from the there's-an-HTML/CSS-joke-in-here-somewhere dept.
China just invited the world to its space station
At a time when NASA and its partners are trying to decide how long to maintain the International Space Station, China has taken the significant step of inviting the world to its planned orbital station. The China Space Station, or CSS, could become operational as soon as 2022.
"CSS belongs not only to China, but also to the world," said Shi Zhongjun, China's ambassador to the UN and other international organizations in Vienna. "All countries, regardless of their size and level of development, can participate in the cooperation on an equal footing."
Such an announcement represents potentially the greatest soft power threat of the last six decades to US and Russian dominance of spaceflight. In the public announcement of this policy on China's state news service Xinhua, Chinese officials said the country stands ready to help other developing countries interested in space technology—and in having their own space programs.
This inclusive approach (though just how inclusive an authoritarian government can be remains to be seen) offers a rebuke of sorts to the US government and the International Space Station. By law, the US forbids direct involvement between China's space program and NASA. Some at NASA want to change this, but Congress has established such rules to prevent technology transfer.
Also at The Verge and Popular Mechanics.
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China has big plans for its massive new rocket
Researchers are developing a rocket that would be more powerful than any U.S. spacecraft, Chinese state media reported Monday. Phys.org reports that the Long March-9 rocket, set to be complete by 2030, would be capable of delivering 140 tons into low orbit.
NASA's upcoming Space Launch System, meanwhile, aims to deliver 130 tons, and the Falcon Heavy from SpaceX launched 64 tons toward Mars earlier this year. China is reportedly hoping to surpass its American and European competitors, planning to spend billions of dollars developing its space programs.
Full reusability for the Long March-9 is not mentioned.
As a point of comparison, the Saturn V rocket:
The Saturn V was launched 13 times from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with no loss of crew or payload. As of 2018, the Saturn V remains the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful (highest total impulse) rocket ever brought to operational status, and holds records for the heaviest payload launched and largest payload capacity to low Earth orbit (LEO) of 140,000 kg (310,000 lb), which included the third stage and unburned propellant needed to send the Apollo Command/Service Module and Lunar Module to the Moon.[5][6]
Related: China Launches Long March-6 Rocket
Chinese Long March-5 Rocket Launch Fails
China Will Open its New Space Station to International Partners
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @08:44PM (2 children)
Sounds like they've realized what a tremendous money pit it is to run a space station.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by RS3 on Thursday May 31 2018, @08:49PM
Feeding humans is a money pit. We all die eventually.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday June 01 2018, @01:04AM
Following that logic, the US should open up its military to other countries.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday May 31 2018, @10:00PM
That way we don't have to work to steal your ideas.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday June 01 2018, @05:11AM (1 child)
And we needed the Texas Superconducting Supercollider so the US could maintain its dominant position in elementary particle physics.
Why don't we study science because it's the _right_ thing to do?
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Friday June 01 2018, @06:12AM
Still bummed about this. I worked on my state proposal and knew at least half a dozen graduate students that became quants over this. Probably the reason for the 2008 crash. But hey, at least we know how rats pee in space. Because all human knowledge is useful and progresses us to be a space faring species. Or something.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday June 01 2018, @02:21PM (2 children)
NASA employees have strict restrictions against working with their Chinese counterparts. The US has effectively self-banned from visiting this facility.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday June 01 2018, @05:54PM (1 child)
It's hard to say if the U.S. is on the right side of history or not.
NASA-CNSA collaboration could be beneficial for both sides. You could see both countries dumping a lot of money into building a huge space telescope, for example. But China is still trying to copy as much U.S. technology as possible, and is beginning to ascend to superpower status.
If the U.S. continues its current course, we can still partner with Europe, Russia, Japan, India, and most other nations that want to collaborate on space projects. However, if China runs its own space station and moon colony projects in parallel, they will use them to develop ties with other nations. Expect to see some African astronauts/taikonauts visiting the new Chinese space station.
We could wait it out and hope that China eventually becomes a democracy and loses some will to compete with the U.S. But that might be a decades or century+ long wait.
Even though the U.S. has a long history of space partnership with Russia, the relationship has been strained recently and NASA/Congress will try to use SpaceX and Boeing to eliminate the need to use Russian rockets to send astronauts anywhere. After commercial crew visits to the ISS and other destinations become routine, we may see contact with the Russian space program largely cut off.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Saturday June 02 2018, @02:12AM
I ask this question in ignorance, not sarcasm or jest.
What could they learn from us? Have we innovated in a meaningful way in the last two decades anything that isn't publicly published already?