It isn’t with NASA, or any government. It’s with SpaceX and U.S. private industry. Though it’s amusing that the author actually believes that the SLS will be sending anyone to the moon or asteroids.
24 thoughts on “China’s Space Race”
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“Yes, NASA has slowed down along with its slowing budget, but with the new Space Launch System (SLS), America will be sending people to asteroids and Mars around the time China is going to the moon.”
China will never get to the moon?
Comparing Chinese space program progress with the USSR or USA space programs and saying it has taken 40 years to progress and they are doing it very slowly is not a 100% accurate comparison. The cultural revolution stopped most science projects with its culling of researchers and scientists. Even things considered to be priority projects like J-8 fighter development were stalled a decade because of it. It is not very surprising that manned space flight was also given a backseat to other things such as ICBM development.
If we compare the Chinese achievements in manned space flight starting with their first manned space flight until today we can see they are taking about as long as the USSR or the US did in achieving the same milestones. The Chinese fly less missions but do a lot more on each mission than either of those programs did historically. Shenzhou is more advanced than the current Soyuz. They have the hindsight of having access to the records of those historical programs and supposedly have also bought manned spaceflight technology from Russia so this was to be expected. Their technology “gap” in manned space flight is mainly in space launch technology. Their rockets are utterly obsolete being based on military hypergolic storable propellant ballistic missiles. Only when Long March 5 comes out (supposedly in a couple of years) will they have a modern rocket capable of supporting their long term projects like the larger space station.
The Chinese fly less missions but do a lot more on each mission
What, exactly, are they doing? If the goal of a human spaceflight program is not to fly humans, what is it?
Shenzhou is more advanced than the current Soyuz.
The MiG-21’s built by Romania and Israel are more advanced than those built by the Soviet Union. They are still MiG-21’s.
For that matter, the Me-262’s built in Washington State are more advanced than those built in Germany.
China and NASA are building replicas of Cold War-era capsules. That is not progress — it is con-gress!
Soyuz is the only human spacecraft still in use today. If that is not indicative of a successful design then what is? The Russians have planned to obsolete the launch vehicle more than once. The Soyuz launcher based on Korolev’s R-7 design has been proposed to be replaced at times with Zenit, Energia, Angara, Rus-M, yet it is still in use while those designs were either abandoned or are suffering from long delays and may never fly at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was still flying over a decade from now in some form. The Mig-21 was replaced by other craft with better performance characteristics like the Su-27 or the F-15. That has not been the case with Soyuz.
The current Chinese spaceflights are obviously to demonstrate the capability to do certain tasks. They have demonstrated docking, space walks, etc. Companies like SpaceX have managed to do a lot on a shoestring budget in comparison with NASA but even something supposedly simple like developing spacesuits is not an easy task and so far there are no spacesuits available in the market with the same reductions in cost that SpaceX managed to do with their launch vehicles. That is an much of an impediment to manned commercial spaceflight as everything else that has been done so far. I also do not consider commercial space to be up and running until SpaceX gets some actual competition. The Orbital Antares would come a long way in helping to solve that issue even if I am somewhat concerned if they can get all disparate components they are using to work together properly.
To me the Shuttle and Buran were their era’s equivalents of the Hughes Spruce Goose: large craft designed before their time with construction materials which weren’t up to the task at hand and zero or negative safety margins. Today it is more commonplace to use Al-Li construction or composites. These have reduced vehicle weight while maintaining overall stiffness but things like reusable reentry surfaces or rocket nozzles are still notoriously underdeveloped. Four decades after the Space Shuttle flew the brand new X-37 still uses the same maintenance prone ceramic tiles. There have been all sorts of new altitude compensating rocket nozzle designs proposed to be used since the 1970s but we still use the same shapes. If you compare that with the changes in engine intakes in jet engines since their inception to this day you see a lot of variations in the design which have not happened in rocket nozzles. Flights rates have been too low in order to allow the proper amortization of R&D costs and launch costs have been too high to allow test flights to be performed. Traditionally new aircraft engines are fixed to a previous generation aircraft where they are tested and tuned in actual flight before being installed in a new airframe. In comparison rockets are only tested in expensive test chambers which can never completely replace actual flight conditions. The fact that there is no margin if a rocket flies with less engines and that you cannot reuse the vehicle also leads to high costs in conducing tests in this way.
Sometimes you need to take one step backwards in order to take two steps forward. Abandoning capsules for winged vehicles was IMO premature and not conducive to developing our near space flight capabilities. Wings are a hazard rather than an advantage if you want to touch down on the Moon, Mars, Phobos, Deimos, or the asteroids. Winged RLVs make sense if you have a lot of traffic going to LEO space stations but aren’t useful for much else. If you have capsules and in space propellant transfer and docking capabilities you can easily make missions to the Moon or those places using the same infrastructure you use for LEO flights.
Soyuz is the only human spacecraft still in use today. If that is not indicative of a successful design then what is?
I heard a a similar comment from the president of the mainframe computer company I used to work for.
The next quarter, he suffered record losses and laid off one-sixth of the company. A year later, he was out of business.
The Mig-21 was replaced by other craft with better performance characteristics like the Su-27 or the F-15. That has not been the case with Soyuz.
And that is a sign of success???
even something supposedly simple like developing spacesuits is not an easy task and so far there are no spacesuits available in the market with the same reductions in cost that SpaceX managed to do with their launch vehicles.
You can blame the Senate for that. The Low Cost Spacesuit Challenge made it all the way into the White House budget request (in a form that was remarkably close to my original language) but the Senate refused to fund it.
I don’t see what that has to do with the supposed superiority of the Chinese space program.
Abandoning capsules for winged vehicles was IMO premature and not conducive to developing our near space flight capabilities. Wings are a hazard rather than an advantage
Don’t swallow the ignorant statements of the Space Frontier Foundation. If you look at the accident rate for capsules vs. the Shuttle, there is no statistical difference. The number of Shuttle fatalities was greater simply because the number of astronauts who flew on the Shuttle was greater. That’s pretty much irrelevant; it’s the rate that’s important.
Winged RLVs make sense if you have a lot of traffic going to LEO space stations but aren’t useful for much else.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. “Microcomputers are good for playing a lot of games but aren’t useful for much else.” When you get to be my ages, you’ve heard all of the arguments before.
If you have capsules and in space propellant transfer and docking capabilities you can easily make missions to the Moon or those places using the same infrastructure you use for LEO flights.
Yes, the same infrastructure that allows China to send almost nobody into LEO will allow China to send almost nobody to the Moon.
Spending more and more money to send fewer and fewer people further and further into space is not progress, IMO.
I don’t have a clue which mainframe company you worked for but IBM still sells mainframes today. Last time I looked at the numbers the mainframe market still had a similar revenue to the rest of the server market even if it shifts much less units. I doubt a lot of people would buy mainframes for new installations but there is a lot of mainframe software littered all over the world which still needs to run. Annoyingly.
To me the Soyuz capsule and R-7 launcher are some of those designs which have survived the test of time quite well like the B-52 Stratofortress or the Tu-95 Bear.
Soyuz has had all sorts of upgrades since it was originally designed. Today it has digital avionics, the crew is composed of three people wearing spacesuits, there were all sorts of improvements made after the accidents in order to reduce the chance of them happening again. Plus it still flies. Why? Because it is cheap and safe enough for the task.
If there is any ‘mainframe’ here it is the Shuttle which was a gargantuan expensive monstrosity which failed miserably at its task which was to reduce launch costs. It was an interesting technical achievement in several fields like the staged combustion engines, TPS, or winged reentry but it was simply too ambitious.
It was a shame the Challenges weren’t properly followed through despite the initial successes. IMO there is too much of a faith in funding silver bullets to solve problems (SLS, James Webb space telescope) which have drained the budget for nearly everything else. There are too many problems which need to be solved to reduce costs or increase capabilities and stuffing everything into one platform is an approach doomed to failure.
I still don’t understand your fixation with winged vehicles. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if atmospheric interceptors eventually stopped having large wings let alone spacecraft. There have been proposals for tailless aircraft (e.g. X-36) with the advent of TVC and with the increasing thrust-to-weight ratios in modern jet engines it may come to a point where wings will be vestigial at best in order to increase vehicle maneuverability at which point the aircraft will probably be drones because human pilots cannot tolerate the piloting stresses.
One of the reasons Soyuz is cheap is not because it is ‘simple’ like some people claim but because it has been produced for so long at such production rates that the Russians have figured out how to produce it cheaply.
No, Soyuz is not cheap. At least, not by any sane definition of “cheap.”
Nor is there any statistical evidence that it’s safer than the Shuttle — much less a well-designed RLV. The people who make that claim have to make excuses why every Soyuz accident “doesn’t count.” Well, the Shuttle also had a perfect safety record, if you don’t count the accidents. And it was also cheap, if you don’t count the money.
“Soyuz is the only human spacecraft still in use today. If that is not indicative of a successful design then what is?”
It’s indicative of a poorly managed space effort by the U.S. since Apollo. Instead of doubling down on government-owned, government-run space transportation systems, we should have moved to a more commercial model like we’re trying to do today with cargo and crew.
The Soyuz is a competent design, but we’re not going to expand our presence into space using it or it’s cargo carrying cousin. Nor will we be able to afford to use Soyuz if they keep raising prices at the rate they have been doing.
We need two or more providers for redundancy and to keep prices competitive (hopefully to even lower them). That’s how we will be able to afford to expand our presence into space.
I still wonder what would have happened had the Nazis never sponsored liquid fueled rocket development during WWII and/or the atomic bomb never got developed. Prior to WWII most achievements in liquid fueled rockets came from small private developers. In the US Goddard was tinkering with his rockets while the public at large laughed at his efforts. In Germany Oberth and Von Braun were making rockets as a stunt to advertise a science fiction movie. Things could have progressed much more differently.
I agree it was a mistake not to open up the space launch market post Apollo. If we compare it with the period after WWI where military airplane technology was picked up and improved upon by the private sector it is easy to see there is a lot of wasted potential and we could have been much further ahead than we are today. Had it been opened up much before that I doubt rockets would have evolved in the same fashion and would be a lot different from what we see today.
“Soyuz is the only human spacecraft still in use today. If that is not indicative of a successful design then what is? ”
Like the model T, henry ford that all you needed was a simple design and you would never have to change. Only when others started out featuring his car and beating him on price/value did he finally upgrade to the model A.
Modern systems are coming online that will have double the capacity of the soyuz and Shenzhou and that will be telling in the long run. Both countries will have to update to remain a relevent player.
I believe a truely successful design for pretty much anything gets replicated and stamped out in assemlby lines and prices soon fall. I don’t believe you can call any government space craft a successful design, because prices only go higher. Successful designs bring prices down and are enjoyed or used by more people.
To me the Shuttle and Buran were their era’s equivalents of the Hughes Spruce Goose
The Buran and Energia maybe, but other than cost failure STS and ISS more or less accomplished their assigned tasks, to build and fly a space station, launching it using a semi reusable space plane. That helped Musk a lot.
In that it provided the target for his cargo and crew transport efforts, yeah, it did. As a technology model to follow, obviously not so much.
As a technology model to follow, obviously not so much.
That’s a feature, not a bug. I always appreciate other people’s mistakes slightly more than my own. Think of how far ahead that has put his effort.
And of course, he hasn’t even started on the space habitat business yet. Certainly he’s going to need some direction if he is going to colonize Mars, and it’s going to have to be something a little more substantial than a tiny little greenhouse with suicidal plants as the only passengers.
STS was supposed to be an all-purpose space truck which would replace all other US launch vehicles. It failed massively. At the time it was approved, there was no space station under way, nor would there be one for many years.
“China became the third country in history to have a space base in orbit. Some say this means almost nothing for the U.S., while others insist it’s time we start training our Space Marines for Operation Enduring Lunar Freedom.”
Really? Where are these people advocating for Space Marines?
“But why not a space race between the Chinese government and the U.S. government? Well, because that’s ridiculous. As with every other attempt to make China our new mortal enemy to fill the hole in our hearts left by the USSR, trying to fabricate competition between the U.S. and China in space does not work”
Why would a space race be ridiculous? China doesn’t have to be our mortal enemy to be our competitor and while they are not our enemy, they are certainly not our friends. The competition is there, not playing the game you are already in just makes you a loser. There are no prizes for participation like middle school soccer.
Like it or not business is a competition but not always a zero sum game. Which the author seems to agree with to some extent. To him it is acceptable for American business to be in a space race with the Chinese government just not for our government to also be in a space race.
China has a good program and people shouldn’t be dismissive of it. They are steadily reaching their goals and have an overarching strategy for their program that links technology development with long term goals. They capitalize on all of the work others have done before them, just like SpaceX.
Right now it looks like China is exactly where we are, sending people to a station in LEO. Sure the USA has done great things in the past but you can’t rest on your laurels. If China were to visit the Moon before the US returns, there would be people who say, “Pffft the US did that x years ago.” and the response would be, “Yes but where are you today?”
“Really? Where are these people advocating for Space Marines?”
Here ya go: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gemini-to-fly-again-159561815.html
I didn’t see anything about Space Marines or prepping for armed conflict on the Moon.
“Chinese Air Force Officers are now conducting military operations in orbit. “The space program, including ostensible civil projects, supports China’s growing ability to deny or degrade the space assets of potential adversaries and enhances China’s conventional military capabilities,” Army Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, wrote in testimony presented before the U.S. Senate’s Armed Services Committee Feb. 16. Recently, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden stated that the country needs to have “a U.S.-based, commercial crew launch capability at the earliest possible time.””
This all seems pretty standard.
Do you understand the meaning of “hyperbole”? The author doesn’t *literally* mean marines in space.. he’s talking about the very real attempts by people like Burgess to paint China as the new red menace. (which, btw, doesn’t literally mean they’re red.. figured I needed to point that out to you).
The author of the og piece seemed to be suggesting that there are groups advocating full scale military actions in space including marines and marine bases to fight a space war. That was not what your linked story indicated. Not even sure why you bothered to link it since it directly contradicted your claim.
It is perfectly rational (and our military would be shirking its duty if they didn’t) to plan for China taking out our space assets. China has already demonstrated the capability and the will to do this in peace time. I am sure you know about the satellite they took out but they have also been experimenting with lasers on our satellites. China also has an active hacker campaign against our defense, research, and business industries.
But looking rationally at China’s capabilities and their actions is a far cry from an irrational red scare.
It really isn’t the type of problem Australia has to worry about.
The threat is that the Chinese will put more people in space than we can. Sure, with SpaceX and other endeavors we’ll soon recapture the lead, but that will only last until we max out at 330 million Americans in space and China just keeps on launching more Chinese. Hopefully some cultural or technological hurdle will keep them from reaching that potential, such as the simple facts that woks don’t work in zero-G and chopsticks are dicey, at best.
Seriously, I think the one advantage China currently enjoys is that their press is portraying their space program as heroic and tremendously important. It probably enjoys far broader and deeper support among their population than ours does, although in a communist country that can be hard to realistically gauge.
China is 50 years behind…
…is a statement devoid of information. Last I heard, they live in the same timeline as we do. As Rand has said many time, space doesn’t matter to most people. It’s not important. Deciding where anybody is under that condition is ridiculous. Nobody is ahead. We are all behind. That will not change until space does matter. It will only matter when tens or hundreds of thousands live there. That’s when we’ll know whose ahead or behind.
Before that can happen, space has to become property.
I also found the “slowing budget” comment amusing. NASA has as much budget now as they’ve (almost) always had. Anyone care to guess how much China’s human spaceflight budget is?
I regularly hear people saying they can’t keep up with the happenings in space these days.. that’s scary, cause we’re barely getting started here.
There will come a time when people will ask how you can stand watching launches when there’s one every week, or every day. They’ll stop offering web streams. Launch watchers then will be akin to plane watchers today.
Mojave’s kind of a long way to go for hooking-up in the backseat…