China announces international experiments to fly on its space station
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The new colonial movement: China and the UN today jointly announced the nine international experiments that China will fly on its own space station, set to be completed by 2022.
The nine projects involve 23 entities from 17 countries in the fields of aerospace medicine, space life sciences and biotechnology, microgravity physics and combustion science, astronomy and other emerging technologies.
It seems to me that the competition in space is definitely heating up. Both China and Indian now plan their own space stations. And the Trump administration’s announcement that it will allow private commercial and competitive operations on ISS, is certainly going to lead eventually to more than one private station in orbit, plus ISS.
The result is going to be many different stations, all offering different capabilities and all in competition to lower the cost to get there and to do research or to sightsee. All are also going to be contributing aggressively in learning how to build vessels that humans can live on for long periods, which in turn will teach us how to build interplanetary spaceships. In fact, every one of these stations will be prototypes for those interplanetary spaceships.
Isn’t competition wonderful? After almost thirty years of boring international cooperation on ISS, with little new achievement or innovation, the space station competition coming in the next decade will revitalize space exploration in ways we as yet cannot imagine.
Please consider donating to Behind the Black, by giving either a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar below. Your support will allow me to continue covering science and culture as I have for the past twenty years, independent and free from any outside influence.
Regular readers can support Behind The Black with a contribution via paypal:
If Paypal doesn't work for you, you can support Behind The Black directly by sending your donation by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman, to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
The new colonial movement: China and the UN today jointly announced the nine international experiments that China will fly on its own space station, set to be completed by 2022.
The nine projects involve 23 entities from 17 countries in the fields of aerospace medicine, space life sciences and biotechnology, microgravity physics and combustion science, astronomy and other emerging technologies.
It seems to me that the competition in space is definitely heating up. Both China and Indian now plan their own space stations. And the Trump administration’s announcement that it will allow private commercial and competitive operations on ISS, is certainly going to lead eventually to more than one private station in orbit, plus ISS.
The result is going to be many different stations, all offering different capabilities and all in competition to lower the cost to get there and to do research or to sightsee. All are also going to be contributing aggressively in learning how to build vessels that humans can live on for long periods, which in turn will teach us how to build interplanetary spaceships. In fact, every one of these stations will be prototypes for those interplanetary spaceships.
Isn’t competition wonderful? After almost thirty years of boring international cooperation on ISS, with little new achievement or innovation, the space station competition coming in the next decade will revitalize space exploration in ways we as yet cannot imagine.
From the article: “The selected projects should not only promote the progress in related scientific fields but also help applicant countries strengthen aerospace technology and research capacity.”
It looks like there are great expectations for research in low Earth orbit, there is a large amount of interest in performing this research, and there is a great reward from this research.
Robert wrote: “Isn’t competition wonderful? After almost thirty years of boring international cooperation on ISS, with little new achievement or innovation, the space station competition coming in the next decade will revitalize space exploration in ways we as yet cannot imagine.”
His recent posts show a greater demand for manned access to space than was suggested in NASA’s recent study for the future commercial viability of low-Earth orbit. It may be that there is more than just government money available to support commercial manned space.
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/nasa-releases-industry-studies-of-future-commercial-viability-of-low-earth-orbit/
Although I have been hearing, recently, about industry concerns that continuing use of ISS may result in difficulty for commercial space habitats to compete with ISS, it looks like these concerns are wrong.
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/white-house-to-allow-iss-commercialization-including-tourists/#comment-1067865
Not only does China have 17 countries lined up, but Robert recently noted other interest in manned access to space. Within a week of NASA announcing the possibility, at least four people have shown interest in taking private trips to the ISS. Demand for such trips is large despite the expense:
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/bigelow-announces-four-tourist-bookings-to-iss-using-dragon/
With demand like this, there is likely enough interest to support independent commercial space habitats and the launch services to support them.
India previously announced a manned space program in which they launch their own astronauts, but now they have announced that they will build a space station to support this manned program:
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/india-to-build-its-own-space-station/
There is definitely worldwide interest in manned space. Hopefully, within a decade private money (corporate, university/non-governmental organization, individual) will be a majority amount being spent on these missions. When governments buy, all we get is what governments want; when We the People buy, we get what we want.
Such as tourist trips to space.