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Chinese Space Program (CNSA) & Ch. commercial launch and discussion

tater

By tater
in Science & Spaceflight

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magnemoe

magnemoe

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, DDE said:

@AllenLi, I shouldn't browse Atomic Rockets at work this much, so I'll stop at having identified a similar configuration among NASA HOPE spacecraft design studies.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/images/realdesigns/hopebntr02.jpg

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/images/realdesigns/hopebntr11.jpg

Was so curious about the bent radiators I had to look into it.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/realdesigns3.php#id--HOPE--HOPE_(MPD)
The bent radiators, are for cooling the Magnetoplasmadynamic engines, the thing at the end of the long boom is the reactors powering them. 
So its something who can be build, it require an lightweight nuclear reactor who can be uses in space. 

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DDE

DDE

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, magnemoe said:

The bent radiators, are for cooling the Magnetoplasmadynamic engines, the thing at the end of the long boom is the reactors powering them. 
So its something who can be build, it require an lightweight nuclear reactor who can be uses in space. 

I've found it in both MPD and ion variants. HOPE uses bimodal NTRs, but those aren't integral to the design.

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SunlitZelkova

SunlitZelkova

Posted
Posted

According to a Chinese news source... I'll let the translation speak for itself...

Translation of article title- "China is about to start research and development of a kilometer-class super-large spacecraft. Is it finally about to start building a star destroyer?"

https://www.163.com/dy/article/GI1TR0HA0511AJQ1.html

Translation by Google Translate-

Quote

Recently, the National Natural Science Foundation of China issued guidelines for the first batch of major projects during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, covering nine major fields including mathematical physics, chemistry, life, earth, engineering and materials, information, management, medicine, and intersection. Every project is heavyweight. Among them, the project "Space Assembly Dynamics and Control of Super Large Aerospace Structures" is of particular interest.

The project guide mentions that the ultra-large spacecraft with a size of one kilometer is a major strategic aerospace equipment for future space resource utilization, exploration of the mystery of the universe, and long-term living in orbit. It requires structural modular design, multiple launches, and space It is constructed in an assembled manner and solves extremely complex coupling dynamics problems.

This puts forward two requirements for the dynamic design of super large spacecraft:

The first is the lightweight design of the structure to minimize the number of launches and reduce construction costs;

The second is the controllable design of the structure to effectively suppress the track and attitude drift of the assembly during the assembly process, and control the deformation and vibration of the structure.

The scientific goals of this project include:

1. Aiming at the weight reduction design and space assembly requirements of ultra-large aerospace structures, and proposing a new theory of lightweight design for assembly structures that meets the requirements of on-orbit dynamics;

2. Establish a new "orbit-attitude-structure" coupling dynamics model of the space assembly process, revealing the new law of the coupling dynamics evolution of the space assembly process;

3. Propose a new theory of "orbit-attitude-structure" integrated stability control for the space assembly process;

4. Exploring a new solution to the problem of “space-earth consistency” in the dynamic test of super large aerospace structures.

The research content has four major aspects, namely: lightweight and controllable design of super large aerospace structures, dynamic evolution of the space assembly process of super large aerospace structures, space assembly process orbit-attitude-structure integrated stability control, and space Ground simulation test of assembly process dynamics and control. According to the requirements, the direct cost budget for the project application shall not exceed 15 million yuan.

This is probably actually a further indication they are serious about SPS. There is also a project to construct a JWST class telescope in orbit.

Also, 1km is much closer to the Venator-class, and so the spacecraft would be better described as a Venator-class Republic attack cruiser.

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kops said

kops said

Posted
Posted

Forty-six pages of comments, too many about re-entry, toxics,  weaponization, and politics.

Valuable information is almost concealed. That may be why  Vanamond considered locking the topic.

Thought to this great forum will not have those annoying things

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SunlitZelkova

SunlitZelkova

Posted
Posted
8 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Trial by error - or have they done maths to determine the outline of this new law? 

 

(presumes 'law' translation is correct - and not some new CN regulation governing coupling) 

I don't think it means "law", like "law of physics" (despite that being the word used), they are trying to find a new way to conduct on orbit construction (that new way is what they are referring to with "law"). I think there are some aspects of aircraft design that are also referred to as "laws".

I have no idea what their plans are in regards to how to discover such a new method, but given they are launching a small scale SPS demonstrator next year, it would make sense for them to launch small scale orbital assembly test spacecraft too.

6 hours ago, kops said said:

Forty-six pages of comments, too many about re-entry, toxics,  weaponization, and politics.

Valuable information is almost concealed. That may be why  Vanamond considered locking the topic.

Thought to this great forum will not have those annoying things

That is generally what happens on forums of all kinds. There are some good PLA-CNSA watching forums in regards to technical data and news, but they are filled to the brim with political statements and rants in between (on the "opposite end", if you get what I mean), which makes it hard discern info.

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JoeSchmuckatelli

JoeSchmuckatelli

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

don't think it means "law", like "law of physics

Translation is always an interesting art.  You not only have to try to convert the meaning of the sentence contextually from one language to another - you have the added challenge of trying to convert colloquial or cultural nuanced phrasing (and aphorisms) into something that will be understood by someone foreign to all of that. 

Thankfully humans are smart - and we have a lot of experience with this!  

So in this sense - 'law' should translate into either 'best practices' at the low end, or perhaps something like 'principle' (e.g. Bernouli) at the high end - should such be discoverable. 

In other words - the plan is to do a bunch of docking and get really good at it. 

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Ho Lam Kerman

Ho Lam Kerman

Posted
Posted

Hi!

It's been... quite a while, shall we say, since I've been active on this site.

My school in Hong Kong has been selected to send two students to attend a real-time conversation with the three astronauts currently aboard the Tiangong space station. If you've got any question ideas, send them here, I'll update you if I manage to get selected to attend.

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SunlitZelkova

SunlitZelkova

Posted
Posted
13 hours ago, Ho Lam Kerman said:

Hi!

It's been... quite a while, shall we say, since I've been active on this site.

My school in Hong Kong has been selected to send two students to attend a real-time conversation with the three astronauts currently aboard the Tiangong space station. If you've got any question ideas, send them here, I'll update you if I manage to get selected to attend.

I'm not sure what level of detail is acceptable... NASA will often choose very simple questions for example... but here is one-

"Why does the space station use electric propulsion?"

-------------------------------------------------

The Global Times, the English language affiliate of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the CPC, seems to agree with my assessment of the Venator-class [People's] Republic attack cruiser-

The Global Times is interesting because unlike RT whose main purpose seems to be to foment chaos, GT screams actual CPC policy to a certain extent, alongside bombastic threats from time to time.

-----------------------------------------

This is bad thinking. China itself is not in a Space Race, but simply wants to match US achievements as they go along (in terms of space). They have literally declared multiple times they don't intend to beat the US return to the Moon and instead are planning for crewed landings in the 2030s, maybe the late 2020s.

At this point in the game, I am curious what point there is in requiring transparency for cooperation. China doesn't really have anything to learn from US space technology at this point (in fact, SLS would be a step backwards, lol), and if leaks regarding reconnaissance assets are a possibility, it should be noted Russia- which has been described multiple times as "a potential adversary" by the US- would hypothetically (within the US threat assessment) want to do the same and yet has not.

Peaceful cooperation in space would be an excellent way to ease tensions. And there aren't a lot of places where that can occur right now.

On the other hand, maybe it is good? If the American space industry as whole believes it is in a Space Race, it will force more innovation and result in new spaceflight projects.

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DDE

DDE

Posted
Posted
5 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

At this point in the game, I am curious what point there is in requiring transparency for cooperation.

Well, you should never exclude the opportunity that Nelson had a conclusion and slapped a buzzword excuse onto it.

If we do take the comment at face value, there may be several topics. The US has good reasons to really dislike ASAT and in-orbit servicing development. Public coverage of the program is canned, politicized and nowhere near as comprehensive as in the "West", which may make NASA see military application research everywhere.

The problem is that there isn't an agreed standard to aspire to, since no-one going to invoke OST's article on conducting an inspection of a spacecraft. US space disclosures on sensitive topics are pretty spotty - that's not a whataboutism, but a genuine question of where to set the goalposts.

5 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

The Global Times is interesting because unlike RT whose main purpose seems to be to foment chaos, GT screams actual CPC policy to a certain extent, alongside bombastic threats from time to time.

Well, why would it be? RIA and TASS both have English versions, so they fulfill the function of broadcasting Kremlin soundbites to Western audiences who care to look. Heck, I was quite surprised this channel, which seems to be an official captioning of portions of Russian domestic evening news, which are far more bombastically pro-Kremlin.

In turn, RT does position itself as a platform for Western opposition voices, and at keast the written version seems to actually fit the bill. The "chaos" is the product of them scooping up anyone notable who says something anti-establishment. That's why they have everyone from the few remaining American anti-imperialist leftists, to American rightoids, to Narendra Modi sycophants. Heck, this thread is about an RT article:

There doesn't seem to be that much of actual editorial control at RT. They have a Russian version, believe it or not, and it has gone completely off the reservation at times: https://russian.rt.com/opinion/705598-petrovskii-mussolini-film-reakciya 

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kerbiloid

kerbiloid

Posted
Posted (edited)
6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

China itself is not in a Space Race, but simply wants to match US achievements as they go along

That's what they call "Space Race".

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

They have literally declared multiple times they don't intend to beat the US return to the Moon

There is only one Shackleton crater at the South Pole.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

are planning for crewed landings in the 2030s, maybe the late 2020s.

Like everyone does. 2030+.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I am curious what point there is in requiring transparency for cooperation.

They haven't hid the drill on Soyuz - and see what happened.

Also, to be sure that the neighbor's module won't crash the whole assembly done for decades, and a short circuit in it won't turn the whole wireworks into fireworks, this module should be studied rivet-by-rivet by all participants of the station.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

China doesn't really have anything to learn from US space technology at this point

At this point China has redone the early 1970s spaceflights of Soyuz/Salyut and Luna/Lunokhod landing. It was 50 years ago.

US/EU had Apollo, Skylab, Spacelab, Shuttle, KH-11 and Voyager (long-term space electronics).
SU had Mir, Buran, and nukesats like the one landed on Canada.
Everyone needed each other and had something significant to share as ISS.
Now they have something to share in the new lunar race.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

SLS would be a step backwards, lol)

SLS is a wise reusage of the existing Shuttle ancestry, maybe not done in the best way.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Peaceful cooperation in space would be an excellent way to ease tensions. And there aren't a lot of places where that can occur right now.

And a great step in that direction would be sharing the lantanoid production which is concentrated in China, and next probably on the Moon.

So, as the Chinese part is available for sharing right now, NASA should make steps to make the lunar deposits aavailable, too.
Because why make China take care of everything, it's busy enough.

Edited by kerbiloid
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SunlitZelkova

SunlitZelkova

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

That's what they call "Space Race".

The American interpretation is that there are goals, and each participant in the race tries to achieve the goal first. China does not care about being first, and thus they aren't in a race.

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

There is only one Shackleton crater at the South Pole.

But there is no way the Artemis "coalition" can occupy the entire base-suitable areas before China can get something there. Unless they want to withdraw from the OST and claim part of it as territory.

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Like everyone does. 2030+.

NASA says 2024 but even ignoring that political date, there seems to be optimism it will be in the 2020s.

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Also, to be sure that the neighbor's module won't crash the whole assembly done for decades, and a short circuit in it won't turn the whole wireworks into fireworks, this module should be studied rivet-by-rivet by all participants of the station.

This is a good point.

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

At this point China has redone the early 1970s spaceflights of Soyuz/Salyut and Luna/Lunokhod landing. It was 50 years ago.

US/EU had Apollo, Skylab, Spacelab, Shuttle, KH-11 and Voyager (long-term space electronics).
SU had Mir, Buran, and nukesats like the one landed on Canada.
Everyone needed each other and had something significant to share as ISS.
Now they have something to share in the new lunar race.

Yes, but China is going to do all of that with or without other nations. There isn't really much to lose strategically.

China does not need nuclear powered satellites as the nature of their maritime surveillance constellation does not require a satellite of the same specifications as US-A.

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

SLS is a wise reusage of the existing Shuttle ancestry, maybe not done in the best way.

But it is a technological dead end, while Long March 9 could potentially be semi-reusable.

3 hours ago, DDE said:

If we do take the comment at face value, there may be several topics. The US has good reasons to really dislike ASAT and in-orbit servicing development. Public coverage of the program is canned, politicized and nowhere near as comprehensive as in the "West", which may make NASA see military application research everywhere.

That may be the case, but even if the CSS does have military applications I am not sure how much benefit there would be to access to Western technology. If it was the early 2000s it would be easy to argue that China participating in the ISS could have a wide range of benefits for their military modernization programs, but now, not as much. Especially as time continues.

So even if cooperation is off the table in 2021, I hope at least something along the lines of Apollo-Soyuz, or maybe Skylab-Salyut, becomes viable in the future.

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DDE

DDE

Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

That may be the case, but even if the CSS does have military applications I am not sure how much benefit there would be to access to Western technology. If it was the early 2000s it would be easy to argue that China participating in the ISS could have a wide range of benefits for their military modernization programs, but now, not as much. Especially as time continues.

This is venturing into value judgements and other unfortunate territory, but I find the US highly inert in its assessment of its adversaries. And this includes the assumption that the Chinese can't invent anything themselves, whether due to racialist "Asiatic lack of creativity" or the "stifling effects of a totalitarian political system". Hence they persist in fretting over any risk of technology transfer, and they would persist in doing so even were the Sino-Venator looming over them.

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SunlitZelkova

SunlitZelkova

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, DDE said:

This is venturing into value judgements and other unfortunate territory, but I find the US highly inert in its assessment of its adversaries. And this includes the assumption that the Chinese can't invent anything themselves, whether due to racialist "Asiatic lack of creativity" or the "stifling effects of a totalitarian political system". Hence they persist in fretting over any risk of technology transfer, and they would persist in doing so even were the Sino-Venator looming over them.

I agree, but I have seen *a* report by an American institution directly challenging the "totalitarian systems stifle innovation" theory pointing out some areas where the authors of the report believed Russia and China were ahead (or at least on par or nearing on par) with the US, mainly in military-related robotics (in the case of Russia, I can't recall the exact equipment/achievement used as an example) and supercomputing (for China).

My post was more so "what I hope happens" rather than what is or might happen, or is likely to happen.

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kerbiloid

kerbiloid

Posted
Posted
53 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

The American interpretation is that there are goals, and each participant in the race tries to achieve the goal first

Probably, but the goals and their existence stay unknown, and a process with unknown aim is undistinguishable from a  process with no aim.

Quote

Alice: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
The Cheshire Cat: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”
Alice: “I don't much care where.”
The Cheshire Cat: “Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.”

 

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

But there is no way the Artemis "coalition" can occupy the entire base-suitable areas before China can get something there.

And maybe vice versa, who knows.

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

NASA says 2024

And SpaceX just got/not got   the order to start designing, while two others have only mockups.

2021 is ending.

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Yes, but China is going to do all of that with or without other nations.

With - would be faster. For China.

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

China does not need nuclear powered satellites as the nature of their maritime surveillance constellation does not require a satellite of the same specifications as US-A.

Nucleon/Zeus and Draco are nuclear, and they are based on designs being tested for years.

Both are needed for lunar cargo support.

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

But it is a technological dead end, while Long March 9 could potentially be semi-reusable.

Reusability means not that much when you are sending a hundred of tonnes to the Moon by a nuke tug.

And SLS is purposed for the recon phase of the lunar expansion, it isn't needed in hundreds. 
So, it's a getting everything possible from the very good engine before the new epoch will require and bring more advanced technical solutions available to that date.

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