China launches three astronauts to its space station
Earlier today China successfully launched a three-person crew to its Tiangong-3 space station, its Long March 2F rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China.
No word on where the four strap-on boosters, the payload fairing, the core stages, and the upper stage crashed inside China, using very toxic hypergolic fuels. This new crew will replace the present crew, who are completing a six-month tour. The new crew will complete a similar-length mission.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
42 SpaceX
17 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 49 to 29, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 42 to 36.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Earlier today China successfully launched a three-person crew to its Tiangong-3 space station, its Long March 2F rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China.
No word on where the four strap-on boosters, the payload fairing, the core stages, and the upper stage crashed inside China, using very toxic hypergolic fuels. This new crew will replace the present crew, who are completing a six-month tour. The new crew will complete a similar-length mission.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
42 SpaceX
17 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 49 to 29, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 42 to 36.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
We didn’t make it to space without the V2 engineers and scientists.
China didn’t either.
They needed us in the same way. First, they needed to be able to afford the effort.
Mimicry is a natural cost-effective way of getting things done.
But they are hungry for space and support exploration on a national basis—rather than “let Elon do it” thinking from short sighted libertarians who never supported the proper funding of NASA
1.. Whatever else is true of the Chinese space program or its ethics, one cannot say that they haven’t achieved a high level of technical competency.
2. Speaking of those ethics, Tiangong just got dinged hard by space debris, necessitating an emergency repair EVA. And there’s a good chance it was debris resulting from their own ASAT test.
https://www.space.com/china-tiangong-space-station-space-debris-measures
3. Speaking of crew vehicles, NASA continues to struggle to understand unusual damage to the Orion heat shield on Artemis I’s reentry. “Amit Kshatriya: still trying to understand fundamental physics of what caused unexpected damage to the Orion heat shield on Artemis I. Top NASA leaders made clear we’re not just to come up with flight rationale, but understand physics and then determine what can we tolerate.”
Eric Berger responds: “This is not great for Artemis II happening in September 2025.” https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1783868331881046231
Jeff Wright,
Oh, please! Like “libertarians” have ever had any consequential influence on NASA’s budget or what it gets spent on.
Given what NASA has done with the alleged pittance it is allotted, the most likely outcome of, say, doubling its annual budget would be to simply more than double the customary waste.
The reason anyone, libertarian or not, says “Let Elon do it” is because Elon will, by gosh, actually do it if the laws of physics do not preclude whatever “it” happens to be.
Statists need to own the now-well-advanced decay and infirmity of NASA just as they need to do likewise anent the same failings in Joe Biden. They will, of course, never do any such thing. Being Left means never having to say you’re sorry.
Elon’s cardinal sin in the eyes of the statists – other than not being one, himself – is that he has called their bluff. Confident for decades that such a thing was impossible, the statist mock toward would-be private sector space cadets was always, “If you think there’s money to be made in space, just do it” Elon did. The Left will never forgive him for that.
Elon’s fine, but he shouldn’t be the only game in town. New Glenn hasn’t flown quite yet–and the spooks love them some Centaurs. Stoke is my favorite but need money to keep that Phil Bono religion alive.
The one thing that has kept China off the Moon in a manned capacity was their desire to have a widespread space launch infrastructure with hydrolox and kerolox-fueled LVs like the West does.
They don’t have a Von Braun or Korolev type Chief Designer to have them focus.
I understand from Space News there was a big shake-up over there in the past week or two.
That may be good or bad.
Space should not be a training ground for apparatchiks nor bank vaults for the crooked.
Ironically, it was competition (so lauded by libertarians) between Soviet design bureaus (and infighting) that held Russia back. Von Braun was able to out-Soviet the Soviets with LOR being the only compromise.
Had I been a a Bond villain with money and Chinese connections like Goldfinger but with Hugo Drax’s lust for spaceflight–I would have told China to table propellant diversity and buy RD-270s and perfect them.
Nine or so gives them an HLLV with no spark-plug. Launch two for EOR and LOR, with Shenzou ferrying the Taikonauts.
Had they focused with **one man’s** will—a Medaris, a Truax, whatever—they could have been on the Moon by 2020, with the United States being shamed into another space race FOR ALL MANKIND style.
Instead, we got Covid.
D.E.,
Given what NASA has done with the alleged pittance it is allotted, the most likely outcome of, say, doubling its annual budget would be to simply more than double the customary waste.
I often have this thought. And it is a depressing one.
Sad news to relate;
https://nasawatch.com/personnel-news/apurva-varia/
As for the other guy’s mask…er…
Richard M,
Long-standing bureaucracies wasting more and more of what they get as they age is about as depressing as the eventual heat death of the Universe. In both cases it’s the nature of the Universe.
Not much to be done about the heat death of the Universe, but bureaucracies can be “cured” of their wasteful ways by the simple expedient of taking them out back of the barn and administering the Old Yeller treatment. As private enterprise takes on more and more of all space-related activity, NASA, admittedly, seems more likely to die by a thousand cuts than by a single sudden coup de grace, but the effect should, in the end, be pretty much the same.
Jeff Wright,
Sorry to hear about Mr. Varia. Losing someone as heavily involved in unmanned space exploration who still longed to be an astronaut and go there himself is, indeed, a lamentable loss. I suspect he was well-nigh unique in that respect.
Re your previous reply to me:
Elon is not the only game in town. But many of the other up-and-coming games in town are run by people who used to be on his payroll.
Blue is one of the notable exceptions and that likely explains why it has been in up-and-coming status for well over two decades without ever having consequentially arrived. It has made its brag anent 2024. We’ll have to see if it can back that brag. I’m not optimistic.
The “spooks” learned to love them some Centaurs when Centaurs were, as you say, the only game in town. Now that they’re not, the spooks don’t seem overly put out.
I, too, am expecting great things from Stoke. Fingers crossed.
The lack of a Han version of Von Braun, Korolev or Musk has been a far greater factor in the limited velocity of the PRC’s space ambitions than what propellants they choose to use.
For a time awhile back it seemed that CNSA was being treated as a training ground for future PRC provincial governors. Alas, the space cadets have now also been found to be as vulnerable as any other class of apparatchiki to the lure of pilfered filthy lucre. No big surprise there. It’s Chinatown Jake.
The Soviets were a command economy with competing “design bureaus” while the early NASA was a command economy with multiple competing contractors which had not yet reached their dotage. The latter won the Space Race and the former faded in the stretch. No points for statism.
The apparatchiki of the PRC are good at copying what others have done, but tend to lack originality. The Soviets never took advantage of the RD-270 themselves. The boys from the PRC would have given you and your advice the bum’s rush. They would wonder if the RD-270 was so good, after all, then why didn’t the Soviets use it?
Totalitarian social orders tend to find little use for brilliant and driven men of vision – except one at a time and at the very top. Any second or subsequent such get quickly disappeared by a top dog eternally fearful of involuntary retirement to a shallow excavation in some prison basement at the hands of such a too-clever fellow. That problem seems to have become even worse since the advent of Xi Jinping.
We did get Covid. And we all know from whence it came.
Dick Eagleson wrote, “For a time awhile back it seemed that CNSA was being treated as a training ground for future PRC provincial governors. Alas, the space cadets have now also been found to be as vulnerable as any other class of apparatchiki to the lure of pilfered filthy lucre. No big surprise there. It’s Chinatown Jake.”
Do you have some sources for this? I am very intrigued indeed, because if Xi government is no longer considering space as its training ground for its political leaders, and some of those former space managers have fallen, it could change the space equation significantly in the next decade or so.