Chinese cislunar flight

[xenomorph555]

So I heard from a few sources that Chinas new heavy lift rocket, the Long march 5 (25mt) will have the capacity to not only put large heavy things in orbit (tiangong-2) or do advanced lunar probe missions (chang'e 5) but also do a cislunar shenzhou flight no orbit on landing. Now what I want to discuss is will they do it. The Chinese have really advanced over the years with many missions and they want to be equal or better then America and Russia. On the probe side of things China will never beat US or Russia however they could beat us in manned and I believe they know this. It's not in their plans to do this however there are reasons to believe they will:

1. They do love their big prestige when it comes to space, a flight ike this would most certainly gain popularity.

2. It would prepare them for future space missions.

3.It wouldn't be too expensive, they plan on using LM-5 a lot so they would probably be able to get one easily. The shenzhou would only need small mods to it.

4. It would gain attention,the chinese space program likes to get international attention, this could probably get it.

of course it may not happen, I hope it does though, I was not around when apollo went on so to see this would be great. Go China!

[architeuthis]

Power to 'em I say. It would please me to see any members of our species voyage beyond LEO. That said the the Chinese space program appears to be proceeding cautiously, and methodically by small increments. I think this is a smart, sustainable approach, but I don't expect they will have the technology or infrastructure to return to the moon before the US does. I'm sure they'll beat the Russians though...

[xenomorph555]

Yeah, poor ruskies, if they kept funding the N-1 they would have made it on the 5th launch, it had everything fixed plus the NK-33's but alas no.

[Kryten]

They wouldn't learn anything by doing this they couldn't with tiangong, and there's nobody to beat there; what'd be the point?

[xenomorph555]

They wouldn't learn anything by doing this they couldn't with tiangong, and there's nobody to beat there; what'd be the point?

No, they learned loads with tiangong, docking, extended living in space, better life support, rendezvous, science experiments and many more. As for the CL flight, they might learn a lot but it would be for experience on the most part, you wouldn't go for a instant manned landing mission (Apollo 8).

Oh and their not trying to beat anyone, just do science unlike the apollo missions which were lets be honest PR programs (did lead to a lot of discoveries and science though).

[NASAFanboy]

They wouldn't learn anything by doing this they couldn't with tiangong, and there's nobody to beat there; what'd be the point?

They have the United States, and the two nations are currently on not-so-friendly terms with each other; but that is up to you or me to wonder about. None of us on the KSP forums are probably politicans who are experienced enough to figure out the outcome for Sino-American relations until 2030, are we? And as for not trying to beat anyone, you must realize that China is ruled by a Earth government, and so is the United States. They have budgets, and unless the space operations on their budgets give their nation short-term benifit and their leaders benifit, they ain't gonna pay a buck. And no buck - no buck rogers.

As for an Chinese cislunar launch, I doubt it'll happen before 2025. The Shengzhou is an Low-Earth-Orbital spacecraft, it does not have the systems or equipment nessessary to venture outside of LEO, and the current Chinese goal in space is to launch an Mir-class station by 2020, none of which involves beyond LEO exploration. The clostest nation to returning to the Moon is the United States, and we aren't landing as far as Bolden is concerned. Yeah, we'll flyby it, enter its orbit, drag a asteroid to it, build a spacestation on its dark side and invite private companies to mine it, but the next American spacecraft on the Moon isn't going to completely belong to the US Government, but more of an private-governmental apporach.

Edited March 17, 2014 by NASAFanboy

[xenomorph555]

Good points, however it should be noted that the shenzhou is a modernized soyuz which was designed from the ground up for lunar flight as the soviets answer to apollo. So it's entirely possible it's capable for lunar flights however it does use a lot of new materials and other systems.

[NASAFanboy]

Good points, however it should be noted that the shenzhou is a modernized soyuz which was designed from the ground up for lunar flight as the soviets answer to apollo. So it's entirely possible it's capable for lunar flights however it does use a lot of new materials and other systems.

Soyuz was supposed to be replaced by the Zond.

The Zond was the cislunar Soyuz variant, and it got cancelled even though it made several successful cislunar flights. That darn N1 kept blowing up. The Shengzhou may be venture to MEO for a short while or enter an higher orbit, but no way can it reach the Moon.

[xenomorph555]

Ah yes I know about zond, oh well maybe in the future China will announce their next gen manned ship (5th gen or 4th?).

[architeuthis]

Oh and their not trying to beat anyone, just do science unlike the apollo missions which were lets be honest PR programs (did lead to a lot of discoveries and science though).

The way I see it Apollo AS-201 through Apollo 10 were only engineering test flights. In a sense so was Apollo 11 and 12, though in hindsight it was obviously also a major PR coup, and as far as some U.S. politicians were concerned the whole point of the program (e.g. beating the Russians). Nixon actually considered cancelling Apollo after 11. Basically his thinking was declare mission:accomplished, and not risk a lost mission that could tarnish the record of achievement. This would have lunacy () in budgetary terms as the hardware for the later missions had already been built. Apollo 13 was supposed to be the first pure science mission, but we all know how that went. Apollo 14 through 17 were all science (especially the last 3), as was the truncated Apollo applications program (in the end, just Skylab). I actually tend to think that China's lunar ambitions (and manned spaceflight projects in general) are more of the nationalistic prestige variety, then of the ivory tower.

Soyuz was supposed to be replaced by the Zond.

The Zond was the cislunar Soyuz variant, and it got cancelled even though it made several successful cislunar flights. That darn N1 kept blowing up.

The N1 wasn't the Soviet's only problem. IRC more than half of the Zond circumlunar missions were failures.

Edited March 18, 2014 by architeuthis

[Camacha]

The N1 wasn't the Soviet's only problem. IRC more than half of the Zond circumlunar missions were failures.

Madness and brilliance are sometimes hard to distingish

[deadshot462]

I hope they go for it, US could use some motivation to stay ahead of the game and visit the Moon again.

[Red Iron Crown]

They have the United States, and the two nations are currently on not-so-friendly terms with each other; but that is up to you or me to wonder about.

Really? Isn't China the US's biggest trade partner, and vice versa?

None of us on the KSP forums are probably politicans who are experienced enough to figure out the outcome for Sino-American relations until 2030, are we? And as for not trying to beat anyone, you must realize that China is ruled by a Earth government, and so is the United States. They have budgets, and unless the space operations on their budgets give their nation short-term benifit and their leaders benifit, they ain't gonna pay a buck. And no buck - no buck rogers.

China is in a unique position here. Their leadership is not elected, so they are freer to pursue projects that don't necessarily play well with the populace and they have greater flexibility with their budgets. China is very interested in becoming the world's most powerful nation (something that will likely happen in our lifetimes) and a successful space program adds to their international prestige. Chinese leadership also has the luxury of taking a longer view on the returns of a project, the US and most of the West are generally focused on this election term for the public sector and this quarter's returns for the private sector.

[NASAFanboy]

Really? Isn't China the US's biggest trade partner, and vice versa?

Trade partner does not mean ally.

The only reason US Industry is in China is for the cheap labor.

[Red Iron Crown]

Trade partner does not mean ally.

The only reason US Industry is in China is for the cheap labor.

True, and now that I think about it, in WW2 Russia's biggest trade partner was Germany, right up until they invaded them.

[Idobox]

Soyuz was supposed to be replaced by the Zond.

The Zond was the cislunar Soyuz variant, and it got cancelled even though it made several successful cislunar flights. That darn N1 kept blowing up. The Shengzhou may be venture to MEO for a short while or enter an higher orbit, but no way can it reach the Moon.

Why not? The conditions on a free return trajectory are not that different from those in LEO. A little bit more radiation, sure, but if the thing is able to keep a decent pressure, it must be thick enough to stop a lot of it.

The Shenzou has done a 5 days mission with 2 crew members, it sounds reasonable to have a 10 days 1 man mission, more than enough to do a cislunar flight (it takes about 6 days).

All you need is 3000m/s deltaV when in orbit, which a new bigger rocket could allow, or by docking with a stage put there in advance.

[Kryten]

Soyuz was supposed to be replaced by the Zond.

Zond was simply a Soyuz varaint, and was only for the flyby program. The landings would have used the 7K-LOK version with the standard layout.

The Shengzhou [sic] may be venture to MEO for a short while or enter an higher orbit, but no way can it reach the Moon.

Why not? Soyuz did, as you just pointed out, and LM-5 should be good bit more powerful than the c. 1970 versions of Proton.