Congrats to China
Anything like this can only spur further efforts to invest in research in space, regardless of politics.
China has placed the first module of a crewed space station in orbit. Launched atop a Long March 5B rocket at around 03:30 AM UTC on Thursday, the “Tianhe” module is 16.6 meters long, 4.2 meters in diameter at its largest point, and weighed 22.5 tonnes on Earth. It is the largest spacecraft developed by China. Tianhe includes …
The ISS doesn't have long left, it's likely to be decommissioned within 10 years, probably less so no real point in China getting involved with it now.
The possible replacement, Lunar Gateway is running into political problems so investing in that could be problematical for the middle kingdom.
When the ISS is decommissioned it's possible that for a few years, China will be the only country with a permanent presence in orbit.
The ISS doesn't have long left, it's likely to be decommissioned within 10 years
Perhaps China can get a good price on it... They certainly don't mind making copies. I know they won't take our used electronics any more, but maybe they can make an exception.
Maybe the next ISS will be made by Foxcomm.
Search for "bacteria in a vacuum", it will kill some, but not everything (you would just be filtering out the weak, and leaving the scary stuff with lots of free raw materials and room to expand).
Photolysis (especially exposure to UV-C) will destroy most surface bacteria if exposure is for long enough but it will also damage the surface of anything from organic origins ( paper, plastic, rubber, ... ) and it will only penetrate as deep as the light can shine.
UV-C is from 280nm to 100nm, so in theory it could break any bonds with bond energies from about 427 to 1200 kJ/mol.
But the reality is that for typical quartz mercury UV-C lamps there are two main peaks in the UV-C range.
It has a one peak from 200nm (600kJ/mol) to 160nm (750kJ/mol) with a maximum near 183 nm (655 kJ/mol) and a larger second peak from 260 nm (462kJ/mol) to 230nm (521kJ/mol) peaking near 252 nm (476kJ/mol).
So any molecular bonds near that bond energy can be broken
e.g.
C=C 602 kJ/mol ( ~199 nm )
C=N 615 kJ/mol ( ~195 nm )
O=O 494 kJ/mol (~242 nm )
So vacuum just removes the weak. UV-C will break mostly molecules with double Carbon bonds at the molecular level but only on the surface. And Ozone would damage surface bacteria as well.
But eventually dead human skin cells (dust) go everywhere the sun don't shine, and stick to surfaces in inaccessible places, that is the growth medium for the bacteria to expand.
Imagine driving the same car for 15+ years, how about 30+ years, or 45+ years, maybe 60+ years. Everything has a bathtub curve ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve ) and in space you never want it to be a wear-out failure. Even if you could replace every part of a space station, except for the body eventually something will fail.
What about the appalling treatment of the american indians that has gone on for more than 200 years, we just don't talk about that, how about eskimos? what about black people? they imported them , themselves just so they could persecute them. how about going to other countries and killing vast amounts of people just because they don't agree with you? ( this list is too long)
Pot, kettle meet frying pan!
The ISS (51.6 degrees, ca. 410km altitude) and the Tianhe module (41.0 degrees, 370km altitude) are in orbits at different inclinations with significant and always-changing velocities (speed and direction) to each other. It would take a significant fuel burn and time to move from one station to another.
IIRC the Chinese station uses the same sort of docking ports as the Russian and American manned capsules use so the ISS and the future complete Tiangong station are theoretically capable of accepting each other's vehicles and, possibly in the future, crews.
From "the fully assembled space station will be around a fifth the size of the International Space Station."
All I can think of after reading that is the videos of many people in china cities living small apartments with fencing (like a kennel) around their bed. And all those shows with tiny furniture that makes children look big.
I kind of imagine 4 people living in 3 connected 55 gallon barrels. Yes I did read its bigger than that.
I wish the astronauts well, they are Earthicans (Futurama). Is "earthlings" children? or are we going dark and we are all Terrans? (startrek evil universe)
"or are we going dark and we are all Terrans? "
Having been into SF for many, many years, and avidly reading even all the "golden age" stuff from before I was born, Terrans is a commonly used word for humans from Earth. This Johnny come lately Star Trek series using Terrans as a "bad thing" just doesn't add up or even impinge on my many memories of Terrans simply being a generic term.
Huge rocket looks set for uncontrolled reentry following Chinese space station launch
However this core stage is now also in orbit and is likely to make an uncontrolled reentry over the next days or week as growing interaction with the atmosphere drags it to Earth. If so, it will be one of the largest instances of uncontrolled reentry of a spacecraft and could potentially land on an inhabited area.