
China to launch space station by 2023 - Libertatea
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24282060
======
javindo
Thought I'd comment before the typical anti-Chinese-Engineering brigade shows
up.

In my opinion, Chinese engineering is a wonder to behold in an era of modern
western bureaucracy killing amazing projects. I realise Chinese politics are
so far the other way they can be just as bad in different ways, but if China
had the same level of bureaucracy as the west their insane Beijing-Shanghai
high speed rail link would have never happened. In the process of creating
this, they built 3 of the top 5 longest bridges in the world.

China have a lot of wealth, a lot of manpower, a lot of ambition. Sure, there
is a high cost, but there was a cost to the pyramids, the great wall,
skyscrapers in any top tier city, castles around the world and so on.

I'm not trying to glorify the obvious human rights abuses which lead to such
amazing monuments of modern engineering but I find it difficult not to be
enthralled by the wonderful creations of China of late and look forward to how
they compete with a new space station.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I find China a particularly fascinating country in this regard, very little
true visibility into their capabilities and a very different culture.

When they said they would put a man on the moon, I believed they would do
everything they could to make that happen. A friend of mine disagreed saying
it was "too expensive", except expense doesn't really work at the nation state
level except in terms of understanding allocation of GDP. So what percentage
of GDP is being allocated to space ? Hard to say, there is that whole
transparency issue.

Sounding like a broken record here, the folks who put on-orbit refueling
stations up are going to rule space for a while. That is because the use of
space today is constrained by pre-planning a mission and pre-loading all your
fuel on the ground. Can't change plans, can't change the mission. If you can
refuel while in orbit then a single ship can do multiple missions, with only
orbital fuel costs, and that would be exceptionally more efficient. Basically
anyone who can do that can out build, maneuver, and occupy orbit and the Moon,
any other competitor. People who can't get gas on site are forced to bring it
up from the ground with them. Sending up fuel tankers for on-orbit refueling
stations can have only a 90% success rate and still be very effective. Bottom
line, the owner of the gas station will be king.

Now once that happens. And it will. The music stops on other folks getting
into space. It will just be so cheap for the gas station owner to put things
up and move them around that no one will be able to economically compete. So
the country that does that is the next super power in the third age.

Given the stakes, China has to try to be 'that country'.

~~~
bdamm
This implies a fuel mining and refinery process that is off-planet. Otherwise,
you have to launch the fuel, and that is an extremely expensive prospect. If a
mission is going to be engineered to operate for a long period of time, you'd
either launch the mission with all the fuel it needs or plan refueling
launches specifically for that mission, as is done with the ISS.

So, who will be the first to mine off-world and refine into usable rocket
fuel? This seems pretty far off considering the exotic materials needed for
rocket fuel, like hydrazine.

I think it's too far out to make a reasonable bet on who will provide the
first in-orbit refueling station.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Actually not at all. It implies you can send cost reduced rockets up with
tanks filled with cryogenic fuels (LH/LOX), if you lose them their cost is
amortized over all the expensive rockets you _didn 't_ have to send up with a
full fuel load.

One of the most interesting talks at the AMW conference one year was ULA
talking about cryogenic fuel depots [1]. Not Hydrazine, these are not
hypergolic fuels just "regular" liquid oxygen and hydrogen.

The change in the cost dynamics is quite compelling though. Consider a 'space
tug' which is in orbit and only needs fuel to meet up with a satellite, and
move it into any orbit (supply the 'delta V' as it were). Now launching a
satellite doesn't have 'launch windows' nor is it constrained by geography.
Costs go down, response rate goes up.

Going to the moon and back? No need to launch all the fuel you need. A vehicle
that 'lives' in orbit can take your service module/lunar module and put it on
a trans-lunar injection orbit with enough gas to land and return. Catch you on
the return and put you in an orbit ready for re-entry.

[1]
[http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CDcQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fselenianboondocks.com%2Fwp-
content%2Fuploads%2F2008%2F11%2F2008-7644-depot-
document.pdf&ei=tH9EUuH8FcvriwL75IHgDA&usg=AFQjCNG6lMLp2QNL7AeeVkDtTMj5YWHoYA&bvm=bv.53217764,d.cGE&cad=rja)

------
rposborne
Misleading Title, China has had a space station since Sept 29, 2011 called the
Tiangong 1. The article is reference a large orbital station similar to the
Mir in size.

Tiangong 1 could be compared to Skylab but is still most certainly a space
station.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong-1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiangong-1)

Edit: The original article has the misleading title.

~~~
morley
The title doesn't say they're launching their first space station; it says
they're launching _a_ space station.

~~~
melling
The BBC story says that it's their first space station.

------
SCAQTony
A space station is a bad investment for any country.

The annual cost of the ISS is $3-billion-year. It will cost an additional
24-billion for the next 6-years to keep it up

The total budget cost of the Kepler Spacecraft was $0.6-billion and discovered
something like 2,740 planets outside our solar system.

The Mars Science Laboratory cost was $2.5-billion and as of last month
revealed that Mars once was a habitable planet.

The Hubble space telescope in all cost $9.6-billion over the decades (plural)
and sincerely over-delivered by refining the predicted age of the universe and
validating that the universe is indeed expanding faster and faster.

I would rather they launch more probes, telescopes, and comet samplers than a
space station that costs more than it delivers.

~~~
Scriptor
It's hard to really quantify scientific returns as a per-dollar measure. The
space station has provided a place to do countless experiments that could only
be done by people in space. Of course, the results of these experiments rarely
make it into pop science articles so they're not often publicized. But they do
happen and it's important not to just brush them aside as not worth the cost
of the station itself.

~~~
varjag
> The space station has provided a place to do countless experiments that
> could only be done by people in space.

Most of these experiments though were about effect of space on humans, no?
It's a bit of circular reasoning.

Even with those, I'm not sure there was really any big discovery since the
previous Mir/Salyut/Skylab decades of orbital hanging around.

~~~
PakG1
If humans like Elon Musk and the rest are serious about becoming a spacefaring
nation that can actually travel to Mars, this wealth of experimental data
would be invaluable when the time comes, if the time comes. Let's not presume
that it would never be useful (and besides that, who knows if there ever could
be use applied down on earth too).

------
velodrome
Orbital space debris is a real problem. I hope China will be a little more
responsible than they have in the past.

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelpaukner/4314987544/sizes...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelpaukner/4314987544/sizes/o/)

[http://www.space.com/3415-china-anti-satellite-test-
worrisom...](http://www.space.com/3415-china-anti-satellite-test-worrisome-
debris-cloud-circles-earth.html)

[http://www.space.com/20138-russian-satellite-chinese-
space-j...](http://www.space.com/20138-russian-satellite-chinese-space-
junk.html)

In any case, I hope more countries put more space stations up. It would be
great for space tourism and other human endeavors.

~~~
cygwin98
Flaming remarks. Removed

~~~
velodrome
Active Satellites / Non-Active Satellites / Orbiting Space Debris:

US: 453 / 683 / 3258

Russia/USSR: 86 / 1310 / 2690

China: 40 / 29 / 2690

~~~
cygwin98
So blame the picture itself then. The last number is colored nearly black on a
dark background.

Also the number is a bit misleading. Most of the China's debris were probably
generated by the ASAT test in 2007, which is not a common case.

------
chiph
Looks like the Chinese have their own docking mechanism, of unknown
compatibility with an older Russian design. I think it'd be a good idea if
they collaborated with NASA and Roscosmos on a design.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docking_and_berthing_of_spacecr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docking_and_berthing_of_spacecraft)

------
Loughla
I am genuinely hoping that this type of thing leads to a cold-war style space
race with increased investments into science and technology.

~~~
melling
Probably won't happen. China will probably take a clear lead within a couple
decades. There isn't enough return on investment in a space race and the US
won't have the extra money.

Kudos to China for taking the lead in the 21st century. Look at how they built
the world's biggest high-speed rail system in such as short period of time.
Next year it will carry more people than the US domestic airlines.

[http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/chinas-high-speed-rail-
move...](http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/chinas-high-speed-rail-moves-twice-
as-many-passengers-as-its-airline-industry)

~~~
pm90
Really? You're just gonna give up that easily, huh?

I don't mean to poke fun at you, but the competitive spirit was what made it
possible for America to be where it is now, technologically. That, and a lot
of money, of course

~~~
Retric
The space race is like the race to buld the largest hotdog. Interesting
spectacle but horrible ROI. It's a classic even when you win you still lose.

PS: 100% Self sustaining colonies have value but that takes 100,000+ people
which nobody is talking abut sending to space any time soon.

------
ximeng
They're also planning a lunar rover soon with potential goal to retrieve fuel
for nuclear fusion.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Progr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Program)

------
peter303
China was not invited to participate in the ISS-1 due to fears it would steal
Western aeronautical technology. Well, it looks like they have taken anything
they wanted. So we might just build the post 2025 ISS-2 with them.

~~~
maaku
China never asked to participate in the ISS. If they had wanted to, they could
probably have joined. "The west doesn't want us to join their space station
project" was pure politburo PR bullshit. (Source: I worked at NASA at the
time)

~~~
huhalu
[http://www.justice.gov/olc/2011/conduct-
diplomacy.pdf](http://www.justice.gov/olc/2011/conduct-diplomacy.pdf)

~~~
maaku
? Not sure the relevance. That post-dates the China/ISS issue by years, and
anyway is about NASA doing it's own diplomacy, which it shouldn't have been.
That's State Department's business - just like it was when Space Station
Freedom turned into ISS and the Russians got on board.

The Chinese could have worked with the State Department, Russia, Europeans,
Japanese and Canadians to join the ISS program and it would have been legal.
They deliberately chose not to.

------
wtvanhest
Does anyone have a list of things China said they are going to do but haven't
actually done?

[Added] Just to be clear, I am actually interested in a list, not interested
in disparaging China. I'm mainly curious.

~~~
bayesianhorse
The Chinese call one of theses lists their constitution.

~~~
cygwin98
This is hypocritical. US and the whole Western world is not any better on
this.

~~~
podperson
It's only a _bit_ hypocritical. There are actual degrees of hypocrisy!

The US constitution frequently prevents the US government (and US State
governments) from enacting laws or enforcing previously enacted laws. This can
be good or bad depending on your point of view, but it's a simple fact that in
the US we have constitutional rights that are actually pretty potent. Do the
police in China have to read people their rights? Guantanomo is a travesty,
but it's a travesty precisely because the US Constitution is difficult for the
government to ignore.

A more interesting example is many former British colonies, such as Australia,
and Britain itself manage to have quite free societies despite having almost
no constitutional protections. In China I'd say you don't even seem to have
the basic rights people in the English system and its descendants enjoy thanks
to the Magna Carta (Habeas Corpus, for example, or the right to a fair trial.
Wasn't there just a very high profile case in China where the accused was very
vocal one day and then suddenly had nothing to say the next?)

~~~
cygwin98
_It 's only a bit hypocritical. There are actual degrees of hypocrisy!_

I don't get this. Did you mean there are 50% hypocrites and 90% hypocrites?
And the 50% hypocrites can always laugh it out at the 90% hypocrites, because
he/she may think he/she has a moral high ground due to less hypocrisy. Heck,
that's mouthful.

~~~
ugexe
I don't get this. Are you saying someone who is a hypocrite 1% of the time is
equal to someone who is a hypocrite 99% of the time?

~~~
Gigablah
Yes, they are both hypocrites :)

(Seriously though, degree and frequency are different things)

~~~
maaku
Maybe, but you and cygwin98 are seemingly the only ones confused/pedantic
enough to care.

~~~
Gigablah
Hey now, there are different degrees of caring. I care 10% and cygwin98 cares
90%.

------
LiweiZ
Just another misallocation of the crucial resource to military power. When
there is little resource, end game comes.

