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rfmcdonaldWill Baird blogged that China is studying the idea of launching a heavy-thrust rocket similar to the defunct Soviet Energia or the American Saturn V of moon mission fame, capable of tossing dozens of metric tons into Earth orbit or towards the Moon.
And 80 Beats carries the news about China's upcoming space station.
If China goes on to build the launch vehicle and the beginnings of its own space station, I'll be impressed. This would take China's space program in the direction of the United States' or the Soviet Union's in the 1970s, with powerful boosters capable of launching heavy payloads into earth orbit or manned missions to the Moon, with simple stations like America's Skylab or the Soviet Union's Salyut series. Whether this is a sensible trajectory for China to follow, judging by what happened to the American and Soviet space programs after the 1970s, is a separate matter, although if it turns out that the China National Space Administration et al manages to make this a workable non-dead end I'll be all the more pleased. Ideas, anyone, on how China could pull this off?
China is studying the design of a Moon rocket in the class of the Saturn V, as the Obama administration proposes canceling the U.S. successor to the Apollo launcher, Ares V.
The country also is developing another new rocket, the “medium thrust” Long March 7, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology says. This new launcher joins the Long March 5 heavy rocket and the Long March 6, which was mentioned last year and is now defined as a “small-thrust” launcher. Long March 5, 6 and 7 will form a family of rockets, it says.
Chinese space officials have said that the Long March 6 was based on the side boosters of the Long March 5. Those side boosters come in two sizes, which could be arranged variously as first or second core stages or as boosters. Long March 7 is therefore likely to be a more powerful combination of the same collection of equipment.
And 80 Beats carries the news about China's upcoming space station.
China will soon have an outpost in space. The government has announced that its first unmanned space module, the Tiangong-1 (or “The Heavenly Palace”), will be launched next year.
The module will serve as a docking station for other spacecraft before being transformed into a permanent taikonaut residence and space lab within two years of the launch [Nature blog]. It was originally due to launch this year, but now will see flight only late in 2011, due to technical reasons, Chinese officials said. The Tiangong-1 is expected to be 30 feet long and capable of housing three taikonauts; future missions will add other modules to construct a larger Chinese space station.
The Tiangong-1 design, unveiled in a nationally televised broadcast on last year’s Chinese New Year, includes a large module with docking system making up the forward half of the vehicle and a service module section with solar arrays and propellant tanks making up the aft [SPACE.com]. The Tiangong-1 is expected to dock the unmanned Shenzhou 8 spacecraft first to test the robotic docking systems before hosting the manned Shenzhou 9 and 10 spacecraft, which are both expected to carry two or three taikonauts into space.
If China goes on to build the launch vehicle and the beginnings of its own space station, I'll be impressed. This would take China's space program in the direction of the United States' or the Soviet Union's in the 1970s, with powerful boosters capable of launching heavy payloads into earth orbit or manned missions to the Moon, with simple stations like America's Skylab or the Soviet Union's Salyut series. Whether this is a sensible trajectory for China to follow, judging by what happened to the American and Soviet space programs after the 1970s, is a separate matter, although if it turns out that the China National Space Administration et al manages to make this a workable non-dead end I'll be all the more pleased. Ideas, anyone, on how China could pull this off?
