Chinese space station 'out of control', will do best firework impression

The Chinese space agency has apparently lost control of its Tiangong 1 mini-space station, which is expected to return to Earth as a fireball. The Middle Kingdom's state media reported in March that the space station's systems had been shut down and the platform was officially retired. Now there's word from the science …

[Dadmin]

Typical problem when you don't have all the data

These are the kind of problems you would expect of a nation that built all of its' technology from stolen plans from other nations. Once they steal some newer NASA plans, they might be able to copy a rocket that does not crash, much like the NORK rockets do. BOOM-SPLASH!!1!

Seems odd to threaten a 7 year prison sentence for the Gaokao students cheating, when once they make it to the local job market, or government, cheating/stealing is the norm.

[Notas Badoff]

Re: Typical problem when you don't have all the data

It's never that clear. Seems the US didn't like a guy cuz of "communist sympathies", so they deported him in the '50s. Look up Qian Xuesen, the father of the Chinese space program. The US _forced_ him to go to the PRC. It takes a really stupid government to do a "foot-rocket" !

[energystar]

"...they grew fast by completely ignoring foreign intellectual property..."

Really making easy this cloudy day...

[energystar]

"...ignoring...intellectual property..."

THAT! That creates a special kind of Character. The character of a DOER. All Artificial Scarcities procrastinate Character.

[Just look at CHINA].

How many formerly PROUD Nations have become into nothing more than a bunch of old 'Ladies & Gentlemen' SEATED on their 'assets and treasures'!

Doesn't anybody get that 'Intellectual' and 'property' belong to different conceptual dominion? Intellectual is a biological concept!

[emess]

Re: "...ignoring...intellectual property..."

And you are from, where? China by any chance?

[tom dial]

Re: Typical problem when you don't have all the data

Quite interestingly, the first paragraph of this post suggests strongly, although implicitly, that intellectual property and the various laws and behaviors that protect it generally act to retard progress. The Chinese, by their industry and use of knowledge and techniques some of which doubtless are claimed by someone as intellectual property, have enriched us all. Their consideration for the environment may be less than desirable, but that also was, and is, common in both developed and developing areas.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Typical problem when you don't have all the data

"Quite interestingly, the first paragraph of this post suggests strongly, although implicitly, that intellectual property and the various laws and behaviors that protect it generally act to retard progress."

That's certainly the case to an extent. Licensing fees and/or R&D is expensive, so ignoring foreign IP is an obvious and valid way to kickstart an economy. Just as the USA and others have done in the past. If you can rip off others IP and find a market where they don't care about the source, then you can undercut the international competition. As a communeist country, China had little use for private IP anyway. It's only now they are at least paying lip service because they need and want to sell to the parts of the world that do respect international agreements on IP.

[Danny 14]

Re: Typical problem when you don't have all the data

to the OP, sure! I mean they should just do the same as the US did for their space programme right? I mean it isn't as though they stole German plans, scientists and breakthroughs after WW2 is it? Von Braun was a good dyed in the wool American afterall (who happened to be a member of the Nazi party and the SS - a minor inconvenience I suppose).

Did you know that more people died building and constructing Von Bauns V-2's than were actually killed by them? Concentration camp labour was cheap enough for him to not worry about such losses though. The V2 became the cornerstone of the US HIROC ICBM which was the incubator for ATLAS (and later Saturn V). That's some heritage though.

Ironically enough, only the European (with german input) Ariane was based on new research that did not come predominantly from Nazi backgrounds (the Russians stole just as much technology and Nazi Scientists as the US); insofar as the US and USSR basically copied V2 verbatim for their early efforts and merely improved them as time went on.

Idiot OP

[herman]

Re: Typical problem when you don't have all the data

...and the German rocketry knowledge of Von Brown was based on the American research of Goddard, which was preceded by the solid rockets of China going back to the 13th century...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Typical problem when you don't have all the data

Von Braun was heavily influenced by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's design for staged liquid rockets; his heavily annotated copy of Tsiolkovsky was found in his office at Peenemünde. Tsiolkovsky was also the inspiration for both Korolev and Glushko.

[x 7]

Re: Typical problem when you don't have all the data

"Ironically enough, only the European (with german input) Ariane was based on new research that did not come predominantly from Nazi backgrounds"

I always understood that much of the ESA technology was based on what had been stolen from Britain during the antics over Blue Streak / Black Arrow involvement in the Europa launcher. Our first stage technology worked, the French second stage didn't. We got pissed off with the French and walked away, they pinched our technology and set up the ESA and Ariane.

[werdsmith]

European Rocket

Yes, a British Blue Streak design was the basis for the first stage of ELDO rockets which via Europa and ELDO B developed into Ariane. Blue Streak was rock solid, the 2nd and 3rd stages were initially shite.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Typical problem when you don't have all the data

Blue Streak used a Rolls Royce licensed copy of a RocketDyne engine, so there is probably an unbroken heritage back to the V2.

Britain's experiments with the kerosene and pure hydrogen peroxide Gamma engine were pretty unique in the postwar era - although a lot of the early research into hydrogen peroxide did come from captured German aerospace data. Those engines eventually powered the Black Knight suborbital rockets and the Black Arrow which put Prospero into orbit.

As for the ESA rocket being based on Blue Streak - not very likely, the first four models of Ariane used storable propellants and variations of the Viking engine which is based on the Diamond N2O4/UDMH rocket that put the Astérix satellite into orbit in 1965.

[Danny 14]

Re: Typical problem when you don't have all the data

Ive only just got back to this. Ariane came about purely because they couldn't use blue streak. It was a totally different design, hence why it wasn't based on V2 technology. It was the storage of LOX that ariane wanted to avoid. Ariane was based on german research for the Wasserfall Ferngelenkte FlaRakete AA rocket, this rocket was NOT designed using forced slave labour or concentration camps; Dr Thiel was not a Nazi party member nor political.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Typical problem when you don't have all the data

"Seems odd to threaten a 7 year prison sentence for the Gaokao students cheating, when once they make it to the local job market, or government, cheating/stealing is the norm."

Think sideways. Anywhere in this world punishment does not get applied to the successful criminals. Only those incompetent enough to be caught at it.

[Sgt_Oddball]

Re: Typical problem when you don't have all the data

Government creating/stealing? What like the race to von brown?

[MotionCompensation]

Re: Typical problem when you don't have all the data

Ehm, OP, I think you don't have all the data on this story.

[x 7]

Its a "space station" so there must be people on board. Whats happening to them?

Or is this actually just another dead satellite?

[Anonymous Coward]

LMGTFY

Last crew departed in June 2013

[Danny 14]

Re: LMGTFY

I have a feeling there is a man in a grey Nehru suit with a white cat controlling it manually. That will explain how they lost control.

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Re: LMGTFY

A white Persian cat, no doubt

[ian 22]

Was the space station retired before or after they lost control?

[Adrian Midgley 1]

Before

You may recall Skylab...

[TitterYeNot]

Re: Before

"You may recall Skylab..."

Yes, but that was a very special set of circumstances. NASA was unable to boost SkyLab's unexpected decaying orbit, so an unplanned re-entry was inevitable, as the US no longer had the ability to get a crewed vehicle up into space.

And of course that situation will never happen again.

Um, wait...

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Before

"You may recall Skylab..."

A brilliantly conceived but badly execute attempt to flatten Australia from space.

[LaeMing]

Re: Before

YAAC: "A brilliantly conceived but badly execute attempt to flatten Australia from space."

Wot? It wasn't flat enough already!?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Before

Have you seen some of the spiders they have there?

Flatten them from orbit is the only way to be sure !

[Alan Brown]

Re: Before

"the US no longer had the ability to get a crewed vehicle up into space."

There were plenty of opportunities to send up an uncrewed vehicle to reboost skylab - the problem is that without Saturn launchers the on-station fuel payload for boosting wasn't going to keep it in orbit long enough for Shuttle missions to reboost to higher levels (Shuttle was originally scheduled to rendezvous in 1978 but the first one didn't launch until 1981 - and even with that, no serious thought had been given to _how_ reboosting with a shuttle could be done. It wasn't until late in Shuttle's life that it started reboosting ISS (all previous reboosts were done by Progress/Soyuz vehicles.)

Sending stuff up is easier than making sure it comes down safely )or in small enough pieces to be safe). The reentry of Spacelab's booster in 1973 and survival down to sea level of heavy bits (at least the engines, probably more) served as a wakeup call to NASA that they'd better make sure things either burned up or could be guided to an uninhabited spot.

Recall this is the same NASA which left "spent" boosters unvented in orbit for many years (the higher orbit ones generally took 2-20 years to come down) until several of them exploded for no apparent reason - that's the reason that care is taken to ensure that boosters are brought down as quickly as possible these days (usually by ensuring that perigee of the transfer orbit is inside the atmosphere) - and if they can't be, every last bit of propellant and oxidiser is vented (including the manouvering jets) to ensure there no extra debris clouds are made.

There's still a full-size nuclear reactor (not just a RTG) sitting in orbit which will come down one day and it's debateable as to what will happen when it does (nothing's going to go boom, but the thought of that much plutonium being smeared across the landscape should give pause for thought)

This chinese station isn't very large and was only intended to be in-orbit for a couple of years. It's unlikely that anything large will reach the ground - especially given that without stabilisation it will be tumbling long before it starts decelerating, which should mean that it gets ripped to pieces.

[Unicornpiss]

Re: Before

Actually Skylab with its antiquated 1970s tech did a little better than China's effort. After 4 years of inactivity and inoccupancy, NASA was able to remotely power Skylab back up and guide it into the atmosphere for a more controlled destruction, I believe. Supposedly Skylab's computer resumed the program it had been running 4 years previously like nothing at happened.

[Alan Brown]

Re: Before

"You may recall Skylab..."

Skylab was abandoned and shut down (1974) long before it fell out of the sky (1979)

It was proposed to reactivate it for shuttle missions and when someone realised that it might come down earlier than expected thanks to a larger than expected solar maximum increasing drag at its orbit - and that it was large enough to cause some serious mayhem if it hit an inhabited area

- that they tried to reactivate it to allow such a mission (_that_ took the best part of a year (the story of hacking the remaining active circuitry to "pulse" the batteries(*) for weeks on end before they'd finally take a charge is impressive even nearly 40 years later)), as the electronics was mostly dead and the batteries completely discharged.

(*) Switching to charge mode took power away from the comms equipment, so the pulses would last about 100ms and then they'd have to wait for the station to reboot and reestablish communications.

"Saving Skylab - the untold story" is worth a read if you can get hold of a copy. It was published in Popular Science in January 1979 and reprinted in Electronics Australia in September of that year.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Before

Nice post.

The plan was for the second Shuttle mission STS-2 to fly in late 1979 carrying a booster to Skylab and place it into a storage orbit.

Following that a 1982 Shuttle mission would rendezvous with Skylab and start the process of restoring it to habitability. Then from 1984 onwards missions would start expanding Skylab's power systems, replace the solar panels and renovate the computer systems. Missions would last 30-90 days apiece and continue to use the big Apollo Telescope Mount to study the Sun.

The final part of the plan was to start expanding Skylab so it could take up to eight astronauts. The European SpaceLab would have formed part of the new station as well as the Shuttle's External Tank.

As it turned out, the Shuttle didn't fly until early 1981 by which time they were still scraping bits of Skylab off of the outback.

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Re: Before

"Saving Skylab - the untold story" / Popular Science, January 1979 ( via googely books)

Skylab Reactivation Mission Report / NASA, March 1980 ( PDF )

[Bloakey1]

Re: Before

<snip>

""Saving Skylab - the untold story" is worth a read if you can get hold of a copy. It was published in Popular Science in January 1979 and reprinted in Electronics Australia in September of that year."

here it is, lovely pictures that really bring back the whiff of that time. Camels, Salem ciggies etc. it is all there in glorious pantone:

http://tinyurl.com/jgvebrd

[Anonymous Coward]

Acording to Wiki...

Before... kind of.

It was unused and left in orbit in "sleep mode" from June 2013. Kind of retired. Used only for observation on longevity of the construction and systems. However the control system failed this year, so they are unable to retire it from orbit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Acording to Wiki...

> Used only for observation on longevity of the construction and systems.

I guess they got their answer then...

[Lamb0]

I'd not be surprised...

were the reentry within the January 27 to February 2 2017 window. A little something extra for the Spring Festival next year would be appreciated. :<)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'd not be surprised...

If it accidentally crashed into the middle of Taipai.

And released a horde of genetically mutated, plague carrying monkeys.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'd not be surprised...

Actually, isn't it supposed to have Sandra Bullock in it?

[Boris the Cockroach]

I'm surprised

at the Chinese.... that they have'nt shot it down with a missile yet spreading even more debris in LEO

Unless it looks like it may land in China somewhere

Boom icon....'cos No boom today.. but theres always a boom tommorrow

[Ken Hagan]

Re: I'm surprised

"Unless it looks like it may land in China somewhere"

...in which case it will be an excellent cover for the test of their home-grown ABM system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'm surprised

+1 for the Susan Ivanova B5 quote

[hotdamn]

As usual, Chinese crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you read?

The article or the history of this mission?

[TeeCee]

If only they'd thought to stick a fruit logo on it. Then it would be Chinese crap that "just works".

The slight snag would be that it would have cost twice as much.

[energystar]

Condolences to China Space Agency.

Condolences to China Space Agency.

Best hopes on successor Tiangong 2 [And expecting Open Research Papers from the effort].

[MrXavia]

Re: Condolences to China Space Agency.

If only the US would allow China to join the iss, then instead of competition we could have cooperation

[lglethal]

Re: Condolences to China Space Agency.

I just want to be clear here that it is the US government which is the issue. NASA would like co-operation, its Congress who doesn't...

[dcathjlmif]

Re: Condolences to China Space Agency.

Or China could decouple its space program from its military like everyone else has done.

[John Brown (no body)]

Maybe...

...they'll just do a re-run of their proof-of-concept anti-satellite missile test. What could possibly go wrong?

[HelpfulJohn]

Re: Maybe...

"What could possibly go wrong?"

"Gravity"? The movie, not the force.

[Vic]

Re: Maybe...

"Gravity"? The movie

Yeah, that went pretty wrong...

Vic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Home delivery

One Tiangong with black bean sauce on a sizzling plate.....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Even then, since 70 per cent of the planet's surface is water, the chances of it causing injury are minute."

My body is 98% water. Sounds like doom to me.

[HelpfulJohn]

Why can't they put up ISS-China-2 in an intercept orbit, loaded with RCS's and fuel and move both stations into a higher orbit where they could practice *fixing* them?

I seem to remember asking a similar question about Skylab.

[Huns n Hoses]

No worries

Even if it were to threaten (a tiny bit of) humanity we always have Bruce Willis.

[Danny 14]

Re: No worries

they tried but as soon as other random volunteers were told to put on red uniforms they left without saying a word.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Chinese, so ..

.. I expect the fireworks to be fantastic.

I bet someone tried to make it re-enter on Chinese New Year so it looked like it was planned :).

Joking aside, I'm intrigued by suggestions that it failed because the Chinese were working from stolen IP instead of their own. I suspect they did the exact same as any other nation: some of it they developed themselves, and some they "borrowed" from other nations.

Please don't try to suggest the US is above using espionage to obtain tech and knowledge it hasn't developed itself..

[Dan McIntyre]

Skylab

Just reading the story of trying to bring Skylab back to life and it's fascinating - before my time as I was born in '77 and I was aware of the former existence of Skylab but not in any detail.

Thanks to whoever posted the links to the Google books and the PDF doc.

[Terje]

What I find bad about this is that they more or less left it in orbit to wait and see what happened to it, Presumably the agreed upon practice is to de-orbit stuff before they fail to avoid uncontrolled things that may be unable to avoid collisions.