China's Space Program News Thread

[bd popeye]

Re: china manned space - news and views

Thasnks for the insight yehe.

I do also wonder whether the reentry module will continuie to land on land in Inner Mongolia or maybe like NASA on the sea near the space center instead?

I would love to see China land on the open sea. Perhaps some day we will see helos dispachted from the 071 LPD or an PLAN CV recover the PRCs "taikonauts". That would be quite a show.

 

[Schumacher]

Re: china manned space - news and views

Shenzhou 8,9,10 will happen earliest 2010, haven't seen any schedule that mentions 2009. The main launch next year will be another probe to the moon similar to the one last year.

 

[crobato]

Re: china manned space - news and views

I for one don't think comparing the shuttle with todays rocket technology is really fair.
The only real same tech age competitor to the shuttle is the Soyuz program, and the Shuttle can lift 3,5 times the payload, I think. It contributed a lot in mankinds quest for the conquest of space.
That nowadays modern rockets designed 30 yrs later appear superior and more efficient doesn't mean the Shuttle was a mistake, just that it's due for replacement.

Its not the Shuttle itself lifting that load but the booster rockets. The grammar should be inspire of. Consider this, take the shuttle out of the equation, and those booster rockets can carry more, farther and higher.

Its plain physics. The amount of energy you take to fling a Volkswagen Beetle is going to be far less than you take with a full sized bus on the same orbit. For the same amount of energy, the Beetle can also be flung higher in the sky. Attach energy with $$$ cost, and you get the basic idea that flying around with a heavy space craft is going to cost bucks than you do with a smaller one. Although I must say the Shenzhou has much less mass than a Space Shuttle, it still has more over a Soyuz.

Essentially for a space craft to be efficient, you need 'less' of the space craft as much as possible and more 'payload' which can be interchangeable with 'distance'.

That's why we're returning to the Apollo concept.

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Basically an Apollo on steroids with solar panels for power. A Shenzhou itself is similar to a Soyuz on steroids with even more solar panels.

IMO a craft like the Shenzhou can be moon orbit capable in its later versions and possible to attach a lander in the front.

 

[Quickie]

Re: china manned space - news and views

Shenzhou 8 will lift off in only months from now during early 2009, according to an unnamed source in this news. Shenzhou 9 will follow later in the same year.

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China hails spacewalk 'heroes' and sets eyes on moon

BEIJING, Sept 29 (AFP) Sep 29, 2008
The first Chinese man to walk in space was hailed as a national hero Monday, as the emerging space power gave one of its clearest indications yet that it is now reaching for the moon.
Mission commander Zhai Zhigang, 41, and his two fellow astronauts arrived in Beijing to mass-circulation papers filled with praise for their historic 68-hour voyage on board the Shenzhou VII spacecraft.

"Shenzhou VII has touched down. The heroes have returned successfully," a typical headline read in the popular tabloid Beijing Times stretching across the front page.

Mainstream papers devoted two or three full pages to coverage of the space walk, celebrating China's status as only the third country in the world after the United States and the Soviet Union to accomplish the feat independently.

The astronauts landed Sunday on the empty steppes of Inner Mongolia after concluding a mission viewed both here and abroad as emblematic of China's rise in nearly all fields of human endeavour.

Millions were watching the live broadcast Saturday as Zhai embarked on his 15-minute space walk, witnessing the symbolic moment when he waved a Chinese flag in the weightlessness of low orbit some 340 kilometres (210 miles) above the Earth.

"It was a glorious mission, full of challenges with a perfect ending," Zhai said after being pulled out of the return capsule. "I feel proud of the motherland."

Early Monday, the crew were flown to the Beijing space programme headquarters, where ranking officers saluted them and children placed flower garlands around their necks.

The three were then driven in open sedans along the tree-lined roads of the facility, to the applause of large flag-waving crowds, according to a live transmission on state television.

They were to undergo two weeks of preventive quarantine, Xinhua news agency said, as their trips may leave them vulnerable to terrestrial viruses.

Coming ahead of China's October 1 National Day, the Shenzhou VII mission triggered a wave of patriotic sentiment on the Internet.

"I'm proud of the great achievement of the motherland," read a typical posting on the Sina.com website. "I'm full of confidence in the future of the motherland!"

Amid the fervour, the People's Daily suggested putting a Chinese astronaut on the moon was an achievable goal.

"We still do not have an exact timetable for a manned mission to the moon, but I believe a Chinese (astronaut) will set foot on the moon in the not too distant future," an unnamed official told the Communist Party mouthpiece.

It followed remarks Sunday by Wang Zhaoyao, spokesman for the manned space programme, who said it was "necessary" for China to put a man on the moon.

"We believe that as long as we can make further progress in science and technology, we can achieve the dream of a manned space flight to the moon in the near future," he told reporters.

Wang said China's plans called for new missions over the next decade aimed at developing the knowledge required for longer-term space habitation, such as docking technology.

Chinese officials -- especially those attached to the lunar programme -- have occasionally told reporters that they were targeting a manned mission to the moon.

However, authoritative documents, such as a white paper on China's space programme issued in 2006, have so far failed to mention manned lunar missions as an official objective.

Before embarking on a full-scale lunar programme, China is more likely to concentrate on the immediate goal of establishing an orbiting space lab, and upcoming Shenzhou launches will be focused on that objective.

The unmanned Shenzhou VIII will lift off in early 2009, "only months from now," an unidentified source told the China Daily.

The paper said the Shenzhou IX, also unmanned, was scheduled for next year, too.
Elements of Shenzhou VIII and IX will form the basis of a space lab to be opened by the manned Shenzhou X mission, likely to take place in 2010, earlier state media reports said.

The long-term ambition is to develop a fully-fledged space station by 2020 to rival the International Space Station, a joint project involving the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and a clutch of European countries.

 

[Neutral Zone]

Re: china manned space - news and views

Thasnks for the insight yehe.



I would love to see China land on the open sea. Perhaps some day we will see helos dispachted from the 071 LPD or an PLAN CV recover the PRCs "taikonauts". That would be quite a show.

The original plan for Orion was to have Soyuz style recovery on land, but whereas Soyuz and Shenzhou launch from the middle of Asia, Orion will be launched from Cape Canaveral so it needs to have the flotation bags needed for splashdown in case of a launch abort, therefore you might as well plan to have splashdowns anyway. The drawback of splashdowns is that you need to have a pretty sizeable naval group and all the associated costs with fueling the ships and keeping well over a thousand personnel out in the middle of the Pacific. For land recovery you need to have a large area of flat ground, China and Kazakhstan both have huge desert and steppe areas that are suitable. There's an apocryphal story from the 1960's that Lyndon Johnson offered NASA the use of his ranch in Texas as the landing area for the US space program, NASA declined for the stated reason that if the capsule went off course it could easily come down in the Rockies, likely resulting in the deaths of the crew. Also the U.S. is a more intensively developed country and even if you avoid the mountainous areas there's a high chance that you would land on farmland probably resulting in a bill from an angry farmer. So it looks like they're going to go back to splashdowns which as you say will result in some great PR for the USN!

 

[bd popeye]

Re: china manned space - news and views

Thanks for the input gents! great discussion..

This will be of intrest to all... Seems some folks at NASA have the jitters over the Chinese Space program. They need to. A spirit of competion may light a fire under someones butt at NASA..possible the US Congress so the funding may ratchet up for NASA..A friendly competion and cooperation between China and the US in space would be simply great.

The autor of this artice has some opinions very contrary to my own. Intresting article never the less...

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By Peer Meinert Sep 27, 2008, 20:03 GMT

Washington - NASA celebrates its 50th anniversary Wednesday, but the US space agency is hardly in the mood for partying.

Even NASA boss Michael Griffin, who is usually rather a cold technician, recently sounded the alarm. After all, the agency's greatest triumphs, notably the first moon landing, took place almost 40 years ago.

In public, Griffin restrains himself, but in private, he bluntly expresses his concern that US dominance in space could soon give way to China.
It was the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that gave the United States its greatest national triumph since the end of World War II.

The images of July 20, 1969, are unforgettable: astronauts in their cumbersome but shiny suits before a grey lunar background, their footprints in the moon dust and the Stars and Stripes staked against a sky in which floated planet Earth.

These images are proudly engraved in the nation's conscience. Space, and particularly manned missions to space, became part of the American ethos of a pioneering spirit mixed with a desire to push limits. The men who dared to travel to space at the time were hailed as modern heroes.

However, times have changed. Griffin's fear that the Chinese could beat NASA in the second race to the moon would indeed be a real nightmare for the United States.

The North American giant space apparatus is planning to send another astronaut to the moon by 2020, as a stepping stone to Mars, but the work on the new Orion spacecraft is going slower than planned because of budgetary problems.

'A Chinese landing on the moon prior to our own return will create a stark perception that the US lags behind not only Russia but also China in space,' Griffin wrote in an internal document that was made public, to the US government's great displeasure.

No country has made as much progress as China in recent years in relation to manned space missions. Its advance has come as the United States has seen its budgets for space exploration shrink.

'We spent many tens of billions of dollars during the Apollo era to purchase a commanding lead in space over all nations on Earth,' Griffin recalled while complaining that NASA's budget has been cut by about 20 per cent since 1992, once inflation is taken into account.

'We've been living off the fruit of that purchase for 40 years and have not ... chosen to invest at a level that would preserve that commanding lead,' Griffin charged.

The US space outlay really started with the 'Sputnik crisis' of October 1957 when the Soviet Union became the first country to launch a satellite into space.

In the Cold War setting, the blow showed that the Russians - so often derided in science and technical matters - were capable of delivering surprises and outdoing the Americans.

US president Dwight Eisenhower reacted promptly by founding a space agency, and NASA started work on October 1, 1958. It initially had 8,000 employees but has seen that number grow to about 18,000 today.

The first leader among NASA engineers was Wernher von Braun, the German engineer who helped German dictator Adolf Hitler develop the V2 rocket that reduced British cities to rubble and ashes in World War II.

Braun transferred the secret missile plans of the Nazis to his new employers at NASA. His cooperation was at first kept secret, and many US citizens were shocked when the German's involvement became known.

The Soviets initially retained their lead in the space race. On April 12, 1961, they launched the first human being into space, Yuri Gagarin. John Glenn followed as the first American in space on February 20, 1962.

It was the young US president John Kennedy who first set 'the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.'

The Apollo programme was launched. Never before had the United States successfully undertaken such a Herculean scientific and technical task. In the middle of the Cold War, it established the dominance of the United States in space and technical matters, seemingly for good.

And yet, the triumph of the moon landing was the zenith of its effort, and that was 40 years ago.

The Vietnam War, a lack of funds and growing doubts about the expense and purpose of manned space missions put a brake on this drive.

Accidents like the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle in January 1986 and the Columbia catastrophe of February 2003, which caused the deaths of seven astronauts each, also contributed to damping down enthusiasm.

Shuttles more generally turned out to be flops.(edit..Say what??) Initially, the reusable vehicles were supposed to make space missions cheaper. However, the bills did not decrease, and the complicated shuttles instead ate up the bulk of the NASA budget for decades.

Finally, NASA decided to retire the two-decades-old ageing shuttles for good by May 2010 and focus instead on returning to the moon with a view to using the Earth's natural satellite as a jumping off point for further space exploration.

In meantime, the US will lack its own transportation to the International Space Station, built largely with US money and effort, for at least five years and will have to beg a place in the considerably smaller and less comfortable Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

Years ago, such a Russian monopoly in space would have been unthinkable for the United States, and so while it celebrates its birthday, NASA must fight off the sombre mood of being left somehow behind.
The new US space capsule Orion is not set to be operational before at least 2015.

To rekindle enthusiasm around space, President George W Bush talked of the new goals of putting a US astronaut back on the moon by 2020 and on Mars by 2037.

In the meantime, Congress is about to pass several laws that would allow NASA to support Russia's Soyuz space programme in order to keep US access to the space station and to demand that NASA keep shuttles serviceable enough to be resurrected if need be, the Washington Post reported Saturday.

 

[Scratch]

Re: china manned space - news and views

Essentially for a space craft to be efficient, you need 'less' of the space craft as much as possible and more 'payload' which can be interchangeable with 'distance'.

I accept that from the pure performance efficiency point. But space is in some cases also a usefull factor. One could do a lot of experiments that wouldn't have been possible in a Soyuz I think. And the Mir was only available from the late '80s. If you have a space station in orbit you just need rockets for transport, and in that role the Apollo style is obviously more efficient. But if you have to take your laboratory with you all the time, the space inside the Shuttle was an advantage I think.
Of course it may have been more efficient to put a station into orbit in the first place, but since this wasn't the case, the Shuttle perhaps was the next best thing.
I also guess it would have been considerably more difficult to e.g. repair the Hubble telescope from a Soyuz space craft.

I also wonder if at some point it will be even more efficient to have a space craft taking off conventionally, but that idea seems to have sliped.

 

[Neutral Zone]

Re: china manned space - news and views

Very interesting Popeye!

I think that speech by Griffin was aimed at Obama. At the start of his campaign he was proposing to delay the Orion program by up to 5 years, he has since moved away from that and by reviving the idea of a space race, Griffin is trying to protect Orion by making it clear that there will be prestige implications for America if it doesn't at least try to put humans on the Moon by 2020.

 

[bd popeye]

Re: china manned space - news and views

Very interesting Popeye!

I think that speech by Griffin was aimed at Obama. At the start of his campaign he was proposing to delay the Orion program by up to 5 years, he has since moved away from that and by reviving the idea of a space race, Griffin is trying to protect Orion by making it clear that there will be prestige implications for America if it doesn't at least try to put humans on the Moon by 2020.

I feel the same way. He's just starting the pressure on the next administration for a major funding boost for NASA.

 

[crobato]

Re: china manned space - news and views

I accept that from the pure performance efficiency point. But space is in some cases also a usefull factor. One could do a lot of experiments that wouldn't have been possible in a Soyuz I think. And the Mir was only available from the late '80s. If you have a space station in orbit you just need rockets for transport, and in that role the Apollo style is obviously more efficient. But if you have to take your laboratory with you all the time, the space inside the Shuttle was an advantage I think.
Of course it may have been more efficient to put a station into orbit in the first place, but since this wasn't the case, the Shuttle perhaps was the next best thing.
I also guess it would have been considerably more difficult to e.g. repair the Hubble telescope from a Soyuz space craft.

I also wonder if at some point it will be even more efficient to have a space craft taking off conventionally, but that idea seems to have sliped.

To repair the Hubble for example, if the space craft is modular, you can bring a special docking module with let's say, Soyuz or Apollo.

To illustrate my case, I will only give you a metaphor and all you need to do is think about it.

You don't need a Mack truck to go to the grocery store.