As last module docks, China completes its space station • Hacker News Board

Re: As last module docks, China completes its space station

#161

Post by SkyMarshal » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 10:22 PM UTC

holoduke wrote: post #158

Quoted post unavailable.

You can’t really judge other cultures by their outward happiness. That’s really just a US thing. I think what it all comes down to is the probabilistic numbers game - how many clever people do you have hacking at various problems. Some % will succeed, and the larger the population the more results will emerge from it. That’s China’s fundamental advantage. They can still fuck it up though with poor political structure, as they did for several hundred years up until the 2000s, and may yet revert to under Xi Jinping. But they’ll have to really screw things up to lose the numbers game.

Re: As last module docks, China completes its space station

#162

Post by choonway » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 10:22 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #52

Victerius wrote: post #8

I hope mankind can move beyond building space stations as a handful of modular small cylinders, and start building space stations the way they appear in science fiction: dozens of rooms, cubical exteriors, hallways, human height doors that open and close, stairs, elevators, hangars, a nuclear reactor instead of solar panels, and modules that rotate around an axis to create artificial gravity. And a more diversified c…

It's extremely hard to join large structures airtight, with joints being stronger than the material itself. Soviet, and Russian spacecraft, and modules were traditionally made with extremely uneconomical method of machining the vessel from a single giant piece of aluminium to not to worry about joints, and their strength under space conditions.

The difficulty is not about joining large structures airtight. otherwise we would have trouble with building commercial aircraft.

the problem is when you want to make something out from the absolute minimim weight possible due to economy of putting things into space, then you can't do with any connections whatsoever.

The pressure of -1 bar isn't particularly challenging engineering wise.

Re: As last module docks, China completes its space station

#163

Post by ROTMetro » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 10:35 PM UTC

garmanarnar wrote: post #157

ROTMetro wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Whataboutism

[flagged]

Re: As last module docks, China completes its space station

#164

Post by Ekaros » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 10:42 PM UTC

bayesian_horse wrote: post #96

50 years late to the space race..

They might be late to join, but when the rest of competition have started racing towards start line... Does it matter.

Re: As last module docks, China completes its space station

#165

Post by ethbr0 » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 10:49 PM UTC

russli1993 wrote: post #117

Jayab wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then maybe a little late to sanction their tech to keep them from being peer competitors.

US did sanction all of China's space industry, defense dual use industries since the 1990s, and never let go ever since. That is pretty early. And this is what happens 30 years since the sanctions. But I have no idea what will happen in the future, plus the nature of industry and technology is also different.

As much as it's a waste of duplicate effort, it's likely good for humanity and geopolitics to have multiple nation-states each trying their own approaches.

Avoids path lock-in by exploring alternate solutions lines, and ensures that if one country decides to slow down (because politics) then the world doesn't lose its only leading-edge space program.

Healthy competition for the betterment of all!

Re: As last module docks, China completes its space station

#166

Post by dotnet00 » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 10:49 PM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #133

Have we actually had the announcement that Russia is going to switch from sending cosmonauts to the ISS to sending them to China's instead? Or is that just kind of assumed, without announcement?

The claims about Russia cooperating on a space station refer to some hypothetical second station as Tiangong is not at an inclination where Soyuz would be able to reach from where it normally launches.

IIRC there was some speculation that they might work with ESA to launch crewed Soyuz from other locations, but that's obviously going to be completely off the table for a while now. So the only other option they'd have is launching from China, which doesn't really make much sense.

Besides that, recently (mainly after the last guy who ran Roscosmos was 'promoted' to some position related to the Ukraine war) Russia has pulled back on its "we don't need the ISS" rhetoric. Now they claim to be interested in sticking with the station beyond 2024 until their own station is ready, similar to NASA's plan of trying to have the ISS hold out until the 2-3 private space stations in various stages of development/construction are operational.

The issue of course being that it's highly unlikely that Russia will ever finish a replacement space station as their space industry has spent decades in decay struggling to get any non-military projects to make significant progress. Thus it's pretty likely that they won't have a station ready and will effectively lose their crewed spaceflight capability from not having any place to go to with it.

Re: As last module docks, China completes its space station

#167

Post by tunesmith » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 10:53 PM UTC

russli1993 wrote: post #112

diskzero wrote: post #34

Does anyone know to what extent China has advanced the state of the Soviet technology that they have (I assume) licensed? I have been to the Russian Star City training facility, Baikonur Cosmodrome and been in the full-size Mir training module and the Chinese station components look very similar. I am sure getting good information is difficult, but perhaps someone here has some more info.

Some of the features I know from the Chinese space station - Solar panels smaller in area than ISS but produces similar amount of power, indicating much more efficient solar panels - Ion thrusters to keep space in orbit - Automated docking of cargo and crew capsule. Semi-automated docking of large station components like the 23ton labs - A robotic arm similar to ISS that walk along the joint points on the station. It…

"sanction" is one of the dumbest words on earth. "to give official approval" vs "impose a penalty".

Re: As last module docks, China completes its space station

#168

Post by dotnet00 » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 10:55 PM UTC

VictorPath wrote: post #114

shortstuffsushi wrote: post #88

Wait, in order to build this, they've launched half a dozen rockets up with no idea where the boosters would come back down and land? That seems up there amongst worst ideas I've heard for a while, "good luck everybody else." Edit: didn't realize this would be a controversial comment; per the article, the "norm" is to have a burn again after releasing their payload, to "control" / direct the return. The Chinese aren'…

Can you tell me what country does not launch their rockets in this manner, other than in test flights?

These days the standard behavior of other nations is to keep enough reserve fuel and power to perform a controlled reentry of any spent stages or to design the vehicles such that the part that reaches orbit is small.

Re: As last module docks, China completes its space station

#169

Post by m4jor » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 10:56 PM UTC

Jayab wrote: post #113

russli1993 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the features I know from the Chinese space station - Solar panels smaller in area than ISS but produces similar amount of power, indicating much more efficient solar panels - Ion thrusters to keep space in orbit - Automated docking of cargo and crew capsule. Semi-automated docking of large station components like the 23ton labs - A robotic arm similar to ISS that walk along the joint points on the station. It…

So then maybe a little late to sanction their tech to keep them from being peer competitors.

Sanctions do not matter to China. They will just have their nation state backed hackers hack into aerospace and defense contractors and steal their R&D instead. Thats the Chinese way and MO. Anything to further the Chinese economy.

They have hacked nearly every F100 they needed to and steal hundreds of billions in IP annually already.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_intellectual_pr...

- https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/09/china-state-backed-hackers-c...

- https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/02/politics/china-hacking-espion...

Re: As last module docks, China completes its space station

#170

Post by m4jor » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 11:00 PM UTC

bestouff wrote: post #144

kortilla wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sanctions are pretty irrelevant when China has one of the best hacking groups in the world and every US corporation of relevance is strongly connected to the Internet.

Yeah, because they are only this advanced because they stole US technology. Chinese people can't be as intelligent as american.

Actually, yes. That's accurate.

Why would they waste time and their own money researching things when they can just steal it and then give that information to private and public Chinese industries? That is their entire MO. The Chinese are also responsible for $200-600 Billion worth of IP theft against the US every year.

They will do whatever it takes to make China #1 and see nothing wrong with doing this.

- https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/02/politics/china-hacking-espion...

- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinese-hackers-took-trillions-...

- https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/16/china-intellectual-prop...