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China Targets 2022 For Space Station Completion
Taco Cowboy writes: According to Reuters, China is aiming for 2022 to get its first space station operational. "China's leaders have set a priority on advancing its space program, with President Xi Jinping calling for the country to establish itself as a space power." After Chinese astronauts docked with the country's experimental space lab last year, they're planning the launch of another laboratory in 2016. Launch and construction of the new space station's core is planned for 2018, and their goal is to complete it by 2022. China insists that its space program is for peaceful purposes.
It could also be that they have experiments they want to perform that wouldn't be allowed on the International Space Station.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
They've tried, repeatedly, only to be blocked by US objections each time.
Their own station would probably be more worthwhile anyway - I can't name a single major achievement the ISS had made in the past decade.
And the masses cried out, "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0!"
Here's a good analogy for the movie. Imagine that the hubble / shuttle and each of the two space stations are actually ships in the ocean. When you're in a spacesuit you're in a little dinghy paddling with oars. Thus there are only 3 ships in all the oceans, each operated by a different country with no coordination as to their positioning, yet miraculously they are all so close together in the vast stretches of the ocean that you can easily row from one to another.
Even then, the analogy still doesn't begin to do justice, because orbits are all about motion and not position, and are 3D with elevation, inclination, etc, etc, as well, so there are even more "places" to be than the entire expanses and depths of all the Earth's oceans.
Better known as 318230.