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China to launch space station by 2023

bbc.co.uk

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Re: China to launch space station by 2023

#41

Post by ecto »

SCAQTony wrote: post #26

A space station is a bad investment for any country. The annual cost of the ISS is $3-billion-year. It will cost an additional 24-billion for the next 6-years to keep it up The total budget cost of the Kepler Spacecraft was $0.6-billion and discovered something like 2,740 planets outside our solar system. The Mars Science Laboratory cost was $2.5-billion and as of last month revealed that Mars once was a habitable pl…

More than $800 billion has been requested by the president and appropriated by Congress for the war in Iraq over the last 10 years.

It is impressive that for just over 1% of that budget we've measured the age of the universe and its rate of expansion. I'm happy for my tax dollars to go to any type of scientific advancement rather than killing other humans.

Re: China to launch space station by 2023

#42

Post by pavs »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #36
cygwin98 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is hypocritical. US and the whole Western world is not any better on this.

Hold on. The US may have many faults, but claiming that it's not "any better" than China in regards to human rights or protection of individual liberties is just asinine. China put down a peaceful protest using tanks . Hundreds of protesters and dissidents were killed. Some by being shot on the spot, some by being run over by tanks, many more by being executed for the crime of protesting the government. People in Chi…

With how many countries did the US engage in pre-emptive wars with false premise and without much if any support from rest of the world in the last few decades, which resulted in 100s of thousands of death? Lets not forget the US financed dictators that killed many more and the topplings of democratically elected governments that resulted in civil wars and more deaths...

And now compare that with Chinese record, or does it not fall under "human rights" category?

American exceptionalism is the most disgusting theory if there ever was one.

Re: China to launch space station by 2023

#43

Post by teh_klev »

SCAQTony wrote: post #26

A space station is a bad investment for any country. The annual cost of the ISS is $3-billion-year. It will cost an additional 24-billion for the next 6-years to keep it up The total budget cost of the Kepler Spacecraft was $0.6-billion and discovered something like 2,740 planets outside our solar system. The Mars Science Laboratory cost was $2.5-billion and as of last month revealed that Mars once was a habitable pl…

This all seems quite good value for money compared to the money wasted bailing out the world's banks over the past few years, or the money spent in those Iraq and Afghanistan misadventures and "the war on terror".

Re: China to launch space station by 2023

#44

Post by varjag »

Scriptor wrote: post #34
SCAQTony wrote: post #26

A space station is a bad investment for any country. The annual cost of the ISS is $3-billion-year. It will cost an additional 24-billion for the next 6-years to keep it up The total budget cost of the Kepler Spacecraft was $0.6-billion and discovered something like 2,740 planets outside our solar system. The Mars Science Laboratory cost was $2.5-billion and as of last month revealed that Mars once was a habitable pl…

It's hard to really quantify scientific returns as a per-dollar measure. The space station has provided a place to do countless experiments that could only be done by people in space. Of course, the results of these experiments rarely make it into pop science articles so they're not often publicized. But they do happen and it's important not to just brush them aside as not worth the cost of the station itself.

> The space station has provided a place to do countless experiments that could only be done by people in space.

Most of these experiments though were about effect of space on humans, no? It's a bit of circular reasoning.

Even with those, I'm not sure there was really any big discovery since the previous Mir/Salyut/Skylab decades of orbital hanging around.

Re: China to launch space station by 2023

#46

Post by PakG1 »

varjag wrote: post #44
Scriptor wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to really quantify scientific returns as a per-dollar measure. The space station has provided a place to do countless experiments that could only be done by people in space. Of course, the results of these experiments rarely make it into pop science articles so they're not often publicized. But they do happen and it's important not to just brush them aside as not worth the cost of the station itself.

> The space station has provided a place to do countless experiments that could only be done by people in space. Most of these experiments though were about effect of space on humans, no? It's a bit of circular reasoning. Even with those, I'm not sure there was really any big discovery since the previous Mir/Salyut/Skylab decades of orbital hanging around.

If humans like Elon Musk and the rest are serious about becoming a spacefaring nation that can actually travel to Mars, this wealth of experimental data would be invaluable when the time comes, if the time comes. Let's not presume that it would never be useful (and besides that, who knows if there ever could be use applied down on earth too).

Re: China to launch space station by 2023

#47

Post by pm90 »

melling wrote: post #9
Loughla wrote: post #6

I am genuinely hoping that this type of thing leads to a cold-war style space race with increased investments into science and technology.

Probably won't happen. China will probably take a clear lead within a couple decades. There isn't enough return on investment in a space race and the US won't have the extra money. Kudos to China for taking the lead in the 21st century. Look at how they built the world's biggest high-speed rail system in such as short period of time. Next year it will carry more people than the US domestic airlines. http://motherboar…

Really? You're just gonna give up that easily, huh?

I don't mean to poke fun at you, but the competitive spirit was what made it possible for America to be where it is now, technologically. That, and a lot of money, of course

Re: China to launch space station by 2023

#48

Post by pm90 »

pavs wrote: post #42
InclinedPlane wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold on. The US may have many faults, but claiming that it's not "any better" than China in regards to human rights or protection of individual liberties is just asinine. China put down a peaceful protest using tanks . Hundreds of protesters and dissidents were killed. Some by being shot on the spot, some by being run over by tanks, many more by being executed for the crime of protesting the government. People in Chi…

With how many countries did the US engage in pre-emptive wars with false premise and without much if any support from rest of the world in the last few decades, which resulted in 100s of thousands of death? Lets not forget the US financed dictators that killed many more and the topplings of democratically elected governments that resulted in civil wars and more deaths... And now compare that with Chinese record, or d…

All good points, but we're talking about how a country treats its _own_ citizens. And in this regards, the US is far better than most other countries, most certainly China.

Re: China to launch space station by 2023

#49

Post by bdamm »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #37
javindo wrote: post #13

Thought I'd comment before the typical anti-Chinese-Engineering brigade shows up. In my opinion, Chinese engineering is a wonder to behold in an era of modern western bureaucracy killing amazing projects. I realise Chinese politics are so far the other way they can be just as bad in different ways, but if China had the same level of bureaucracy as the west their insane Beijing-Shanghai high speed rail link would have…

I find China a particularly fascinating country in this regard, very little true visibility into their capabilities and a very different culture. When they said they would put a man on the moon, I believed they would do everything they could to make that happen. A friend of mine disagreed saying it was "too expensive", except expense doesn't really work at the nation state level except in terms of understanding alloc…

This implies a fuel mining and refinery process that is off-planet. Otherwise, you have to launch the fuel, and that is an extremely expensive prospect. If a mission is going to be engineered to operate for a long period of time, you'd either launch the mission with all the fuel it needs or plan refueling launches specifically for that mission, as is done with the ISS.

So, who will be the first to mine off-world and refine into usable rocket fuel? This seems pretty far off considering the exotic materials needed for rocket fuel, like hydrazine.

I think it's too far out to make a reasonable bet on who will provide the first in-orbit refueling station.

Re: China to launch space station by 2023

#50

Post by melange »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #37
javindo wrote: post #13

Thought I'd comment before the typical anti-Chinese-Engineering brigade shows up. In my opinion, Chinese engineering is a wonder to behold in an era of modern western bureaucracy killing amazing projects. I realise Chinese politics are so far the other way they can be just as bad in different ways, but if China had the same level of bureaucracy as the west their insane Beijing-Shanghai high speed rail link would have…

I find China a particularly fascinating country in this regard, very little true visibility into their capabilities and a very different culture. When they said they would put a man on the moon, I believed they would do everything they could to make that happen. A friend of mine disagreed saying it was "too expensive", except expense doesn't really work at the nation state level except in terms of understanding alloc…

Why does being first to put up a gas station matter? What stops other countries from putting up their own?
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