For the longest time, the Chinese space program was basically driven by nearly identical copies of other hardware. But now they are doing original things in space, building their own rockets from their own designs, etc.
China steals a lot of tech. They always have, and always will. But their homegrown science and tech capability is pretty substantial now.
Granted.
I was mostly responding to the contention in the cited article as interpreted by @PastTense that sheer volume of published papers in undifferentiated journals was some sort of meaningful metric of actual scientific advances or technological / engineering capability. IMO as to China specifically it has not been so historically and still is not today.
There is no doubt their current engineering is much less derivative than it once was. And that more actual cutting edge science is being done as well. And space in particular is an area where they’re making good progress on their own.
Oh yeah, I have lots of problems with how China does stuff. It hurt me personally: I had my name on a couple of patents in the past, and in the last five years of work I submittee two new patent applications - and couldn’t get them through because of Chinese patent complaints about prior knowledge - which weren’t true and didn’t even reference the same ideas, but I’d have to spend valuable time writing up documentation to refute the challenge, succeed - then they’d just issue a different specious challenge. They were doing that to everyone for a while - blocking patents while they likely stole the ideas and patented them themselves after the original patent filers gave up.
The article says:
The Nature Index, which tracks data on author affiliations in 82 high quality journals, found that authors affiliated with Chinese institutions are more prolific than their US counterparts in physical sciences, chemistry, Earth and environmental sciences. The only category in which the US is still in the lead is life sciences.
So these are not “fake results published in fake journals”.
MIT doesn’t send you to count rats in Outer Mongolia if you don’t publish enough.
Here’s an interesting blog post that arrived in my in-box today after I had written my posts above. Fakin’ It the Modern Way | Science | AAAS.
I don’t have a dog in this fight myself, but ISTM that overall the picture is pretty murky. The Chinese may in fact be producing a bunch of good science published in good journals. But it appears they’re still producing a lot of junk science in semi-good journals too.
The next Falcon 9 launch is scheduled for later today. If successful, it will be the 200th consecutive launch without a failure. The next best rockets in terms of success streaks was the Soyuz, which had a 100-launch success streak in the 1980s, and the Delta II, also with a 100 successes in a row.
The Falcon 9 may double the record for consecutive launch success tonight | Ars Technica
It’s not often that you get all three of faster, better, cheaper, but here we are. I have to imagine that reusability has helped their reliability by allowing them to inspect intact boosters and discover marginal design features (i.e., ones that have not yet caused a failure, but are closer to the edge than they expected).
And each one has 9 engines. Does anyone know if any have failed during the successful flights? if not, that’s 1800 engine flights without a failure.
I’m afraid crap science is the norm all over the place. We have overproduced scientists and lowered standards to allow them to publish. The result is a lot of bad or trivial ‘science’.
Here’s a list of 300 COVID papers that have been retracted already:
They come down on all sides of the various debates.
Once:
Still a pretty good record. There was only one other failure from back in 2012, and with a previous generation of the engine (the 1C instead of the 1D).
But occasionally what looks like crap science turns out to be a significant breakthrough which original reviewers didn’t recognize–so it’s important this stuff be published.
It’s important real stuff be published. But stuff that is simply made-up falsehoods is utterly harmful with no redeeming value whatsoever. But deliberate fakery for career purposes is a sizeable fraction of the total.
Sigh:
Starliner delayed again.
Boeing has found two new issues via the latest review.
Parachute System - soft links (made of fabric) load limit data wasn’t correct and restest showed failure at a loading point.
Wire harnesses covered in tape. The tape is now determined to be flammable.
Boeing is standing down the preps for the CFT mission.
To repeat one of the jokes in the tweet replies: “Inflammable means flammable? What a country!”
SpaceX will have flown 40-something astronauts on Crew Dragon before Starliner flies one. Maybe 50-something. The programs were started at the same time, and Boeing was supposed to be the reliable, conservative choice (which is why they got paid more).
ESA Mars livestream today (June 2) at 1800 CEST (1600 UTC)
(live minus travel time)
Brian
If you can drive up to then hover within a few tens of meters of a freely orbiting object for months, you can certainly cast a physical net around it as effectively as you can charge it electrostatically.
Yes, your nets are probably finite in number, but your electrostatic charging is very very slow. Which way moves more debris per unit time, and more importantly per unit dollars, remains to be seen.
It would require quite a net to move something the size of a bus, and fuel. It might work better to attach some thrusters and drag it into the atmosphere, or set course for the sun.
It’s the same effort whether you drag it by electrostatic attraction or by a net and string. But there’s going to be a lot more conversion inefficiencies in your electrostatic system. Rope is pretty well 100% energy efficient.
Agree that dragging a large heavy object off station into a de-orbit or safe parking orbit will take a lot of oomph. Regardless of how the total oomph is delivered. The cool thing about space is that it’s (mostly) frictionless. So even a tiny effort applied for long enough produces significant results. Unlike you or I tying a rope to a school bus then yanking on the rope futilely.
ISTM the way to de-orbit stuff is with magnetic drag tethers. Attach the tether to the target and let the interaction of the orbiter’s motion and the Earth’s electromagnetic field, plus the solar wind field, generate drag to slow the orbiter down until it re-enters. Much more time-effective at LEO than at GEO, but at least now you’re harnessing the power of the Earth, not the power of your puny interceptor, to do the real work.
That’s long seemed the best route to me, simply because you don’t need to expend any fuel to accelerate the object to be de-orbited. Nor do you need to secure it in any complex way, as you might a net or tow-cable. At its simplest, it could just be a loop of cable with a resistor in the middle and a sticky/magnetic pad for attaching it to an object*; it can just hang there and slowly turn orbital velocity into radiant heat. If you want to be fancy, maybe you could use the generated juice to power a small transmitter broadcasting telemetry or a warn-off.
*With the caveat that either attachment method has complexities of its own, especially if you’re using a drone to locate objects and attach the tethers. You’d need vacuum-compatible adhesive, and/or the drone would have to be smart enough to find a suitable magnetic attachment point on the object, if such a point exists.
In the science fiction novels Blue Gemini, the USAF looped a tether to Russian satellites to connect an observation device. If you found something sturdy enough, I don’t see why you couldn’t fasten a tether in that manner.