, not every three years. At some point if they want to do that, they have to start actually doing it.

China's NOT following the "US/Soviet paradigm" with thier program. Had the US and Soviet Union not made the "Space Race" another arena of the Cold War, it's MUCH more likely that OUR programs would have more closely resembled THEIRS than the other way around.

The Chinese are doing a gradual, incremental, step-by-step program, not a massive "race to nowhere". Each of their flights builds upon the successes of the last one. No, they haven't had a "Mercury program", "Gemini program", and "Apollo program", each with from a half-dozen to dozen flights each, or a "Vostok", "Voskhod", or "Soyuz" program... they developed an enlarged version of the Soviet Soyuz and incorporated their own "improvements" to the design. They haven't done dozens of flights over short periods of time, because they're not RACING anybody.

Right now, they're about at the same level the US and USSR were in the early 70's-- the first "elementary" space stations. They've basically done the same type of program that we would likely have done before Kennedy's "lunar calling" came about. By sidestepping the 'diversion' of the Space Race/lunar goal, they've managed to accomplish in a handful of flights what took the US/USSR DOZENS of flights and a decade of intensive and expensive effort. They've demonstrated the successful launch and recovery of their spacecraft, manned and unmanned, and multimanned, demonstrated orbital rendezvous (can't remember if they've docked or not) and now are demonstrating their ability to build, launch, and hopefully operate a space station, just as the USSR did with the early Salyut stations, and the US did a little later in the early 70's with Skylab.

There's nothing in the book that says they "HAVE" to launch every month, three months, or six months to operate a space station. Salyuts were flown for a considerable period of time unmanned, what we would today call "man tended". In fact, there were proposals to make the US "Space Station Freedom" a "man tended" space station instead of a permanently manned vehicle. Actually from a science point of view, it's probably preferable, because you can get a much "cleaner" microgravity environment that way when it's unmanned, while still having the benefits of crew doing larger and more intensive experiments during the manned phases.

Going "permanently manned" presents some problems-- first you have to have a long-duration spacecraft, or resort to frequent "spacecraft replacements" for the long-duration crew by visiting crews like the Salyut stations did with the early Soyuz's... a crew would fly up in a new Soyuz, leave it at the station, and depart in the "old" Soyuz. Some long duration crews saw 2-3 of these "Soyuz swaps" before they departed the station for Earth. Longer "on-orbit lifetime" and greater reliability has extended the duration that Soyuz can remain on orbit, but they definitely DO have a specific "warranty period" when return to Earth is necessary to avoid risks of prolonged missions causing hardware or equipment failures.

The second problem is one of supply and trash disposal. Skylab was designed and launched "fully stocked" for the three pre-planned missions, and didn't readily adapt to extended or extra missions beyond that. It was possible, but would have had it's own unique set of problems. Skylab also used the S-IVB's LOX tank as a "septic tank" into which the "flight waste" and garbage was dumped through a waste airlock. This "finite space" would eventually be filled and when it was, frankly, you'd have been "SOL".... LOL
The USSR solved this problem in two ways... the Salyuts were "disposable stations" that weren't intended for long on-orbit lifetimes. They were used for a period of time, and then abandoned and re-entered and burned up and replaced by a newer model. With the long-duration later Salyuts, the problem became more pressing-- so the USSR "killed two birds with one stone" by developing a Soyuz-based automated resupply craft, the Progress Freighter. Progress would launch unmanned, automatically dock, and deliver a large load of supplies to the station, along with a load of reboost propellant for the station's rocket engines and manuevering thrusters. The Progress itself could fire it's manuevering engine to raise the station's orbit as well. The Progress, emptied of supplies, would then be loaded with trash, sealed up, and undocked, retrofiring itself to burn up in the atmosphere. Using a supply chain of visiting Progress freighters who then acted as disposable garbage trucks when their mission was completed, paired with Soyuz manned launches for visiting crews both short and long duration and swapping Soyuz out as needed to provide for long-duration flights beyond Soyuz's orbital lifetime, allowed a great deal of flexibility to the Soviet and then Russian station program, paving the way for Mir which followed, which was a MUCH larger and more ambitious station.

IF China DESIRES to do a "permanently manned" station, then they're going to need to demonstrate a launch rate of at least every 6 months. In all likelyhood, they'll also have to demonstrate the ability to launch an unmanned version of their spacecraft and dock via remote control, or autonomously, to the station, to act as a resupply craft and serve as a garbage truck for return. Technically speaking, this COULD probably be performed by the manned vehicle, using it's orbital module as a supply vessel on the trip up, and as a dumpster on the return trip, jettisoning it to burn up before the capsule reenters, but it's unclear how much payload they could carry or dispose of using such an arrangement (clearly less than a dedicated unmanned vehicle could).

So, a lot of it depends on what they intend to do. There's nothing intrinsically "wrong" about how they're doing it, and how they're doing it doesn't "prove" they're backward or less advanced than we are. The fact that they're doing it at all, while we're thumbing a ride from the Russians at $62 million a pop for the foreseeable future, sorta proves the point! In fact, ISS would've probably been better had it been a "man tended" station instead of a "permanently manned" station for reasons already explained. Certainly it would have been a less expensive boondoggle and would have probably had very similar science returns, perhaps even better science returns, actually, though in different areas of course. It wouldn't have had to be so gargantuan had it been man-tended, either.

"There's more than one way to skin a cat... "

Later! OL JR

[JStarStar]

LOL, well China also benefits from 50 years of technical information from manned flights by the U.S. and USSR/Russia, so they don't need to "reinvent the wheel."

Still, if they intend to do anything on a more than intermittent basis in orbit, they are going to have to develop a much more frequent launch capability than they have demonstrated so far.