China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
That's rather encouraging.
I continue to believe that the prospect of a reusable CZ-9 is one of the most important industrial projects China may have on its balance sheet in the future, with both significant commercial and military consequences, and the earlier they get on it the better.
The presence of the new resuable CZ-9 and here seen with grid fins on the first stage, greatly suggests it is indeed the newer reusable one, perhaps the 24 kerolox one from September -- and the lack of the older CZ-9 variants with boosters, hopefully means it is a signal that there is movement that the focus will be on the new reusable CZ-9(22) kerolox pattern, and that the old CZ-9 with boosters will be ditched.
After all, the CZ-5DY/G appeared at Zhuhai back in like 2018 in one of its earliest depictions, and at the time it wasn't signed off either and a few years later it has been confirmed as an official project.
I think you mean have entered the Mengtian module.Taikonauts have entered the Wentian module.
It is amazing to see that the Chinese Space Station is now complete. I started following the program in 2011 after China got discriminated off the ISS and then they decided to build their own. And the plan was to complete it in around 10 years, which they have done even with some Long March 5 delays. That in itself is amazing and certainly deserves more recognition. Unfortunately the program receives almost no attention in the West. Everybody should definitely look out for 26-28 november when we will see 6 astronauts onboard at once!
China is now the only country to have both independently built a modular space station and successfully operated a rover on Mars. Congratulations China.
From what I read China had built back-up modules in case a module/launch failed or was lost. Now that the space station has been completed without any module failure, what happens to all those backups?
Can they be added to current space station to enlarge it even more?
Can they be added to current space station to enlarge it even more?
A back up core module yes. A plan for phase 2 expansion that uses it has been floating around since before Tianhe-1's launch. You launch it and attach it to the forward docking port of Tianhe-1 and that gives you room for another two lab modules to double the size of the station.
This rendering simply cloned Mengtian and Wentian minus their solar panels for lab 3 and lab 4 but if Phase 2 really happens there's no reason why they have to be like that. They may not even be Chinese modules.
Equally, they could have a 2nd space station, it may even be preferable to separate experiments this way.
Sustaining two space stations are expensive
