Rocket in place to send 3 crew to Chinese space station:
The rocket that will send three crew members to start living on China's new orbiting space station has been moved onto the launch pad ahead of its planned blastoff next week. The three astronauts plan to spend three months on the space station doing spacewalks, construction and maintenance work and science experiments.
The main section of the Tianhe, or Heavenly Harmony, station was launched into orbit on April 29, and a cargo spacecraft sent up last month carried fuel, food and equipment to the station in preparation for the crewed mission.
The Long March-2F Y12 rocket carrying the Shenzhou-12 spaceship was transferred to the launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Wednesday, the China Manned Space Engineering Office said in a brief statement.
The space agency plans a total of 11 launches through the end of next year to deliver two laboratory modules to expand the 70-ton station, along with supplies and crew members. Next week's launch will be the third of those, and the first of the four crewed missions planned.
[...] China said in March the astronauts training for the upcoming crewed missions were a mix of space travel veterans and newcomers and included some women. The first station crew will be all male, though women will be part of future crews, according to Yang Liwei, who orbited Earth in China's first crewed mission in 2003 and is now an official at the space agency.
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China space station: Shenzhou-12 delivers first crew to Tianhe module
China has launched three astronauts into orbit to begin occupation of the country's new space station.
The three men - Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo - are to spend three months aboard the Tianhe module some 380km (236 miles) above the Earth.
It will be China's longest crewed space mission to date and the first in nearly five years.
The crew successfully docked with the space station just over seven hours after the launch.
China, Russia reveal roadmap for international moon base
Russia and China unveiled a roadmap for a joint International Lunar Research Station Wednesday to guide collaboration and development of the project.
Chinese and Russian space officials revealed the plans June 16 at the Global Space Exploration (GLEX) conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, stating that the ILRS has received the interest of a number of countries and organizations.
Also at Washington Post.
Previously: Rocket in Place to Send 3 Crew to Chinese Space Station
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @05:49PM (3 children)
Guess how many have Uiyghur astronauts?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @06:09PM
Zero, there are no Uiyghurs in China. There never were any Uiyghurs in China. The MiniTrue would like a word with you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @06:31PM
They ride in the fuel tank.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @07:33PM
Chinese uyghur repression resulted from a backlash to minority friendly policies ? Similar to those against affirmative action in US? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/10/china-celebrating-diversity-suppressing-xinjiang-communist-party [theguardian.com]
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Thursday June 10 2021, @06:25PM (2 children)
Hopefully their rocket is safer than their escalators.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @09:48PM (1 child)
Instructions for next week:
1. wear a crash helmet in case of space debris in your backyard.
2. remember to "Go Green" folks! Do your bit to save the planet while more rocket launches spew millions of tons of CO2 and other crap into our atmosphere.
3. Remember, Climate Change is YOUR PERSONAL fault, not Elon, NASA, ESA, Bezos, China etc. Why? S-p-a-a-a-a-c-e.
Thank you for playing Earth 1.0.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @11:30PM
Please stop with the rockets aren’t green; plot global emissions by cars, boats, planes, scooters, motorcycles, lawnmowers, mopeds and rockets. The lowest emissions will be rockets
(Score: 2, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday June 10 2021, @06:35PM (9 children)
From the article.
The PLA is literally just their name for their army navy and airforce. It'd be like saying "Sailors from the ruling Democratic Party's military wing, the US Navy" it's an incredibly bizarre and surreal way to describe it.
Technically, I guess it doesn't include their reserves, like police, or volunteer militia members, but it's the only standing army the country has.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @06:51PM
The difference is that Chairman Xi won his election fair and square.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @07:22PM
Funny how you are moderated offtopic. It's from TFA!
And yeah, I agree. It's propaganda the other way.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 10 2021, @07:47PM (2 children)
Maybe talking about them in that fashion is warranted, considering their social credit scoring system.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday June 10 2021, @08:20PM
If I were to, as you suggest, consider premise Px as "Country x has a social credit scoring system" I cannot fathom the syllogism that leads to the conclusion Cx "It is warranted to describe the military of nation x as a wing of its political leadership"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11 2021, @03:30AM
You, sir, just lost five docial point for making that comment online.
D'uh. Be good citizen. Go play now.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @07:49PM (3 children)
I think the answer goes without saying, but if not: propaganda. Another statement from that very brief article is even more laughable:
No, the reason Beijing doesn't participate in the ISS is because of the Wolf Amendment [wikipedia.org]. In 2011 we deemed China's abilities in space primitive and the threat of technological theft high, so we decided just banning any collaboration with them would be productive. In Representative Wolf's own words [forbes.com] :
That country we have nothing to gain from now has now, in a decade, become one of the most active nations in space, effectively caught up to us in terms of public space capability, and is well on their way to surpassing us. Good times, great narrative shift.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10 2021, @08:00PM (1 child)
Citing public space capability is disingenuous because the US is migrating to privatized space capability.. Despite some teething problems and push-back from the established players it is working out very well and the US not only enjoys greater launch capability than ever before it is poised to increase it again by an order of magnitude over the next few years. The US has nothing to gain from China and a lot to lose.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 11 2021, @02:27PM
Sure, that's a fair point. But I think it deserves some further discussion. Our "private capability" is really just a euphemism. There is SpaceX and then a handful of companies that vary only in their degree of fail. And while SpaceX has achieved absolutely amazing things, I do not believe they alone can compete against a superpower who is looking increasingly focused on space. And I'm not sure how long effective public-private can really work. The recent Artemis contracts exemplify this point.
NASA picked SpaceX for their next mission to the moon, which makes all the sense in the world because SpaceX is currently leagues ahead of any other company. However, Jeff Bezos' wanted to be picked. And he owns senators. So he buttered a few bellies and the next thing you know congress is changing all the rules and passing new laws so Bezos can also "win." Bezos being the owner of Blue Origin - an aerospace company that has existed for more than 21 years and has yet to manage to put even a single object into orbit clearly deserved a contract to put something on the Moon.
So our future (given the current political status quo) is looking to increasingly be SpaceX vs China. And I simply do not think that SpaceX will be able to compete against the effectively endless funding a superpower can provide. To say nothing of what happens when somebody dies, which will happen sooner or later as we start sending more and more people into space. For SpaceX it will be a months long investigation, endless media skepticism/clickbaiting against space, large bureaucratic panels which may likely end up having congressmen owned by people like Bezos on board (trying as hard as they can to ground SpaceX), and more. For China? They'll give some medals and honors, maybe toss up a memorial, declare them national heroes, and keep right on schedule for next week's launch.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by crafoo on Thursday June 10 2021, @11:32PM
It's posts like this that will earn you negative social credits in the coming USA social credit system. I wonder if they will tie this to your lending rate once all of our currency is digital and all commercial banks have been nationalized.