China plans space station for the 2020s, eyes Moon trip
Weary Eagle, leaping Dragon?
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The People's Republic of China has unveiled plans to have a sizeable crewed space station orbiting the Earth by 2020. The Chinese space agency is also looking ahead to a manned Moon mission, though no timetable has been announced for this.
Flight International reports today on the Chinese announcements, made at the International Astronautical Congress underway at the moment in South Korea.
The magazine quotes China's Manned Space Engineering programme deputy general designer Wang Zhonggui as stating that the PRC plans to assemble its space station from three modules sent up separately aboard Long March 5 booster stacks. It would remain operational throughout the 2020s, and would follow on from a smaller orbital laboratory project set to launch in 2015.
As to the moon plans, Zhonggui was reportedly cautious, saying that concept studies were underway but that no firm schedule had been set.
"The Moon is still far away for our technology," he told Flight, noting that NASA's mighty Saturn V moon-rockets of yesteryear could put 118 tonnes into low Earth orbit - enough for all the hardware required for a return trip to the Moon. By contrast the Long March 5, planned to launch from 2015, will be able to loft only 20 tonnes.
Even so, if the plans announced today come to fruition, China alone will come close to matching the combined manned-space efforts of the rest of the world. Until recently, the International Space Station - a collaboration between most of the world's advanced space-faring nations - had a crew of only three, and even now its complement is just six. China could apparently have a three-person orbital presence within six years.
America has plans to return to the Moon, and establish manned bases there, too. But these are currently mired in budget difficulties, and with the imminent retirement of the Space Shuttle, the USA will soon have no manned space capability of its own at all.
China's Moon plans may be vague, but at least the PRC will retain the ability to travel in space - and given NASA's funding problems, it's hard to say that US lunar ambitions are much more solid.
In recent times, Brits ambitious to travel in space have often tended to become US citizens and join NASA. Several have managed to become astronauts in this way. It just could be that space-happy Brits - at least those not choosing to try for a spot with the ESA - may soon start emigrating to China.
The Flight report is here, and a supplement with pictures from Korea here. ®
COMMENTS
RE: watch for falling Centuars
"Now that the US have shown they can bomb the Moon with impunity,"
I can't remember seeing strong resistance to that bombing raid from the Selenite forces.
watch for falling Centuars
Now that the US have shown they can bomb the Moon with impunity, the Chinese had better hopr to have a strong roof on their moon base.
ISS
China's going through the motions. They wanna get a solid grip on space. They want to build their own space station to master building things in space. They also need to go through all the on-site research for military purposes that the US and Russia have already done ages ago, plus maybe some new stuff. They need a private place for that.
The US doesn't use the ISS for military purposes either, I don't think; the DOD does to research, but usually in independent platforms and even free-flying pressurized vehicles. Plenty of prototype sats and things too. The Clementine mission to the Moon was actually a DOD project - they needed to test a bunch of new technologies and found they could split the bill with NASA by sending it to the Moon.
...So I'm not saying the US doesn't do military research. Everyone does military stuff in space. The whole reason we're IN space is ballistic missiles. Gemini astronauts flew ballistic missiles to orbit, and even Iran's ballistic missile program developed into flying sats too.
Just... Not on the ISS. It would be kinda silly to do your top secret military research down the hall from Russia's lab, and likewise it would be pretty silly for China not to build its own private lab.
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