China's Space Program News Thread

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TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
That
They raised the orbit back in December and then Xinhua announced the end of Tiangong-1 on 21 march this year. Considering it was supposed to deorbit in 2013, did they finally run out of fuel? If its out fuel are they just going to watch it burn up on re-entry?

Someone did some calculations and said on it current course, it will deorbit around May-June 2018.
that I think is the just of it. Until its orbit drops to burn up its a runaway train. Rather than attempt a controlled destruction the orbit will degrade and crashing sometime along its orbital track in a window of 2 months means that... They have no idea where its coming down. Lesson learned from Skylab was that just because it is supposed to burn up doesn't mean that it will.
 

delft

Brigadier
They're unlikely to deviate from Russian practice of dropping it into the South Pacific. If there is a technical failure in the vehicle a satellite can be send to connect to it and guide it down.
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
It's quite amazing that no one seems to have yet introduced a systematic form of refuelling procedures for their space assets.

The lifespan of space assets is determined entirely by how long their onboard fuel stocks lasts. When that fuels runs out, millions and billions of dollars of perfectly functional equipment is deliberately destroyed.

That seems like an astonishingly wasteful way to proceed.

The technology to refuel satellites and space stations surely has been available for years if not decades?

Fair enough it might not be cost effective to send up a ship/pod every time something needs a top up, but the thing is, you only need to send the tanker up once, after that, it can stay in orbit and potentially top up dozens or even hundreds of satellites before it runs out of fuel itself.

Once it's onboard fuel stocks runs out, you can send up a fuel pod to it to latch onto, and use that to top up dozens or hundreds more satellites until the next fuel pod is needed.

Such a system should extend space asset lives to several times what they are now.

With all the resources and money saved from not having to keep rebuilding what are now effectively throw-away satellites and spacecraft, mankind could afford to put together far more ambitious projects, like an orbital satellite repair and upgrading station, where old or damaged satellites could be towed to be upgraded and/or repaired to further extend their useful service lives.
 

vesicles

Colonel
It's quite amazing that no one seems to have yet introduced a systematic form of refuelling procedures for their space assets.

The lifespan of space assets is determined entirely by how long their onboard fuel stocks lasts. When that fuels runs out, millions and billions of dollars of perfectly functional equipment is deliberately destroyed.

That seems like an astonishingly wasteful way to proceed.

The technology to refuel satellites and space stations surely has been available for years if not decades?

Fair enough it might not be cost effective to send up a ship/pod every time something needs a top up, but the thing is, you only need to send the tanker up once, after that, it can stay in orbit and potentially top up dozens or even hundreds of satellites before it runs out of fuel itself.

Once it's onboard fuel stocks runs out, you can send up a fuel pod to it to latch onto, and use that to top up dozens or hundreds more satellites until the next fuel pod is needed.

Such a system should extend space asset lives to several times what they are now.

With all the resources and money saved from not having to keep rebuilding what are now effectively throw-away satellites and spacecraft, mankind could afford to put together far more ambitious projects, like an orbital satellite repair and upgrading station, where old or damaged satellites could be towed to be upgraded and/or repaired to further extend their useful service lives.

I guess that question is not technological feasibility, but financial feasibility and applicability. A single satellite lasts a long time in orbit. By the time its fuel is gone, the satellite technology has changed so dramatically that the old satellite would have become so obsolete that it becomes meaningless to play with the old one.

Much like the HDTV's nowadays. The technology changes so fast. By the time your tv is broken, much better tv has come out. No one wants to fix their broken tv anymore. its much easier to simply get a new one. No one wants to be stuck with an old tube TV anymore. No matter how much little gizmos you can put on the tube tv, it can never compete against a 4K 3D curved 80" smart LED HDTV.
 
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plawolf

Lieutenant General
I guess that question is not technological feasibility, but financial feasibility and applicability. A single satellite lasts a long time in orbit. By the time its fuel is gone, the satellite technology has changed so dramatically that the old satellite would have become so obsolete that it becomes meaningless to play with the old one.

Much like the HDTV's nowadays. The technology changes so fast. By the time your tv is broken, much better tv has come out. No one wants to fix their broken tv anymore. its much easier to simply get a new one. No one wants to be stuck with an old tube TV anymore.

No one (in the western world and maybe China) bothers to repair TVs because TVs have fallen so much in price. I doubt many people would take such a wasteful attitude with more expensive assets cars for example.

Satellites and space vehicles are by no means cheap, at millions of dollars a pop. Average life for LEO satellites is 5 years, and 8 for GSO. With such short lifespans, nor do obsoleteness affect them much.

Few countries' militaries still possess sub metre resolution optical imagining satellites. Most countries are still launching brand new imagining birds with worse specs.

If you could top up your obsolete military satellites, you can easily transfer them to civilian agency (to save them having to send up a new one with the same or worse specs) or even sell it on and potentially make a huge chunk of the original build and launch costs back.

If you take all those savings and invest in modular satellite design and an orbital satellite repair, upgrading and recycling station.

Yes, it will cost a lot to set up and run initially, but over the medium to long run, it should yield massive savings.

Applying such a measure to GSO satellites would also massively help to resolve the growing space junk problem building in that region because of the current practice of dumping dying satellites into 'orbital graveyards', since GSO birds are too far away to be pulled into the atmosphere to burn up like LEO birds.
 

Quickie

Colonel
That that I think is the just of it. Until its orbit drops to burn up its a runaway train. Rather than attempt a controlled destruction the orbit will degrade and crashing sometime along its orbital track in a window of 2 months means that... They have no idea where its coming down. Lesson learned from Skylab was that just because it is supposed to burn up doesn't mean that it will.
Tiangong 1 is only about the weight of 2 large satellites. They are possibly hoping for the best case scenario of the Tiangong 1 burning up completely during reentry?
 

Engineer

Major
I can shed some light on this.
  • Things degrade in space, like batteries and solar panels. Fuel isn't the only thing.
  • Having a tanker in orbit is no good. Other than constellation, most satellites have an unique orbit. It takes a lot of fuel to change orbit to go from one satellite to another.
  • It takes fuel to lift fuel into space. A kilogram of fuel gets pricey, fast!
  • Fuel tanks on satellite are pressurized. There is no air to re-pressurize the tanks in the vacuum of space.
  • On aircraft, every kilogram counts. You think that's strict? On a satellite, every gram counts. Docking mechanism is too heavy, not mission-critical, so out it goes. Extra plumbing is too heavy, not mission-critical, so out it goes too.
  • KISS principle. Like writing a software -- the more lines there are, the more error prone it gets. So the key is to write as less as possible.
 
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