Here’s the link–
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993965
Can they do it?
What effect will this have on the US Space program?
On China’s global prestige?
Opinions? Comments?
i think it’s a great thing to happen. Ever since the Mars mission, a lot of people seem to have lost interest in Space.
I hope in my lifetime, major discoveries and/or 1st contact would happen. Of course, i hope they’re on the desirable side.
well, I don’t have anything technical to add. I just want to say that I hope they do it. This would be a great way to expand space exploration and maybe jumpstart America’s own lagging space program.
Excuse me, but what does (essentially) duplicating a russian space mission of the 1960’sprove? From what I see, the Chinese will be using a Soyuz-type capsule, which will orbit two or three astronauts.
Sorry, but this ranks as one of the more bizarre propaganda efforts of the chinese.
(a) Yes they should be able. The Shenzhou spacecraft is a derivative from the Soyuz design and they have tested it and the home-grown booster repeatedly over a few years (apparently took longer to work out the bugs on the derivative engineering than they thought at first).
(b) It serves as a demonstrator of capability to adapt technologies, even if it’s no demonstrator of native new technologies.
© It’s essentially a prestige kind of exercise, for now. They will contrast how “advanced” Europe and Japan have to hitch rides with the US and Russia for anything manned, and specially how right now the Russians have the only way up and down, and a precarious one while at that. Specially good for prop purposes among non-European nations; and of course, it’ll feel good for the nation who invented the rocket to finally have their people riding one around the Earth.
(d) according to the reports at the astronautix.com site, the Chinese Space Agency HAS thought it over, realized nobody’s “racing” and so has decided to save a bundle and cut down on some of the overambitious projections that had been leaked out in the recent past.
(e) however, any demonstrated manned spaceflight capability/experience improves China’s bargaining position to be taken into account for any major space activity – such as future space station expansions, space-resource claims, space treaties, joint missions, etc.
Up to three guys for up to six days in a Soyuz-sized capsule? Man, even for the sake of advancing space exploration, which I’m 100% in favor of, that sounds like a miserable six days for those guys!
I hope they can successfully do it, though.
Maybe they too want to see the Great Wall from space.
Mama Tiger, from what I’ve seen, the Chinese capsules are a bit bigger than the Soyuz. Somebody above mentioned astronautix.com – it’s a MAJOR space junkie site. It gets a bit technical, but is very interesting.
Meh. It’s been done. Color me unimpressed.
It’d be nice to have someone else up there doing stuff once in a while.
I am obliged to wonder how many starving Chinese people or dying AIDS patients could have been saved with the BILLIONS of yuan they have dumped into this science fair project. In an age of joint aerospace ventures, China’s effort amounts to nothing more than reinventing the wheel.
Why the heck isn’t the mainstream media all over this?
The mainstream media is being as nationalistic as possible right now. Great feats by other nations are not currently on the press agenda.
:::plaintive violin music plays in background:::
Yeah, that’s right. So long as ANYBODY is starving, or just plain hungry, or even DIETING, or so long as anybody has AIDS, or any disease, or maybe just isn’t FEELING quite well, we must expend all our efforts to help them. We must never waste our energies by doing anything to advance the frontiers of human knowledge and human space while ANYONE is in ANY way uncomfortable. Because as we all know, every advance in technology and science was only possible because EVERYONE on EARTH was totally comfortable at the time.
:::end plaintive violin music:::
How long until a Chinese ship dock at the ISS?
Someone has to post the column now, and it might as well be me.
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Well, maybe because the mainstream media’s grandfathers covered the “man in space” story 40 YEARS AGO. Let’s not attack media outlets for being “nationalistic” for not going crazy over something that has been accomplished and repeated over 100 (200?) times over the last 1-2 generations.
That said, congrats China.
Thanks neuroman. So it is true that they’ll possibly be able to see it along with several other man made structures but not from anticipated later flights that might take them to the surface of the moon. Interesting.
I wonder if now the new big dam, (Three Gorges?) will be visable as well.
Not necessarily, and it would not be new. Before the space stations there were a few 4-to-5 day 3-man Soyuz flights and Soyuz 9 did a 17.5-day freeflight 2-man endurance mission, the longest mission on any capsule-type ship not docked to a space station. With the orbital workspace module attached, the Soyuz has a habitable volume of 9 cubic metres (= 927 cu. feet. Cozy but bearable for a week. More than an Apollo CSM, though not as “open”), the Shenzhou should be maybe 5% bigger according to the numbers released. The really cramped sitting-atop-each-other compartments we often see on TV are just the reentry modules (Soyuz protects for reentry exactly only the minimum aerodynamically-efficient enclosure for 3 men and survival gear. Everything else is ditched.)