Chinese 'nauts return to Earth after vigorous space coupling China’s latest three taikonauts returned safely from the country’s longest manned mission, which was another practice run to the Heavenly Palace. Taikonauts Zhang Xiaoguang, Nie Haisheng and Wang Yaping (from left to right) Taikonauts Zhang Xiaoguang, Nie Haisheng and Wang Yaping (from left to right). Credit: Xinhua …
One thing that the Chines have is sheer weight of population. They can afford to throw people at something and if it fails, there are plenty more where they came from. It might sound harsh to say that they view the general populace as some almost inexaustable commodity, but if you look at their track record with things like mining and general industrial safety, I Think you'll get my point.
That being the case, you could imagine how they could afford to have a few shots at the more ambitious ventures, like a trip to Mars, without worrying too much about the human cost.
Having said that, such a mission would be so high profile, it would be hard for them to keep it under wraps. I can't see them launching 'x' suicide missions to Mars with no mention of launches, until they get it right, and then fanfare-ing their success only when they successfully land someone there
To get to Mars with current tech will take months if not years and no-one has come up with adequate shielding ideas yet. Which is not so say it can't be done, but lassoing an asteroid, carving out a habitat, and hitching engines of sufficiently high specific thrust are beyond even the Americans and Chinese at this point. Give it another century, once the population crash is done and dusted, and we'll see.
But on present evidence I'm firmly convinced the only way human minds will reach the nearer planets, let alone the stars, is as digital avatars adapted to space, instead of trying to take a bubble of Earth with us.
"no-one has come up with adequate shielding ideas yet."
Wrapping the habitation sections in water tanks solves a lot of the issues, it's just that water is pretty heavy even if it is the ideal shielding material.
Longhaul flights like that aren't going to happen easily unless Orion-class nuclear launchers are used. Chemical launchers simply aren't up to the task.
In recent studies it's been shown that while the water tanks you suggest work for most particles from the solar wind, the more energetic particles spawn secondary radiation which is still fatal on quite short timescales (weeks).
Some cosmic rays are accelerated in pulsars, black hole accretion, or galactic magnetic fields, just like synchrotron radiation, to fantastic speeds approaching c. Over millions of years of slow but incessant acceleration, these can have energies around 20 GeV !
The tanks help but you are still talking about several times the safe lifetime exposure during a Mars mission.
No gas or fluid shield will protect against those short of an atmosphere kilometres thick.
Homegrown outfits like SpaceX are awesome and making marvelous strides. I love 'em, wish them the very best. However, the Chinese are willing to do what nobody else can: burn huge piles of money. Private companies don't have billions to play with. NASA's budget gets routinely slashed, since a base on Mars won't buy socialist votes. The Russians are broke, no other space-capable nations are planning bases.
There's simply no competing with the Chinese. They have the will, and they're willing to spend the cash. That's true of nobody else on this planet. While everyone else is getting cheap and sending robots, they will put people on the moon and Mars.
Its still just big dumb rockets with an expendable capsule on the end......
The shuttle was a bit dumb rocket with a glider glued on the side...
We need something a bit more clever really...
Skylon looks to be the only viable solution out there. but as usual in the UK, not enough funding...
Something a bit more clever, eh?
I know what!....yes, start cowering now those who've seen my posts before....cower properly, damn you!!
Now..where was I?..Oh yes...we in this tiny wee set of islands look, quite rightly, at Skylon and praise its style and elegance of solution. That's ecause of the "tiny wee" bit...we don't have huge amounts of largely useless land that we can use/abuse for the Porpoises of......<drum roll>
Project Orion
10,000 ton plus, built using anything that's strong enough, as in effing big girders, because wieght is not an issue when you use...
Nuclear Devices
to punt you very quickly in to orbit, and very, very quickly to Mars/Luna/Tesco/wherever....there...done now...you can uncower...oh...i've invented a new word...<well I could hardly have invented an old one could I>
The obvious icon.....obviously
"The Yanks give them boodles of dollars for Walmart tat"
Where do the Yanks get these "boodles" of dollars from? They borrow it off the Chinese. And they don't just spend it on "tat". Almost everything you can buy in our western, post-industrial knowledge economy has "Made in China" on the label.
Posted from my re-badged FoxConn Air (Designed in California, Built in China, Profits squirrelled away somewhere)
It's more like they have the spies. That think is basically a Soyuz with some Apollo technology tacked on. Bet you the "space station" will look like the UdSSR tincan as well and basically use the same tech. It's not as if they have developed stuff that others don't have.
The semi-smart nations are the Euros and Japan - NOT developing canned man space debris aka "manned space flight". Lease a US/Russin tincan for some propaganda flights and otherwise run a money making satellite launch business.
"It's more like they have the spies. "
The technology you mention is all openly documented or readily purchasable. The chinese don't suffer from "Not Invented Here" and will more than happily use/adapt someone else's designs if they work for the task at hand.
ISS doesn't look much different from an old USSR tin can, it's just got a few more cans tacked on than MIR did.
You may be right, but the chinese are also very interested in robot tech. not everything in space can be done by a human, especially when it involves long duration stuff.
I suspect they'll use people to work out how to do things and then design a robot to do it repeatedly.
The Chinese are climbing on the shoulders of others yes, but stealing? By that logic the Yanks stole from the Germans who stole from one particular Yank (Goddard) who, it is true, patented multi-stage and liquid-fueled rockets...
... but that was in 1914 and the patents had expired well before the Germans took advantage of them. And the Russians did steal from both but hey, they didn't recognise that form of intellectual property anyway (copyright is a different matter)
... and even they had their own unique contributions to engine tech, like the fuel pumps using waste gases, that was 15 per cent more thrust right there ...
... besides, Goddard would have got nowhere without the idea of the rocket in the first place which was ...
Chinese.
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