China's Space Program News Thread

[Richard Santos]

Regarding post #7991:

It’s basically a double ended robot arm with a wrist and a hand at each end, when one of its hands grabs a mounting point on the outside of the spacecraft, that hand‘s wrist turns into a should joint. Electrically I doubt this is difficult to implement. It would be like a series universal aerial bus ports on the outside, that can connect to a Universal Serial Bus style connection with ports on both ends of the arm.

If the connections in the hand are made to be androgynous, then two or more such robot arms can be used together where the the arms grasp eachother by the hand, thus extending the reach of the arm to multiple times its original length.

 

[ougoah]

Military chips (and radiation resistant ones for space) do not need to be of the leading generation like commercial ones do. China has long been self dependent on these types of chips. Russia, I would not be surprised if they too are mostly self dependent.

Maybe there are some technical reasons why some commercial satellites require more modern chips that approach or are of the leading generation but Russia like India, does have a basic state backed chip research and at least in India's case, even fabrication. This isn't difficult or impressive for India since the chip research and fab tech they have is roughly early 2000s standards and entirely based on foreign equipment. It does not have any domestic equipment and has not domesticised a single fab technology/method like China always has. India is not sanctioned on this like Russia has been.

China has the market and the technology + talent to overcome these sanctions and China's honestly always been quite a bit closer to leading generation at every step of the way and in every sub-sector of semiconductor fabrication with its own equipment and fab technology that it has domesticated/mastered with the latest one being DUV and DUV taken to heights and domains no other has - allowing China to do 14nm and possibly 7nm (we'll see if a year's time if it can be commercialised). China leads the world in semiconductor design and research... I don't think any other can be considered more broadly competent in design and research than China, of course Korea and Japan dominate their niche fields with Korea honestly surpassing Japan in this area. Russia never had such a market advantage like China enjoys and didn't have as much state funding to "keep up" with the lead at every step. Once sanctions hit, they were crippled by it in a way China hasn't been even a year after total fab equipment bans - although Huawei may have to rely on domestic market and user appeal to survive in smartphones which I hope they don't drop since they can offset relative performance loss with user appeal OS catered to Chinese market.

If India is unable to cooperate with Russia (assuming there is a genuine chip access problem for Russia) due to lower technology (2000s level doesn't cut it for Russia's requirements) and political reasons since India's entire state financed military and space chips are foreign dependent for fab, then China can easily help out. China has no reason to worry about competition since it's long been banned from providing launch services for anyone who uses anything American. Any Russia and Chinese space cooperation would only give more reason to supply chips (anywhere Russia cannot) if they aren't already doing so.

 

[ougoah]

Regarding post #7991:

It’s basically a double ended robot arm with a wrist and a hand at each end, when one of its hands grabs a mounting point on the outside of the spacecraft, that hand‘s wrist turns into a should joint. Electrically I doubt this is difficult to implement. It would be like a series universal aerial bus ports on the outside, that can connect to a Universal Serial Bus style connection with ports on both ends of the arm.

If the connections in the hand are made to be androgynous, then two or more such robot arms can be used together where the the arms grasp eachother by the hand, thus extending the reach of the arm to multiple times its original length.

It seems to be at least slightly more technically difficult than any other equivalent space arm from ESA, Canada, and Japan.

Those all have a fixed end where electronic and heavy duty mechanical connections to the spacecraft are located. The Chinese one having this function has to have both ends detachable and all electronic and mechanical connections have to be done through the detachable mechanisms on each end. That's fairly impressive. I'm sure the others can do the same and probably will be in the future since it is a rather good idea so it's not exactly a technical marvel, it's an impressive one but totally achievable by any competent team in Japan and Canada.

 

[Richard Santos]

Well, this arm does suffer from a slightly heightened risk of detaching completely from the station and floating off into space if it were accidentally overloaded.

A fault in control when this arm is “crawling” from one mounting point to another could also leave it floating off into space. Any similar fault in a fixed arm would be easily recoverable.

The idea is clever, but there can be reasons why it might not be as good an idea as it first appears. We will see.

 

[ougoah]

One has to laugh at how pathetic the US is. Constantly banning and sanctioning competitors and still feeling insecure enough to make up nonsense and propagate lies about their "adversaries". In an even playing field, even with their resource and influence advantage, the US these days simply does not feel comfortable even having near peers. It wants to be the sole power that is capable of any important technical feat while also controlling every other smaller player and never letting them have any significant influence or technical ability without having the option of immediately removing those abilities at will.

This is the future for humanity under the previous superpower dynamic. US as superpower that holds ultimate control over the world with an illusion of independence and share of the pie for those that suck up and behave to best according to their interests and will. The rest would be forever kept down in a state that doesn't even allow them to develop or get the means to develop according to their sovereign wishes. If there was no China or Russia, Iran or North Korea (the next non vassal powers that could have the military or potential means to eventually be a thorn for the US), it would go around exercising its will with even less of a facade for morality and the undeveloped nations like India would not receive a care or mention. If anything it would be a sort of modern return to British India style governing with more overt direct governing from London and Washington.

 

[Kejora]

Well, this arm does suffer from a slightly heightened risk of detaching completely from the station and floating off into space if it were accidentally overloaded.

A fault in control when this arm is “crawling” from one mounting point to another could also leave it floating off into space. Any similar fault in a fixed arm would be easily recoverable.

The idea is clever, but there can be reasons why it might not be as good an idea as it first appears. We will see.

ISS has been using this arm design for years without problem, so I wouldn't be too concerned about its reliability.

 

[ougoah]

Well, this arm does suffer from a slightly heightened risk of detaching completely from the station and floating off into space if it were accidentally overloaded.

A fault in control when this arm is “crawling” from one mounting point to another could also leave it floating off into space. Any similar fault in a fixed arm would be easily recoverable.

The idea is clever, but there can be reasons why it might not be as good an idea as it first appears. We will see.

There are some more risks to this design for sure but for the purposes, it won't encounter or be used in any situation which requires it to deal with forces that overload its design parameters.

I doubt any such fault of complete detachment would be possible since it surely must be programmed to have at least one side attached to spacecraft. So unless there is a software fault and human error involved, such a risk is no greater than overloading or other failures that essentially cause similar or greater consequences.

I think they applied this method because of the known plans for the eventual space station requiring such a capability - traversing to complete tasks that are unique or particular to this station design.

 

[Temstar]

Regarding post #7991:

It’s basically a double ended robot arm with a wrist and a hand at each end, when one of its hands grabs a mounting point on the outside of the spacecraft, that hand‘s wrist turns into a should joint. Electrically I doubt this is difficult to implement. It would be like a series universal aerial bus ports on the outside, that can connect to a Universal Serial Bus style connection with ports on both ends of the arm.

If the connections in the hand are made to be androgynous, then two or more such robot arms can be used together where the the arms grasp eachother by the hand, thus extending the reach of the arm to multiple times its original length.

Yes the ends are androgynous, besides the walking this point is also demonstrated in the video when they showed that the big arm on Tianhe and the small arm on Wentian is in fact capable of being joined together to form one super long arm.

This also means options like "dextre" style fingers and oh say a scissor style attachment are possible.

 

[ougoah]

ISS has been using this arm design for years without problem, so I wouldn't be too concerned about its reliability.

No the Canadarm on the ISS moves around on rails. The Japanese space arm is fixed. The ESA space arm is fixed.

The Chinese space arm is double ended and can detach on both ends and be used to traverse a spacecraft. This involves a different level of engineering and design. Not as simple as it looks but obviously no doubt achievable by the others if they see merit in such a solution for their unique problems/station designs. Also not without greater potential for issues since it is a much more complex design not just for the software controlling detachment and operation but also the mechanisms and electronic connections on both ends.

 

[Temstar]

I'm told, although I haven't found a video of this: the Canadarm on ISS can in fact walk end over end like this too, and it did so in early days of ISS construction. Some time later ISS got a system where the arm has one end planted on a little rail mounted cart which can move around on the ISS quickly, saving the need for walking.

Can anyone confirm?