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I don’t really think this means much with regards to any competition between China and the US in space, but it’s an interesting historical event nonetheless: China’s first woman in space arrives home

This is amusing:

China’s space programme is several decades behind that of the US and Russia – which launched manned space stations in 1973 and 1971, respectively – but Beijing’s determination to boost its programme comes as the US is cutting back its investments in space. The US retired its space shuttle fleet last year.

China, by contrast, has invested about $6bn in space programmes since 1992 to catch up with its counterparts, raising eyebrows in military circles in Washington.

So, they’ve spent in the past twenty years about what NASA spends on human spaceflight in a year or so. It would seem they’re getting more for their money.

And note that FT appears to suffer from the premise that the only space program is a government space program – I guess after reading that the US (i.e.: NASA) is cutting space investment and has retired its spacecraft fleet we are supposed to infer that the US is retreating from manned space. Umm…no, not so much.

Posted on June 29th, 2012 under Chinese Space, Space Commerce. Tags: China, Liu Yang, taikonaut, Tiangong. Comments: 2

The crew of Shenzhou 7 returns (already?!) from China’s first spacewalking mission.

SpaceX gets a Falcon 1 (finally) to orbit. Good. Hopefully this is the first of many successful launches, and helps to drop the “giggle factor” regarding commercial access to space down another big notch.

That has to irk the Chinese a little, their own achievement being overshadowed by the success of an American private company. Heh. (But admittedly only a little, since the two events are apples and oranges.) But I suppose it’s too much to ask for Musk not to let this successful launch make him cocky:

“This is one of the greatest days of my life,” Musk said. Clearly buoyed by the huge win tonight, he also talked about their Falcon 9 rocket development program, “We are going to be taking over for the Space Shuttle when it retires.” You could hear the pride at the huge accomplishment of a U.S. company getting to the point where they could say that. [emphasis added]

It depends on what capabilities currently provided by the Shuttle he means, of course. It’s probably too much to expect the manned version of Dragon to be completed and tested to NASA’s satisfaction by 2010 (assuming that’s when Shuttle actually gets retired), and likewise for it’s launcher, the Falcon 9. It’s not that SpaceX couldn’t finish the hardware in that time, for Bigelow perhaps, it’s that it’s expecting an awful lot from NASA to upend its culture in only two years and allow its astronauts to actually fly on a non-NASA vehicle.

And speaking of NASA, one can’t help but wonder what sort of pressure, if any, this will put on Constellation. SpaceX has probably spent less getting this far than NASA plans to pay for the development and initial procurement of the Ares I instrument unit alone. With all the Ares I dirty laundry in the news and the blogs in the past couple of weeks, surely someone in Congress has to be asking how SpaceX seems to be doing on the cheap what NASA can’t seem to get done with a budget an order of magnitude larger.

Posted on September 29th, 2008 under Chinese Space, Constellation, Space Commerce, Space Policy. Comments: 1

Reading excerpts from the time-warped Chinese press release about the launch of Shenzhou 7, I was reminded of the strange similarity between their official propaganda and – of all things – bodice-ripper romance novels:

After this order, signal lights all were switched on, various data show up on rows of screens, hundreds of technicians staring at the screens, without missing any slightest changes …

‘One minute to go!’

‘Changjiang No.1 found the target!’…

The firm voice of the controller broke the silence of the whole ship. Now, the target is captured 12 seconds ahead of the predicted time …

‘The air pressure in the cabin is normal!’

Ten minutes later, the ship disappears below the horizon. Warm clapping and excited cheering breaks the night sky, echoing across the silent Pacific Ocean.

Hmmmm…

He raised his trembling hand over the warm, smooth console.  His heart fluttered but his body was still, poised for action. The gaze from his bottomless black eyes traced the gentle curve of the status display panels like a lover’s caress, watching, waiting for the subtle signs of readiness he knew so well.

There – right there. The wink of a light. The subtle shift of an indicator. The unmistakeable signal: she was ready at last.

With a violent thrust, he pressed his finger to the glowing red button.

From what seemed like miles away came a deep, throaty groan, the dangerous but rapturous echo of barely-restrained energies being released at long last.  The sweat of overwhelming anticipation dripped from his brow as the long, firm shaft rose into the sky. 

“Liftoff!” the flight controller cried out in ecstasy. “Oh, God! Yes! Liftoff! Liftoff!”…

Posted on September 27th, 2008 under Chinese Space, Space Policy. Comments: 1

Haven’t I this somewhere before?

On the bright side, since the thing will be built by a noble communist utopia opposed to the racist, capitalist, imperialist space hegemony of Amerikkka AND it uses evil RTGs that will pollute the pristine surface of the Moon with radiation (snort), it should induce a delicious bout of cognitive whiplash in Bruce and his friends.

ADDENDUM: I no sooner post the text above than I come across Jeff Foust’s review of a book on “space war” by Bruce’s heroine, Helen Caldicott.

What is one to think now of China?s interest in ?prohibiting the deployment of weapons in outer space and the use of force against outer space objects?, in the words of a Chinese diplomat quoted in the book, now that China?not the United States?has destroyed a satellite in space, creating the dangerous orbital debris decried by anti-weaponization advocates? The book, unfortunately, offers no insight on this, since the authors focused entirely on the US as the villain in space weaponization debate. [emphasis added]

Hmm…that, too, seems familiar.

Posted on April 3rd, 2007 under Chinese Space. Comments Off

The Chinese test an ASAT weapon, and Bruce is nowhere to be found.

Maybe he’s just slow getting around to it, what with his preoccupation right now with refurbing the house for his new commune.

I?m sure when he does mention it, however, it will be to point out how it’s all our fault — that innocent China merely perceived the US? own ASAT programs as a threat to which it had to respond in kind. After all, the US is the wellspring of all evil, ill-will, and bad things in the universe, especially under the fascist, jackboot rule of Chimpy McBushhitler. China’s actions are simply a regrettable response to the U.S.’ provocative moves to militarize space. After all, non-Western countries — being peaceable, sharing, spiritual, and in every way morally superior by nature — are simple stimulus-response organisms, incapable of undertaking such tut-tuttable actions of their own free will and in furtherance of their own self-selected goals.

Oh come on now, you know he’ll say something like that…if he says anything at all, which is more likely to be the case. If it’s not the U.S. doing something he doesn’t like, it’s doubtful whether it even registers on his radar — much like terrorism committed against the West. He rails repeatedly against the war in Iraq, for example, but never acknowledges why it is being fought (except to mindlessly regurgitate the “oiiiiiiilllllll!” canard). He works up a lather over any alleged atrocities by U.S. servicemen (or the IDF), no matter how spurious or distorted the details, while remaining silent about actual, documentable atrocities committed by those being fought against. So why should China testing anti-satellite weapons prompt outrage from Bruce? If it’s not the U.S. developing space weapons and cluttering up the “space shipping lanes” with debris, why would he care?

There is a tendency among people in Bruce’s camp to see “The Other” as both morally superior and absolved from moral considerations at the same time. Being oppressed and exploited by the greedy, corporatist, racist, militaristic, imperialist U.S. relieves the The Other of any moral responsibility for their actions, leaving them free do as they wish — to commit violence against whomever they please, for whatever reasons they choos, employing the most morally questionable means at their disposal. Whatever the acts of The Other, they will invariably escape the notice of the utopian pacifists. Yet when the U.S. (or Israel) take any military or intelligence-gathering action, it just as invariably registers in the microscopes of such “peace warriors”, signalling them to gather together the peace community for a protest vigil and organic vegan potluck, and triggering yet another round of melodramatic handwringing about the death of democracy under the jackboot heel of corporate fascism and the insatiable war-hunger of the Military-Industrial Complex™.

It’s always America’s fault. Even, I suppose, the selective outrage and moral blindness of peace-radical moonbats.

Posted on January 19th, 2007 under Chinese Space. Comments: 3

Michael Griffin spoke at JSC today, and is reported to have said that the Chinese are “five or six years closer to the Moon than we are”.

Interesting.

Posted on October 24th, 2005 under Chinese Space. Comments: 2

Or else they need to more carefully fact-check stories they reprint from Xinhua — China’s spacecraft orbit ‘slips’:

Gravity has drawn Shenzhou VI too close to earth, the agency said.

Shenzhou VI, which has two astronauts on board, is in a low enough orbit to be affected by the Earth’s gravitational pull.

I should hope so, since I don’t think an escape trajectory was quite what the Chinese were planning for their second manned spaceflight.

Posted on October 13th, 2005 under Chinese Space. Comments Off

China has now launched
twice as many manned spacecraft in the past two and a half years as the US:

China’s second manned spacecraft blasted off from a remote northwestern launch site on Wednesday, just two years after the country joined an elite club of space powers.

Astronauts Fei Junlong, 40, and Nie Haisheng, 41, were handpicked from 14 fighter pilots and had been in the running for China’s first manned space launch in 2003. Their mission is due to last five days.

“There is nothing to worry about,” state television quoted the two as saying before the launch as a light snow fell. “We will accomplish the mission resolutely. See you in Beijing.”

They still have to come back, of course.

Here’s wishing them well in their efforts to build up a state-directed, centrally-planned space program.

Posted on October 11th, 2005 under Chinese Space. Comments Off

Shanghai plans ‘space city’

Shanghai plans to build a major research facility to assist China’s ambitious astronaut program state media said.

The astronaut program includes a space walk within the next few years.
The country’s largest city will invest more than one billion yuan ($158.35 million) in the research facility, the China News Service reported, quoting Yuan Jie, director of the Shanghai Aerospace Bureau.

The project has entered the initial stages and will be completed within three years, Yuan was quoted as saying.

Unfortunately, the article doesn’t give any further information as to what the Shanghai facility is intended to be used for — or indeed whether the research facility is even formally part of the Chinese space program, or just some sort of economic development gimmick designed to capture a share of the “tens of thousands of scientific, manufacturing and planning personnel in more than 3000 factories.”

What’s interesting to note here is the plans for future manned Shenzhou flights. While the Chinese program appears to be leaping forward at a less than glacial pace, each of their planned flights seems to be recapitulating achievements that took the US and Soviet programs many flights to accomplish…each planned flight demonstrating significant new capabilities rather than making cautious, incremental expansions. If all goes as described in the article, by Shenzhou-8 China will have demonstrated the major capabilities developed in the US via the Mercury and Gemini programs — manned orbital spaceflight, extended stays in orbit, spacewalks, and rendezvous and docking. And given other information about the “orbital cabin” portion of the Shenzhou spacecraft, they seem likely to also try their hands at modular space stations, skipping the Skylab/Salyut period and jumping directly to a Mir/ISS approach. It’s easy to dismiss the Chinese program as slow or motivated by a nationalistic “us too!” wannabe-ism, but they may be showing that they have learned the right lessons of how and how not to do space exploration from the US and Soviet/Russian experiences.

Posted on January 23rd, 2005 under Chinese Space. Comments Off