hobbsyoyo
Deity
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2012
- Messages
- 26,575
Damn that first monkey that lifted the first stickGuess we are stuck with it and must as well make the best of it.
I think the General's speech was mostly a take on the state of things rather than an announcement of a change. The capability for the great powers to clobber each other in space has always been there, and while most in-space military activities are connected to espionage and communication, they tie directly into kinetic warfare on the ground. The focus on anti-satellite capabilities by all three great powers is worrisome but has been going on for a couple of decades, so that isn't new either.
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China successfully launched the first module of their new space station. It's based on a design that goes all the way back to the USSR's Salyut stations and Mir - and a derivative is even one of the core modules of the ISS. The Long March 5 booster rocket that the Chinese used to launch it has a bigger fairing than the Russian Proton booster, and this meant that the Chinese space station could have lots of things attached to its external surfaces prior to launch. The previously launched Russian station modules all had to have their external bits and bobs detached and placed inside the station for launch to fit in the Proton fairing, and then cosmonauts would have to go inside it and extract all the pieces and place them outside. Obviously the simplicity of having all the bits and bobs already in place due to the larger fairing of the Long March 5 is a bonus for the Chinese.
They have 11 launches scheduled over the next year to add 2 more modules and deliver cargo and crew to the station and set everything up. The coolest feature of this station is that it will co-orbit with a new Hubble-class space telescope that can dock with the station for period refurbishments. The mirror on this telescope is as big as Hubbles but has a field of view something like 400x wider.
Spoiler Chinese Hubble :
One big worry about the space station launch - the way the low earth orbit version of Long March 5 operates is such that the entire massive core stage makes it to orbit. This is somewhat unusual but is not a problem in and of itself. What is a problem though is that the Chinese do not de-orbit the core stage and instead leave it to decay and re-enter randomly over the Earth. This core stage is large enough that pieces of it will survive re-entry and could land on someone or something. The last time they launched this rocket, the debris missed coming down over New York City by a handful of minutes.
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