China's Space Program News Thread

Status
Not open for further replies.

Temstar

Brigadier
Registered Member
LMAO if true

Russia going for junior partner status on space cooperation. Should start spending some real cash if it wants to be seen as an equal
So what happened here is CSS is in a 42 degree orbit. The lower the inclination the more bonus you gain in delta-V during launch from Earth's spin. The closer your launch site is to the equator the lower your minimum inclination. You can always launch from low latitude launch sites into high inclination orbit easily (eg: the most extreme case you can launch from any launch site into a polar orbit no problem). To launch from high latitude launch site into low inclination orbit requires the launch vehicle to do a "dog leg" maneouver during launch which wastes delta-V and/or reduces maximum payload for a given rocket.

Wenchang (LM-5B and LM-7) - 20 degrees
Jiuquan (LM-2F) - 41 degrees
Baikonur - 46 degrees
Cape Canaveral - 28 degrees

So you can see Wenchang due to its advantageous location could have placed the station in a much lower inclination orbit, but in order to accommodate Shenzhou launched by LM-2F from Jiuquan they ended up putting the station in 42 degree orbit.

42 degrees isn't really that far off the 46 degrees from Baikonur, so if Russians wanted to they could do a four degree dog leg during ascent and be in the correct orbit. Depending on your launch vehicle stack though you may or may not have enough delta-V to perform this. Alternatively you might just launch into a 46 degree inclined orbit, then either use the spacecraft's engines or via some kind of orbital tug and perform an inclination change into 42 degrees. It's not an insurmountable problem mealy an annoyance.

ISS is on a 51.6 degree inclined orbit precisely to accommodate Soyuz and Proton from Baikonur, it does mean launches from Cape Canaveral to the ISS isn't as efficient as it could have been.
 

voyager1

Captain
Registered Member
I mean, i dont fault the Chinese for declining the Russian offer. Ideally all transport services should be made by China so that it can strengthen its domestic space industry.

So all rocket launches for cargo and crew should be China made to promote space development and private space enterprises.

By allowing Russia to offer trnasportation services it means that you weaken your space providers by having the Russians eating into the limited share of space supply launches
 

caudaceus

Senior Member
Registered Member
And what is your point? What does what you are saying have anything to do with "active de-orbiting" anyway?

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

This is what happened to the second stage of Falcon 9 (the almighty god like SpaceX) after launch on March 25 2021, it fell on a farm in Washington state.
View attachment 71522
Imagine a person standing in the middle of this spot?
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
View attachment 71523

Probably made some cargo cult centered around God Emperor Musk.
 

danielchin

Junior Member
I'm not an expert but found this comparison is interesting, basically the ISS has wasted tons of weight in numerous knots/adapters/huge truss and inefficient solar panels, it's lab modules (US/Russia/Europe/Japan) is crowded and has only similar numbers of experimental modules.
Again, take some salt while reading.
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
 

voyager1

Captain
Registered Member
I'm not an expert but found this comparison is interesting, basically the ISS has wasted tons of weight in numerous knots/adapters/huge truss and inefficient solar panels, it's lab modules (US/Russia/Europe/Japan) is crowded and has only similar numbers of experimental modules.
Again, take some salt while reading.
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
But thats why we are talking about comparing their pressurized volume

As per @Temstar previous post, the ISS has 9x times more volume than the CSS. Note hoever that with all modules assembled the volume of CSS will probably double
 

Quickie

Colonel
I mean, i dont fault the Chinese for declining the Russian offer. Ideally all transport services should be made by China so that it can strengthen its domestic space industry.

So all rocket launches for cargo and crew should be China made to promote space development and private space enterprises.

By allowing Russia to offer trnasportation services it means that you weaken your space providers by having the Russians eating into the limited share of space supply launches

The other reason, with the proposed Russian orbital inclination, all Chinese missions to its space station would have to expend additional Delta-V which would mean additional fuel/cost, and a less than optimum max payload to the space station.
 

Temstar

Brigadier
Registered Member
Pressurised volume:
ISS - 915.6 m^3
CSS - 110 m^3

That's not including the expansion plan, if CSS gets the full 6 modules you would expect that volume to be about double.

Another good metric is power. I don't know how much power generation capacity CSS will have when finished bit I heard it's a lot. ISS is 84-120 kW average power (240kW in direct sunlight)
I found some numbers for Tianhe's panels:

Each panels are about 13m long, 2.7m wide, total surface area for a pair bit over 70 square meters. they're super duper efficient and can reach 30% efficiency at converting light to electricity, resulting in max 18kW. In comparison ISS solar panels are 14% efficient.

Assuming Mentian and Wentian's panels are similar performance stats (and are much bigger at 30m long) you can start to see why CSS has such high power generation for its size.
 

gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
No way Russia would seriously demand an orbit change with the station already launched.
They probably asked for a change before the launch but China for its own reasons declined to do so
I dont think that the station itself can change its orbit a lot.

That is what they did basically. But it was probably too late in the process for the Chinese to accommodate design changes to the station.
Most likely the Russians would have wanted the station to be in a place they could also get there from Vostochny. The Russians don't plan to use Baikonur in the long term.

For what it's worth the Russians do have a module they can retrofit to use as a core station module. It even has its own power supply and everything. So they can do their own station and that is what will likely happen.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top