China's burgeoning space program plans to place astronauts on the moon before 2030 and expand the country's orbiting space station, officials said Monday.
China will beat the USA back to the moon, but 2030 is a little ambitious.
A crewed moon landing all hinges on Long March 9 flying reliably, and flying years ahead of schedule. That rocket, if and when it flies, will be a Saturn V-class rocket. Nothing else that China has or will have comes close to doing an Apollo-style crewed mission. There's the theoretical option of doing in-space construction using a lot of Long March 5 launches. But that brings in a lot of engineering challenges, and would require ramping up Long March 5 production literally today.
China is first preparing for a "short stay on the lunar surface and human-robotic joint exploration," Deputy Director of the Chinese Manned Space Agency Lin Xiqiang told reporters at the rare briefing by the military-run program.
Realistic, and the safest way to do crewed exploration. The Moon is a horrific place from a human health standpoint. The dust is the worst. There's no weathering like on Earth or Mars, so lunar dust is made up of microscopic flakes of jagged rock blasted out in meteorite strikes. Solar radiation interacts with the lunar surface to electrostatically levitate dust, so even the most careful astronaut is going to track it back into their ship. And that dust is awful stuff. It slices up your lungs and airways, it's conductive so it can cause shorts in electrical systems, and it also likes to slice up spacesuits. Keep the people inside (except for emergencies) and let them run robots by remote.
A crewed moon landing all hinges on Long March 9 flying reliably,
That's what I thought too and it's not going to be ready until after 2030. But apparently they have an SLS-like Long March 10 in development that will be ready before 2030?
even the most careful astronaut is going to track it back into their ship
I remember several years ago there were American concepts for crewed Mars rovers that had spacesuits as part of the vehicle. Instead of climbing into an airlock, the suits are the airlock. That way you don't bring in any dust. I'll try to find a picture or video.
Even Long March 10 would require at least two launches to put the various pieces off the ground. Its design payload mass to a trans-lunar injection would be about the same as the Apollo CSM alone, no Lunar Module in tow. Modern crewed spacecraft haven't really gotten much lighter than older-design spacecraft (gains in compactness of electronics is often offset by improving safety margins in other systems), and the Apollo CSM engine was a pretty darn efficient one for its day, so I think it'd be fair to assume that a Chinese Apollo-style mission would have an architecture roughly equivalent to Apollo - including similar masses for similar ships.
Suitport is a fascinating idea. It would be a great idea for "disposable" hardware like an Apollo-style mission. One of the big challenges in longer-term missions would be suit maintenance. My favourite suit design is the good old USSR-derived Orlan suit. It has only one opening, the back, where cosmonauts slide in. The fabric panel behind the cosmonaut is actually just a cover for all the suit's systems. Pretty easy to maintain by space-tech standards.
Silicosis from hell. Mars is the same but not as bad bc it has atmosphere and wind to move the dust around and grind the edges off a little, but it's still living in a world made of abrasive grit. It's impossible to overstate how insanely hazardous and unsuited for life anywhere else in the solar system is. All of this manned flight stuff is a hubristic waste of resources. Just send more robots ffs.
Mars' atmosphere also means that so as long as you've got electricity, you can use regular air compressor tech to blow a worksite relatively clean of dust, or blow most of the dust off a suit before closing up an outer airlock, etc. To try the same thing on the Moon means hauling along big tanks of some sort of inert gas, and carefully rationing usage.
Lunar colonization is an insane idea. The Moon is fantastic for a lot of science proposals. EM telescopes of all wavelengths on the far side where they're permanently shielded from Earth and shielded from the Sun for 2 weeks out of 4. Gravitational-wave detectors on tectonically stable ground that don't need vacuum tunnels built because above-ground is a natural vacuum. Infrared telescopes in the permanently-shadowed polar craters. Etc, etc, etc. The Moon is an amazing place for automated observatories. And of course the geology (selenology?) would be invaluable to understand how the Earth-Moon system evolved. But the Moon is a completely stupid idea from a colonization perspective.
I don't get why people still have to be sent into space with all the advancements in robots and satellites. Especially when it comes to risking some of the PLA's finest when AUKUS are starting to close in on China.
A crewed moon landing all hinges on Long March 9 flying reliably, and flying years ahead of schedule. That rocket, if and when it flies, will be a Saturn V-class rocket. Nothing else that China has or will have comes close to doing an Apollo-style crewed mission. There's the theoretical option of doing in-space construction using a lot of Long March 5 launches. But that brings in a lot of engineering challenges, and would require ramping up Long March 5 production literally today.
Realistic, and the safest way to do crewed exploration. The Moon is a horrific place from a human health standpoint. The dust is the worst. There's no weathering like on Earth or Mars, so lunar dust is made up of microscopic flakes of jagged rock blasted out in meteorite strikes. Solar radiation interacts with the lunar surface to electrostatically levitate dust, so even the most careful astronaut is going to track it back into their ship. And that dust is awful stuff. It slices up your lungs and airways, it's conductive so it can cause shorts in electrical systems, and it also likes to slice up spacesuits. Keep the people inside (except for emergencies) and let them run robots by remote.
That's what I thought too and it's not going to be ready until after 2030. But apparently they have an SLS-like Long March 10 in development that will be ready before 2030?
I remember several years ago there were American concepts for crewed Mars rovers that had spacesuits as part of the vehicle. Instead of climbing into an airlock, the suits are the airlock. That way you don't bring in any dust. I'll try to find a picture or video.
edit: Suitport!
Even Long March 10 would require at least two launches to put the various pieces off the ground. Its design payload mass to a trans-lunar injection would be about the same as the Apollo CSM alone, no Lunar Module in tow. Modern crewed spacecraft haven't really gotten much lighter than older-design spacecraft (gains in compactness of electronics is often offset by improving safety margins in other systems), and the Apollo CSM engine was a pretty darn efficient one for its day, so I think it'd be fair to assume that a Chinese Apollo-style mission would have an architecture roughly equivalent to Apollo - including similar masses for similar ships.
Suitport is a fascinating idea. It would be a great idea for "disposable" hardware like an Apollo-style mission. One of the big challenges in longer-term missions would be suit maintenance. My favourite suit design is the good old USSR-derived Orlan suit. It has only one opening, the back, where cosmonauts slide in. The fabric panel behind the cosmonaut is actually just a cover for all the suit's systems. Pretty easy to maintain by space-tech standards.
TIL
Christ, I didn't realize it was that hazardous, that's like some videogame bullshit
Silicosis from hell. Mars is the same but not as bad bc it has atmosphere and wind to move the dust around and grind the edges off a little, but it's still living in a world made of abrasive grit. It's impossible to overstate how insanely hazardous and unsuited for life anywhere else in the solar system is. All of this manned flight stuff is a hubristic waste of resources. Just send more robots ffs.
Mars' atmosphere also means that so as long as you've got electricity, you can use regular air compressor tech to blow a worksite relatively clean of dust, or blow most of the dust off a suit before closing up an outer airlock, etc. To try the same thing on the Moon means hauling along big tanks of some sort of inert gas, and carefully rationing usage.
Lunar colonization is an insane idea. The Moon is fantastic for a lot of science proposals. EM telescopes of all wavelengths on the far side where they're permanently shielded from Earth and shielded from the Sun for 2 weeks out of 4. Gravitational-wave detectors on tectonically stable ground that don't need vacuum tunnels built because above-ground is a natural vacuum. Infrared telescopes in the permanently-shadowed polar craters. Etc, etc, etc. The Moon is an amazing place for automated observatories. And of course the geology (selenology?) would be invaluable to understand how the Earth-Moon system evolved. But the Moon is a completely stupid idea from a colonization perspective.
I don't get why people still have to be sent into space with all the advancements in robots and satellites. Especially when it comes to risking some of the PLA's finest when AUKUS are starting to close in on China.