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Details of Chinese Moon Rocket Emerge
MarkWhittington writes "AmericaSpace has published the results of a study of Chinese rocket development by Charles Vick, a noted expert on the Russian and Chinese space programs who works for GlobalSecurity.org, using Chinese language sources. Of note are the developing concepts for a super heavy launch vehicle designated as the CZ9 or Long March 9, capable of taking Chinese astronauts to the moon and points beyond. 'Liang outlined several new Long March versions, virtually all of them testing elements that would eventually find their way into the Long March 9 that has 4 million lb. more of liftoff thrust than the 7.5 million lb. thrust NASA Saturn V. Forty-three years ago this week a Saturn V propelled the Apollo 11 astronauts to the first manned landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969.'"
AmericaSpace
That's not the WORST name for an organization I've ever heard. But really? You're THAT unimaginative?
Everything is better with chainsaws.
You know those inscrutable aliens in sci-fi films that have indecipherable glyphs on the sides of their spaceships: They're Chinese.
It is time to build the Sea Dragon rocket with 80 million pounds of thrust. And no new launch facilities would be needed since you can only launch it from the ocean.
An empire prospers when it keeps the trade routes open. It falters when it turns to lording over its own people, and a new core of empire forms on its outskirts, little fettered from it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I'm pretty sure it's this attitude that is responsible for the Fermi paradox.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Let them go to 'and places beyond' in their fancy shmancy 12 million lb. thrust rocket. It's far more cost effective and easy, to send probes and rovers to other places in this solar system. The real question is, 'Who will be first to manipulate the higgs field in such a way that will allow for light speed or near light speed travel'?
Tut. Them is us. Who will be .. it's one of us. We're all humans here, when it comes to the effort to get into space. Terrans, if you like. We (outside the States) are as proud of what you folks (I assume you're in the US?) did in the 20th century as you are. We (the world) look forward to great things from all nations (including the US) in this 21st century. Let's all take pride in the Space exploits of this planet's inhabitants. That's our species, risking their lives.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Yeah, and space is just as big as the Atlantic Ocean too. Great comparison.
You're absolutely right. We must never ever compare one type of technological advancement with another because you can only ever compare two absolutely identical things before drawing any meaningful conclusion.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Obviously, a US news source is going to use the largest NASA rocket ever flown as the basis for comparison, but I think their option 'A' design looks quite like the Soviet Energiya booster.
Saturn V was a single body launch vehicle - each stage was stacked on top of each other, and fired sequentially. This was simpler to assemble, but meant that two stages had to start in flight - one of which had to start twice! The first stage was LOx/RP-1 to get high thrust low in the Earth's atmosphere, and the upper stages were LOx/LH2 to get maximum delta-V.
Energiya, on the other hand, looked more like the US shuttle stack (and indeed, was used to fly the Soviet version of the space shuttle, the main difference being its ability to fly without the shuttle as its own rocket). It had a LOx/LH2 core stage, surrounded by 4 LOx/RP-1 boosters. All of the engines were started on the ground, at liftoff. Energiya was a mode 'modern' super heavy launch vehicle, as this approach is widely considered better these days.
Sensibly, the Chinese appear to have looked to the most recent super heavy (100t+ payload capacity) launch vehicle that successfully flew for design cues.
The submission and at least one of the linked articles are just silly "OMG CHINA" rabble-rousing in an attempt to justify the diversion of NASA resources from commercial providers like SpaceX towards giant white elephants like the SLS heavy-lift rocket (and the legacy contractors behind it). I've yet to see any evidence that China's supposed plans for a heavy-lift rocket are anything more than sketches from dreamy engineers, without any actual funding behind them; if anything other non-existent heavy-lift rockets like SpaceX's Falcon XX have more progress behind them.
If anything, indications so far suggest that China's space exploration plans involve the more sensible approach of assembling exploration modules in space, instead of building rarely-used mega-rockets that launch everything up at once.
It probably depends on your definition of "spacecraft". To launch a probe anywhere in the system, sure, the Saturn V is sufficient. But look at the size of the craft that the Saturn V sent to the Moon; it wasn't all that large. 3 men in a capsule plus a lander, plus a rover on one or two missions. If you want to launch a larger craft with 6 or 10 astronauts, and some more heavy cargo for them to set up at the destination, you'll need a bigger rocket most likely. Or if you want to launch a craft big enough for 3-4 people to live somewhat comfortably on a mission to Mars (which would take months, not days like the Moon mission, requiring much more supplies and living space), again you'll need a bigger rocket than the Saturn V.
Of course, you can also get away with smaller rockets by splitting things up and launching them on separate rockets, and then joining them together in orbit before continuing the mission.
You know those inscrutable aliens in sci-fi films that have indecipherable glyphs on the sides of their spaceships: They're Chinese.
Actually, someone found a stone tablet, somewhere near Siberia. They carbon dated it, and it supposed to be like more than 5 millions year old
On that stone tablet were carvings that looks very much like some ancient Chinese characters
I had the link once, but unfortunately I lost it (hard disk crashed).
I tried to search for it, to no avail.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
OK, so our technology has peaked out.
Didn't I see you standing there when Ooog invented the wheel? And wasn't it you that said "What good is this 'wheel' thing you 'invented' that will cause the gods to hate us? Why can't you be reasonable and have your wife pack all your shit on her back like everybody else does?'
'Reasonable' people refuse to rock the boat. 'Reasonable' people embrace and defend the status quo. Status quo means 'freeze in place', nothing moves. Not even you. So, go ahead and stand in place, don't move. The unreasonable among us are moving on.
Space travel at this stage of the game is engineering. We're still developing the engineering to do it cheaper and better. Now, the next little bit is going to take some thinking, so if you wanna take a nap first, that's okay, this comment will still be here when you wake up.
You want clean air, water, land, whatever, there are exactly two and only two options to get it. Option 1 is come up with a way to destroy every piece of technology everywhere on the planet, down to and including the ability to make fire, and turn the entirety of the human species back into a hunter-gatherer tribal society. Downside of this is, the planet cannot support 7 billion people at the stage of hunter-gatherers. It'd be closer to half a million, maybe a million, spread all over the globe. High level apex predators need large areas to hunt in, they can't be supported in small areas. This means there's not a lot of them. And as the current champion apex predator, we're dangerously overextended without our technology.
Option 2 is move all havey industry like metal refining and dangerous chemical processes into orbit and beyond. Get it out of the atmosphere where its poluting byproducts can be blown away by the solar wind. Bonus is, the raw materials are readily at hand, just need a nudge to put them in orbit around Earth where they can be harvested. Again, this is an engineering problem, and like all engineering problems, you solve it by throwing engineers at it.
Go ahead, be 'reasonable'. Fight for the status quo. Fight for decreasing resources increasingly more inaccessible. Fight to keep funnelling what wealth is left into the pockets of the 1%. Just don't complain when us unreasonable blokes run you over on our way to the future.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Maybe someone should start writing a new stuxnet variant targetting China's space program?
Sure, but the job of writing it would probably get out-sourced to India. Ya know, the other developing country with an ambitious space programme.
There will be a lot of comments about the Chinese only managing to do what the US did half a century ago, but the point is they're doing it while the Western world has abandoned those ambitions.
When the Apollo 11 astronauts toured the world after their successful landing they were surprised to hear people everywhere, even in the USSR, exclaim "We did it!" Not "You did it", but "We", as though the entire human race had participated.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Awww, how cute is it that "people" living outside of the U.S. think they're human? Silly foreigners.