China's New Military Space Stations Coming Soon

WindBourne writes "China will be launching 2 new space stations this next year. One is for their civil program (as run by the military), while the second is openly for the military. It appears that there will be multiples of the military version to be launched in 2010, and that they are developing the same US Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) that was canceled in 1969. In addition, it appears that China is accelerating their timelines on a number of the earlier space announcements."

Comments

You know whats ironic?

[Aklarr]

Whats ironic is that China seems to have much more ambition, or is that much less red tape, then NASA does in the USA to get space projects happening

Re:You know whats ironic?

[captainpanic]

Why is that ironic? Big projects are a direct result from a centralized bureaucracy with a billion people that can do the work. Their space project is nothing compared to other infrastructure projects they have.

Specialist tasks are, pretty much by default, more expensive in our current capitalist system with companies having more power than the governments. The chinese work cheaper and are faster at taking decisions. And their government does have the power to tell a company that "they will do this-and-this task for this budget, with NO option to spend more money" (whereas NASA and ESA always seem to exceed the budget).

Face it, the Chinese will rule space if Western countries don't step it up.

Re:You know whats ironic?

[Ethanol-fueled]

Or more expendable astronauts.

Re:You know whats ironic?

[nothing2seehere]

Actually, China has been hit worse that most countries, especially the US, and it's just going to keep getting worse. The Chinese government announced that over 7% of all domestic companies went out of business over the last year, and that China is now experiencing deflation. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, deflation is very, very bad, espeicially for a manufacturing-based economy.

Re:Nuclear rover? Will nukes power their stations?

[vlm]

Interesting (if true) that they didn't just put on solar panels (will the rover be used during the lunar night?).

Very slightly off topic, you'd be amazed how many people confuse "same face always facing the earth" with "same face always facing the sun". Then for a good time explain Mercury's spin-orbit resonance and they get all confused.

During the night, a good way to keep warm is a nice toasty nuclear reactor or RTG.