China Completes Its First Manned Space Docking

This AP story, as carried by the Houston Chronicle, says that the Chinese Shenzhou 9 spacecraft (carrying a crew that includes the country's first female astronaut) has successfully docked with an orbiting module, a first for China's manned space program. However, manned mission or not, the actual docking was actually executed from below: as with previous docking maneuvers, "Monday's docking also was completed by remote control from a ground base in China. A manual docking, to carried out by one of the crew members, is scheduled for later in the mission. Two crew members plan to conduct medical tests and experiments inside the module, while the third will remain in the spacecraft."

Comments

Significant Milestone

[mister2au]

Slow but steady progress since initiating this program in 1992.

With a first Chinese moonwalk estimated for 2024 that is 32 years total (with already 50 years of rocket research in the world to leverage off) ... makes you understand just much the US threw at its lunar programme to manage going from the start of the Mercury program to moonwalk in less than 11 years

Re:Significant Milestone

[EdgePenguin]

Or, to put it another way, how little the Chinese are investing. The space program is clearly not viewed as a high economic priority in China. The period between their first manned flight and now is roughly the same as the period between the first US manned flight and first US lunar landing; and in that time period China has had an economy far in excess of that of the US in the 1960s. They have also had lower costs due to the fact that they don't have to develop all the technology from scratch. They could easily have done a repeat of Apollo on this time scale, but chose not to.

Re:Significant Milestone

[Gordonjcp]

Maybe they just don't want to rush it and take chances. In the 1960s the US and the USSR were competing to be the first to space and the first to the moon. The Chinese are going to be the third country to reach the moon (second, for manned missions since the Russians didn't bother) whichever way you slice it.

There's no point going at it in a hurry and risking the lives of astronauts any more than they have to. Back when the Apollo missions were flying, the US and the USSR had an attitude of "get someone up there and maybe back down if they survive, and get it done now". The Chinese don't need to do that.

Re:Significant Milestone

[Jane Q. Public]

"... economy far in excess... "

is only a relative figure. Per capita (which along with total economy MUST be included), their economy was nowhere near the U.S. during that time, as measured in U.S. dollars. The total "GDP" (if there is such a think in a socialist country -- definitions must be clarified) might have been greater, but it was for a far larger population.

The fact is that during most of that period, China could not even feed itself, "large" economy or not.

Re:Significant Milestone

[mister2au]

Technically not third to reach the moon
- Japan put up an orbiter (Hiten) in 1993
- ESA put up SMART-1 in 2003
- India crashed their Chandrayaan probe (deliberately an impact mission) a few years ago

And even then, both India and the Europeans are targeting manned landings before China.

Although even Iran has announced for 2025 so clearly some of these need to be taken with some skepticism

Re:Significant Milestone

[k(wi)r(kipedia)]

I think the total size of the economy is more important in attempting to measure a country's ability to maintain a national space program. Otherwise some small but rich European or oil-producing country would have also launched humans into space a long time ago. The Soviet Union was clearly poorer than the US in per capita terms, but managed to beat the US to several early space milestones.

Re:Significant Milestone

[abelb]

Don't forget that China has successfully completed two orbital lunar missions with Chang'e 1 and 2.

Re:Significant Milestone

[Xiaran]

Iran is going to go up there and knock over the American flag.

Re:Significant Milestone

[Teancum]

A huge difference between Gemini 8 and Shenzhou 9 is that Armstrong and Scott were actually piloting their spacecraft where instead the pilots of the Shenzhou spacecraft are sitting at mission control.

I am fairly certain that if remote control technology has been sophisticated enough at the time, then NASA would also have done it by remote control.

Not really. This is basically a difference in attitude towards those who are inside of the spacecraft, where an American philosophy is that those inside of the spacecraft ought to be much more directly in charge of what is going on, while the Chinese/Soviet philosophy was one of paranoia that the spaceflight participants might do something politically embarrassing so that authority was taken away.

The original plan for the Mercury spaceflights was to be largely automated, with the astronauts being largely "spam in a can" and really not doing anything other than being a passenger and enjoying the ride. Considering the Mercury astronauts were all test pilot instructors (qualified not just as test pilots but to teach people how to become those as well), there was a minor revolt within the astronaut corps that insisted some level of actual piloting should take place inside of the spacecraft, where key decisions about the progress of the spacecraft such as abort decisions and proceeding through various milestones rested upon the mission commander... in some cases with the mission commander alone.

Note also that much of the early NASA technology for launching astronauts into space came from the ICBM missile development, where significant automation already took place. The first spaceflights for the Mercury program used Chimpanzees, who obviously weren't rated as pilots or expected to do much other than take in the ride.

I'll note that the attitude of allowing manual control has made a difference in several missions and allowed a successful conclusion to those missions that otherwise might have gone badly. Gemini 8 was one of those situations BTW, where the astronauts weren't able to explain their situation to ground control due to a loss of telemetry and garbled communications until after they had finally resolved the situation. Another was the ability of the astronauts to rework Apollo 13 in order to get them to come home. I'm sure other situations could be brought up where real piloting skill was applied, including John Glenn's decision to not jettison his retro-rockets on the Friendship 7 flight. John Glenn also switched to a manual flight mode due to problems he noticed during the flight, not trusting the automated system that was in place.

Re:In Space...

[yotto]

Look... I apologize already for the insult, okay? But it isn't entirely undeserved.
Making extensive use of, well, let's say "borrowed" technology -- not to mention the outright theft of some of it -- is hardly equivalent to doing this stuff on your own.
If it's a success, I will be somewhat surprised, and not very inclined to credit them for it.

I know. American scientists were able to get to the Moon without using any technology from any other cultures. Every other country should have to do the same. The Chinese shouldn't even be able to use those rockets we invented thousands of years ago.

(For the sarcastically disabled, I know who invented the rocket)

Sorry in advance...

[yotto]

...carrying a crew that includes the country's first female astronaut... A manual docking, to carried out by one of the crew members, is scheduled... Two crew members plan to conduct medical tests and experiments...

...giggity.

Re:Sorry in advance...

[JustOK]

There's the "Han Solo" method. Just a question of who shoots first.

Re:In Space...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... Well...

You mean "borrowed" in the sense like the USA did when using the techniques developed in Nazi Germany?

And why should you develop something yourself when the knowledge is available? Most techniques used by the NASA are not especially top-secret as far as I know. So - why spend an big budget on something that's freely available?

I think there is a good chance the first man on Mars will be Chinese. Not because they are that good, but because they slowly bit steadily keep pushing forward, while the USA is stepping down. Anyway by the time of those first manned mars landing, I estimate the biggest budget in the USA will be spend on thousands of lawyers fighting the (around that time completely out-of-control) software patent wars (inside the USA, because outside the USA people are not that stupid).

"They're starving in China"

[TapeCutter]

"They're starving back in China, so finish what you got." is a line from a John Lennon song, when I was a kid that's what mother's told their children when trying to persuade them to eat thier veggies. There were several famines due to Mao's "great leap" the worst of which was without doubt the worst in the 20th century (and perhaps of all time). I was too young to recall that one but I do recall the one in 1969 (the same year Armstrong set foot on the moon).

It's said (by who I don't recall) that China has dragged more people out of poverty in the last 4 decades than the rest of the world combined by simply raising the standard of living for their own people. Having wittnessed (from afar) the scale of the change since the gang of four were booted out in the 70's, I'm inclined to believe that claim.

Que paranoid rants about governments from 20-somethings with cheeto filled stomachs, in...3...2....1

Re:"They're starving in China"

[crazyjj]

"They're starving back in China, so finish what you got." is a line from a John Lennon song, when I was a kid that's what mother's told their children when trying to persuade them to eat thier veggies.

Funny thing is that I saw an interview not long ago with a Chinese writer who said that when he was growing up in the 50's and 60's, the Chinese were told the same thing about the U.S. They were shown Depression-era footage of soup kitchen lines and told that was typical of life in the U.S. They would even encourage schoolchildren to give to charity to help out the starving Americans.

Re:Face

[_merlin]

She isn't hot by any standard of the word. Well, at least by classical Chinese measures of beauty she's quite ugly. And if the pictures are photoshopped, whoever did it should be sacked. I think it's you who's insecure, and you seem to have a bit of a case of yellow fever, too if you think she's hot.

Re:In Space...

[hakann]

This explains it perfectly: http://www.xkcd.com/984/