China's Success
China’s giant, quiet step in space, Leroy Chiao, CNN
“I have seen China’s space technology. It is impressive. What the Chinese lack is operational experience. In that, we are still far ahead. But we in the know hear footsteps. It’s time not for another government space race, but for expanded space cooperation and collaboration — an effort the United States would lead, as it does today with the International Space Station program. Bring China into the international fold. This is how we can retain the leadership position. Otherwise, we risk falling behind.”
China Completes First Space Manned Docking Mission
“China is celebrating the safe return of three astronauts, who successfully completed a mission that included the country’s first manual docking in space and the first Chinese woman astronaut. Live television images of the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft’s return were broadcast around China Friday.”
Folks:
Whoa! Some great video work by the Chinese during the whole decent. Flaming trails of the capsule and service module, infrared and color shots of the parachute decent. Great closeup of the landing from a helicopter shows the summersalt Shenzou takes as an encore.
Outstanding! They put the Russians to shame on the smooth automated docking and easily surpassed then on landing and recovery video coverage.
Bookmark this link to paste into the media player of your choice for next time:
http://www.cctv-9.com/2005/… (China TV live)
tinker
Speaking of the somersault —
Why were they landing in a sloped area, anyway? Aren’t there places in Inner Mongolia that are flat for miles on end?
where is this great video work? was it live? is there a link now to the video?
Tony:
Live. Link posted above.
tinker
The first link is the landing, second link is extraction of the crew.
http://www.youtube.com/watc…
http://www.youtube.com/watc…
Maybe the Russians are feeling the pressure now, this morning we had good live video of the Soyuz parachute descent starting twelve minutes before landing, and a good by Russian standards live view of touchdown.
The extraction video this morning however was not very good quality, apparently transmitted by satellite phone. I remember watching a previous Soyuz landing where the initial video was low quality, apparently taken by someone who arrived on one of the first helicopters or ATV, but by the time the crew was extracted some higher quality equipment arrived at the landing site. That didn’t happen this time.
Someone will have to convince Congressman Frank Wolf first. Right now, any NASA civil servant will likely get chewed out by Wolf for even looking in the direction of somebody who works in China’s space program.
I’ve seen a lot of “China scare” stuff in business and politics news (even in local political mudslinging ads), but everyone seems very supportive of their space program – and I too wish them the best of luck in all their space ventures.
Another space race would be good, something to light a fire under us Americans – but just knowing the scope of space exploration is expanding is good enough.
I think the point when comparing spacex and china is not what they are doing in an absolute sense. By that measure spacex launching a vehicle to the space station is not that impressive. The point is that spacex is doing the things they are doing at a dramatically reduced price with increased efficiency. That’s why watching them is so awesome.
This comparison makes me queasy and I’m not sure exactly why. I’m old enough to remember when researchers wondered if the human eyeball would self-explode when in micro-gravity; when nobody knew if astronauts would be able to eat, swallow, and poop; when the limits of regular multi-G exposure were completely unknown.
The body of science and knowledge that’s been built over the years and acquired by the newbies is really stunning but perhaps escapes attention. It was at great expense that gravity decell sleds provided data. Many poor animals were lost to awful deaths. And the accumulation of data marched forward.
It’s true that a column-to-column comparison of Chinese, SpaceX, and NASA rocket costs requires some accounting. The stunning differences in quoted prices to space, for example, are so staggeringly different that Boeing, et al., have some splainin’ to do.
But while this explanation is underway, do keep in mind that so much basic research has entered the common weal and is available to anyone who wants it.
It’s been said that once a notion is known to be possible, replicating it is child’s play. In this case it’s not exactly suitable for children but still: NOW we know that space is accessible, that multi-stage rockets are the best way to get there, that humans can live in space, that radiation can be managed. We know how to build several different types of engines that produce stunning amounts of energy. The knowledge is in the public domain, now.
International cooperation in space is great diplomacy but there’s really no evidence that international programs like the ISS has saved the US any money.
More American aerospace jobs would have been produced if all of the space station components had been built and launched from American soil.
Marcel F. Williams
There’s cost and then there’s cost. A lot of the reason behind ISS was to keep then-impoverished rocket scientists from following money to whatever state or organization wanted to lob missiles and even possibly nukes around.
Maybe that was a wise investment, maybe that was expensive paranoia. We’ll never know for sure.
Thank goodness, because the only proof we were right would have come through failure to do so and unmentionable results.
It may have been about the only semi-rational reason for the ISS at all.
I think the main reason for the international nature of the ISS effort was to make the project harder to kill in later administrations. And that worked.
You are exactly right. NASA maneuvered the ISS into Treaties with other countries to ensure its continueation for as long as it can be maintained!
Marcel,
I think it’s exactly that sort of thinking that’s been creating a shell around the US. It seems to me that some in your country are intent on entering into some sort of isolationism, based, I suspect unfortunately, on a feeling of American superiority. Certainly, not all Americans feels that way, but it doesn’t take too many people speaking that way to give the impression that it’s a much more wide spread attitude. And I think it only encourages people like Rep. Wolf, who doesn’t need any help harming America’s progress.
We are clearly moving into an ever-increasing cooperative world, where companies are more multicultural and countries are cooperating more and more, at both the government and industry levels, to everyone’s benefit. And realistically, programs like your lunar base are going to require an international effort to create and to maintain. Anyone who still thinks that America can do it all alone is engaged in wishful thinking and will only end up disappointed. Ask yourself why spacecraft and LV hardware from other countries is used in America.
The Chinese are an industrious and capable people, as are those of pretty much any industrial nation on this planet, and we would all benefit by working together — share the expense; share the workload; and share the benefits gained. That’s the way things are going to have to be, of necessity, if for no other reason. So, I highly recommend thinking in cooperative, international terms for future major space programs, so as not to get left out. There’s a great deal more to consider than just the money that you don’t see as saved. Look at at the trends in money not allocated and progress slowing down and it’s not hard to see that we’ll be going forward together with the rest of the world, or not at all. China will go to the Moon; I think the question is: will America be going with them?
Steve
AHHHHHHH, but Marcel.
We could have slowed down the Chinese advance into space capability by having them join us in ISS!!
A little sarcasm there, in case it does not come thru in the words!
That’s a naive perspective. There is no question that more American jobs would have been produced if all Station components had been made in the U.S. But more American jobs require more American dollars. Pray tell, where were those additional dollars going to come from? That’s like saying that I could be rich if only everyone would give me money. A real “duh” statement.
The international cooperation on ISS has exercised what will be a profoundly important capability. That being … international cooperation. In highly technical project, requiring an awesome level of coordination across distance, language, and culture, cooperation isn’t something that can be depended on to just work. The space science world has learned that lesson well. With regard to human space flight, Boldin has said straight out that we ain’t goin’ anywhere — NEOs, Mars, even back to the lunar surface, without international partners. He’s just reading the fiscal tea leaves. Mike Griffin tried to do a U.S.-only Constellation transportation architecture and I guess he proved the point. Did international cooperation on ISS save us money? I suspect it saved our future in human space flight.
I think it is funny that people talk about how we are still way a head technically as if this doesn’t matter.
The fact is china is way ahead of us in space. Like Spacex they are standing on NASA and russia’s shoulders and doing space cheaper than it has ever been done. They are at the head of the pack, leaders in the new race to utilize space by dropping the price.
Lol it reminds me of Microsoft selling pc s at fifth the price of apple and grabbing the world market after apple did the major R and D.
In. High school I ran second on my team my ninth and tenth grade year behind my friend ST Hsieo Sp a school mate born in Twain. Lol maybe I’m Spacex and he is china lol
Anyway chasing him was a wonderful experience. And beating him was better lol. He made me do things I never thought I could.
My simple point lol
We have a new race a better race, a race that should lead to space for all.
The leaders are out there going at it. I’m cheering for my favorite. But really cheering for all.
Go Elon go!!!!!!!!!!!!!
PS
Isn’t it fun ???????!!!!!!!
George,
Even when you were second, it was more enjoyable for you running just behind a friend. Would the race have had the same appeal if you were running against someone you didn’t like or didn’t trust? Racing against your friend, no matter who came in first, you still “won” in terms of what you got out of it. I think that’s an important message.
Steve
Steve
How do you engage a foe????
You be friend him!
You lead by example!
You share with him!
You help him!
Us not inviting china to ISS was stupid!
Who starts wars and distrust among people anyway!!!
The average Joe from any country would get along with the average Joe from another country.
You would think the USA being a melting pot would understand this better than most.
Seems it’s that us against THEM thing. To me Those few that get control, be it through government or business then spin their webs against us all. Use the bad side of our porky pie nature to get us to distrust our neighbors. Next thing you know we are building war machines to to fight boggy men.
DTARS,
I agree with your assessment completely. There’s always going to be an “us and them” of some sort; I think the trick is in identifying the real bad guys, instead of going after the people who the real bad guys are pointing at. For example, Rep. Wolf and his cohorts are constantly pointing at outsiders, like China, yet they are working against us and our space future while China is doing the things that we approve of. So, who’s the real bad guy?
As for saying that “Us not inviting china to ISS was stupid!,” to be fair, I think we have to realize that the timing of a message can say as much as the words in the message. In past decades, including when the space station went international, China was still fairly standoffish, not yet ready to join the rest of the world as a cooperative partner. Now, however, and for the past few years, I think they’ve made it clear, both governmentally and industrially, that they are ready and willing to play in the band with the rest of the technical world.
So, now is the time to get them on board, while they’re interested, we’re (largely) interested, and it’s obviously mutually advantageous. It would be foolish, I think, to piss them off by continuing to exclude them, and would be to everybody’s loss. Clearly, China is going to be the financial power in the world in the coming decades, so we had all better be willing to play ball with them. And I think that the Chinese leaders and lawmakers are at the point where they are willing to bend a little more and come into line on issues like copyright and import restrictions in exchange for “doing business” at a more significant and higher-tech level. I think that their apparent change in attitude towards outsiders in recent years can be seen as an olive branch being offered, and it would be a damn shame if the rest of the world didn’t reciprocate; it would be a valuable example to all nations, east and west, and a major opportunity lost if we throw it away. It’s much like Japan in the 1970’s all over again, which worked out well.
There’s another aspect to cooperation with China that very much appeals to me: they, by all accounts, have a work ethic that the rest of the world can’t match (even though most countries still think they can). Perhaps working side by side with them on more levels day to day would help some of this work ethic rub off on workers in other countries. It certainly had that effect, for a while, when Japan started working with other countries a few decades back. But it seems to me that the American continents and much of Europe have slid back down into the union mentality again, which generally always lowers production and raises prices in the western world. Any competent business management can realize that better supporting your workers in exchange for a better, more productive work ethic is a win-win that can’t be beat, but sometimes it take an example to make the message sink in (obviously these things go in cycles, and right now I think we’re at a low point while China and India are at a high).
The thing that bothers me most is that any decisions about working with China in space will almost certainly be made by people we don’t know of, for reasons that we’ll never be told about, which makes a mockery of democracy. I suspect that writing to your elected representatives on this issue (like many others) would be a waste of ink and paper. It might just be more effective to write to those who are going to be running against the current incumbents and try to affect their platforms and policies with your thoughts, which they just might be willing to highlight and publicly support on the campaign trail. In others words, if the current “representatives” don’t “represent” your point if view, do your best to get rid of them, because you’re never going to change them.
And this has been far more political thinking at one time than my poor brain can tolerate, so I’ll quit now, simply repeating my assertion that “we’ll be going forward together with the rest of the world, or not at all. China will go to the Moon; I think the question is: will America be going with them?“
Thanks for your continued inspiration, George,
Steve
Adding this before reading your comment Steve lol
Steve a few points about friendly competition.
May have said this before way back. But a lesson learned while running was this. For me in most of the races I ran I was usually proudest of the second places. More than the first places. Reason, in many of the second places I dug deeper, had to have more courage.
Isn’t that why so many are so proud of Spacex? That ability to do more with less. The little lean guy against the big well feed giant guy? Digging deeper?
I would rather companies compete, not countries. Reason being there is something evil about nationalism. Nationalism is about dividing people for porky pie reasons. Which leads to lack of communication, mistrust, fear, paranoia, etc etc war.
I get angry watching the Olympics when something as pure as good sport. Is taken by the fans and media and turned into we have more points, we are better than them.
I saw on the news how chinas military uses rocket science for this and for that. FEAR FEAR!!!!
And we are surprised when other distrust us!!!!
Anyway your comment “it’s about the people” , whatever you meant by it, bugs me lol maybe that’s a good thing lol. Trying to dig deeper lol
Who wins when two countries go at it? Hard to say??
Who wins when two companies go at it? The consumer! ME 🙂
PS Mr. C lol maybe you SHOULD repeat yourself more often. Lol just a thought 🙂
Steve
Including china on ISS I was thinking about when they sent someone here to talk with Giffin I think about joining us on ISS and we snub the heck out of them.
Whoever can do space cheapest will come out ahead in the long run because it will be sustainable. NASA is losing at this game, BADLY. All of the ops experience in the world doesn’t mean jack, and all of our past accomplishments mean nothing in this regard. What matters is the present and future. Both of which are extremely dim for NASA. China has spent about the same amount of money on its entire manned space program in the last 20 years than NASA has on the Orion capsule alone in the last 7 years, about $6 billion. The Chinese are flying rockets, capsules, and orbital laboratories for this cost. While Orion is years away from a test flight. SpaceX has spent around $1 billion and has a rocket and a capsule that have flown a mission to ISS. NASA HSF is no longer relevant except as a jobs program for FL, TX, and AL. That will only sustain us for so long. And the Science side is not far behind having spent $4 billion on JWST. It’s time to clean house or we will fade away.
nasa817,
Although your argument is not exactly apples and apples, your point, I think, is well made. The tough question that no one seems to have an answer for is: exactly how do we go about cleaning house? It’s always going to be a major battle trying to eliminate so many CS jobs, which is essential in this case. But it’s more than just the CS and underemployed Ops people who would need to go. So, how do we can them without paying them all welfare instead? And who does the choosing as to which jobs get cut? The moment that seniority enters the picture it’s all going to fall apart anyhow when the buddy system takes over. Many, many people appear to agree with you, including me — but how?
Steve
One thing to do is make the new buzz slogan be this
The RACE TO UTILIZE SPACE IS ON
THE NEW SPACE RACE!
Write your congressman
Tell him to support “commercial” Space providers.
To help lower the price of space flight.
Tell him you want expensive wasteful programs like SLS cut.
Tell him you want an R and D NASA again.
The Leo cheap commercial, while BEO wasteful exploration myth must be articulated better than I can say. That plan Steve lol Seems the Chinese have their plan. We need ours that spread our Spacex type strength throughout Leo and BEO. Not let the porkers keep using that exploration excuse.
Steve,
NASA suffers from terminal incompetence of leadership. The only cure for this patient is death. And it is going to be slow and painful. No one can bring themselves to believe just how dire things are or how inept the Agency is because of its reputation due to past accomplishments. There is no way to get rid of the incompetence because it is nearly universal in senior management. Those that are competent are powerless to overcome the super-majority of idiots. The only way to really fix NASA would be to fire everyone and rehire using independent panels of experts to evaluate everyone based on experience for the position for which they are applying. No one internal to NASA should be allowed to approve who is hired. This is the root of the problem. Idiots hire idiots and the fecal matter floats to the top, like a septic tank.
I hate to be pessimistic, but NASA is no longer capable of success. Our new motto should be, “Success is NOT an option.” Constellation was cancelled before the truth came out, it was on the path to failure. The new programs that replaced Constellation are being managed even worse and will collapse under their own weight, if not cancelled outright if Romney is elected. If Obama is elected, they will continue until the schedule slips and the budget overruns to the point where they too are cancelled. NASA has way too many people to sustain on its payroll and the majority of them have NO experience in what they are tasked to do. We should have kept flying Shuttle because that’s all we know how to do.
Someone posted that only the present and future matters and yet here we are wringing our hands over the past. Yearning for the great days of NASA, while at this moment amazing things are happening – are we afraid to admit that the great days are here right now? Do we, in the modern culture, yearn to nay say and and become angry old men? NASA is doing great things RIGHT NOW.
Chris,
Very good point. I think there’s often confusion generated in our comments here because we fail to distinguish between NASA and NASA HSF in what we say. As you say, NASA is doing great things. NASA HSF, however, I think is in sad shape, and unfortunately HSF is the only part of NASA that some people pay any attention to. Speaking for myself, I find that quite often I’m all smiles about one NASA program and two minutes later I’m an angry old man about another program. It’s pretty much impossible to avoid reacting like this.
As for time frames, in truth I think we have to consider past, present and future, both when planning and when evaluating results, in order to have the necessary perspective and context.
Steve
Steve
I disagree !!!!
NASA human space flight is in the best shape it has been in forty years!!!
Dragon marks the start of the revolution of NASA human Space flight that failed to happen when challenger blowup.
Someone said that to have heathy Human space program you have to continuely evolve. Well I think from this point on human Space flight will evolve at a rate almost as fast as the sixties, only it won’t stop!
That’s sure better than flying the same old billion per flight dollar spacecraft round and round wondering why your doing it.
Add
Lol another running analogy lol
We have lots of talent. We are in pretty good shape. In the human space flight race we have been a little clumsy and have stumbled and tripped ourselves up. But the race is long and all we need to do is roll with the fall and go get them!!
Watching a dragon rider make a soft no bounce landing on a helicopter pad in a few years will be real cool 🙂
“NASA human space flight is in the best shape it has been in forty years!!! Dragon marks the start of the revolution of NASA human Space flight”
I think most of us are saying that it is not American human space flight that is a problem; hopefully Musk, Space-X, Dragon, and some of the other commercial suppliers will begin to take over in the near future.
NASA human space flight is in shambles, however. We have an ISS that, just as it is ready to be put to use, has little logistics to support it. We gave up the technological sophistication of Shuttle without even a wimper-this was sheer stupidity. There is an Orion and SLS somewhere down the line, maybe in 10years, but no one is sure what we will do with it or why it makes sense because no one has laid out the plan or strategy. We have two presidential candidates who have been openly hostile. I am not certain which is worse. We have people like Neil Degrasse Tyson arguing for more money for NASA (the argument is going nowhere), but NASA is not sure what to do with the money it is already getting and its been wasting much of it.
Jerry
I just read a link where Musk talks about having trouble spending 2.5 billion to do heavy lift lol
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn….
For the cost of two shuttle flights we could have much of shuttles capability plus.
Why should NASA do heavy lift at all if they can hire commercial to do it so much cheaper??
Don’t SLS and Orion just need to be canceled anyway because they cost tens of times what they should!!!!!
I repeat Musk can develop SLS type heavy lift for just 2.5 billion!!
How can we get NASA to use the money they have. Support Musk and company so we REALLY get humans to the moon and Mars Soon!!
With all shuttles up and down capability we were paying some 250 million per sit to put astronauts in space! Is that good? Now we pay Russians 56 million per seat to fly astronauts lol. Me Joe taxpayer is doing better!
Yup as bad as it looks human space flight is looking up!
Won’t NASA plan human space missions in the future using commercial crew??? Isn’t that NASA human spaceflight????
I hope that Musk can do what he says. Keep in mind that it is a really big leap to go from a Dragon-Falcon 9 rocket launch once a year to regular, routine and frequent build ups of the vehicles whether for several flights a year or for the heavy lift vehicle. I think he will be able to do it but it is a steep learning curve he is facing right now.
NASA human space flight has been faced with the issue of doing more with what it has for a long time, but has not changed the way in which it does business; in fact they have continuously done less with a reasonably stable level of funding.
Jerry
If I understand the whole situation correctly I don’t believe that NASA should build and fly rockets ever again like they did in the past. So I don’t really think NASA space flight is in a shambles. I think it is coming to an end as it should! The time is now to pass the torch to the “commercial” guys in BEO as well as LEO NOW! Doesn’t NASA need to plan how they will provide R and D for the “commercial” crowd and then refuse to do SLS and Orion.
Mr. C talked some about transforming Orion to build on orbit spaceships. Is he talking NASA employees or prime employees or both!
Anyway the current shambles is better than the locked in no growth situation of before. We are that much closer to getting it fixed. I hope.
And as I have said before. Musk is headed to Mars regardless so we agree American human space flight is in pretty good shape if we can Stop THEM, NASA congress whoever from keeping BEO spaceflight unaffordable for themselves!
Lol
Don’t let NASA Explore the Solar system in a 1960s moon Rocket!! That’s an an unfordable Stupid idea.
Don’t let NASA exclude “commercial” from BEO exploration in the name of pork.
“Commercial” new Space need their new Taxi business supported all over the solar system!Jerry
If I understand the whole situation correctly I don’t believe that NASA should build and fly rockets ever again like they did in the past. So I don’t really think NASA space flight is in a shambles. I think it is coming to an end as it should! The time is now to pass the torch to the “commercial” guys in BEO as well as LEO NOW! Doesn’t NASA need to plan how they will provide R and D for the “commercial” crowd and then refuse to do SLS and Orion.
Mr. C talked some about transforming Orion to build on orbit spaceships. Is he talking NASA employees or prime employees or both!
Anyway the current shambles is better than the locked in no growth situation of before. We are that much closer to getting it fixed. I hope.
And as I have said before. Musk is headed to Mars regardless so we agree American human space flight is in pretty good shape if we can Stop THEM, NASA congress whoever from keeping BEO spaceflight unaffordable for themselves!
Lol
Don’t let NASA Explore the Solar system in a 1960s moon Rocket!! That’s an an unfordable Stupid idea.
Don’t let NASA exclude “commercial” from BEO exploration in the name of pork.
“Commercial” new Space need their new Taxi business supported all over the solar system!
Sorry but most of the comments here are ignorant. The reason that the Chinese have spent far less is:
1. They bought a lot of the tough to develop technology from the Soviets/Russians after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
2. From Wikipedia, according to IMF for 2011
2.1 U.S. per capita income: $48,387
2.2 China per capita income: $8,382
3. As someone said, like SpaceX, they are benefiting from the gains already made by NASA, Russians, and Europeans.
When you have a workforce that makes 1/6th what its competitor does I would hope you could do things a lot cheaper. Especially when the government is a totalitarian one that can tell people what jobs to take.
China has been working in earnest on this since 1992. The per capita numbers are for 2011. I’m sure it was a lot less in the 90s for them.
Yes, you can make cheap IPhones, IPads in China. But do you really want to ship the manufacture of our rockets and capsules over there? I think not.
This is not meant to diminish their accomplishments. Just to put them in what I consider the proper perspective.
There must have been a glitch in the DISQUS editor, because I’m guessing that you meant to say that you think that most of the comments here are ignorant.
Their work force makes a 1/6th???? And what is their cost of living.
If you want to design a nice house does it make a difference where you got your ideas? Who cares??
Congrats to China! They did an auto-docking first, then allowed the crew to see if they do it manually. NASA does not do manned auto-docking?? NASA spent several million to develop auto-landing capability for the shuttle, but NEVER used it to touchdown, because the crew would become simply a backup to the auto system. Is there no need for our test pilot astronauts anymore?
What does the commander / pilot do on Orion?
We should NOT expect China or any other nation to repeat our operations learning curve from the beginning. ( Of course at NASA we had to always avoid any technology transfer to China along with some other countries. Why, it appears they already got what they need!)
Was there during the development of that Shuttle auto landing capability, and was wondering if it had ever been used.
MSFC spent millions back during that 4 billion technology development program of NASA’s , and never accomplished auto rendezvous or docking.
“What the Chinese lack is operational experience.”
That is not as big as a deal as some make it out to be. NASA, especially JSC has tons of operations experience, but it’s not that useful. What has it gotten us? We’re essentially behind China at this point in terms of manned spaceflight whether some want to admit it or not.
Operational experience cannot be correlated to intelligence or innovation and in some cases it’s the exact opposite. NASA owned plans for manned spaceflight for the past 10 yrs are just downright terrible. The only innovation we’ve seen if you call them that are minimal upgrades for maximum expense. COTS and Commercial Crew are pretty much the only realistic options we have.
Competition with China may provide a motivational and political boost for NASA, but it’s for the wrong reasons.
I don’t think that things like innovation or intelligence would correlate well to the people leading NASA today.
Helen Simpson said
“That’s
a naive perspective. There is no question that more American jobs would
have been produced if all Station components had been made in the U.S.
But more American jobs require more American dollars.”
Actually I think your perspective is naive. ESA, JAXA and other of our
partners owed the US money for a variety of services including
launching their elements and providing different aspects of mission
support. Instead of taking their money, we had them build our hardware:
modules, cupola, etc. We gave away the design and manufacturing jobs and also didn’t take their money. We were magnanimous. I am not sure about the intelligence behind our decisions however. Now we haven’t built any HSF hardware in a long time, which may be one reason why Orion seems to be costing so much and taking so long. And somehow ISS did not seem to be inexpensive.
There are different ways of looking at it. We launched *their* elements because *their* elements provided services to us. Those elements were providing mission support for our own needs (as well as theirs). Propulsion, life support, experiment rack connections. In many respects, the providers of these elements didn’t owe us money for the transportation we supplied.
We had standing contracts for the Shuttle launches. It wasn’t as if we were going to fly any of those flights with the payload bay empty. We didn’t have the funds to build those elements ourselves that would fill those payload bays.
So you’re saying that had we pulled the plug on a number of Shuttle flights, we would have had money to pay our workers for ISS components? Sorry, but the Shuttle contracting didn’t work that way.
You should “Reply” to the post you’re responding to. Click on “Reply” under that post.
I replied exactly as I wanted in order to put the reply in a place where it would be seen.
Now your perspective becomes absurd-illogical.
ESA and JAXA did not provide propulsion or life support systems and their people were not going to go build nuclear bombs. You are confusing our traditional friends with our traditional enemies, the Russians. The Russians had modules, propulsion systems and environmental control systems sitting on their shelves and they had their own rockets and did not need Shuttle. Even in this case, turning off all of our work on propulsion systems was not smart.
Space Shuttle launches cost between 500 million and $750 million each. It made sense for our friends to pay for the launches they required.
It made sense for Americans to keep building American hardware.
You should give more consideration to the shared functions of Columbus and Kibo, as well as the cargo functionality of HTV and ATV.
Your words about “building nuclear bombs” and “traditional enemies” are amusing. If you want to choose your enemies on the basis of tradition, you can fold the Japanese and even the Brits and the French into the mix. Got news for you. Many countries in ESA work hard on nuclear bombs. France has several hundred operational nuclear warheads.
Asking our ISS collaborators to pay for the Shuttle launches that *they* require, presumes that we didn’t require what they were launching. We did. The goals that those launches served were shared goals.
I think it’s unwise to try to be too quantitative about ISS cost-sharing. Again, the fact that the cost sharing we did has some built-in flexibility is probably one of the crucial ingredients for successful international collaboration. As noted previously, such international cooperation will be essential to U.S. involvement in efforts beyond LEO.
One of the powerful incentives international collaboration brings to U.S. efforts in human space flight is that, unlike wholly U.S. projects, success of that collaboration isn’t measured simply in U.S. jobs created or U.S. congressional districts served. That’s why Congress is suspicious of the whole international enterprise, and I suspect is what made Congress so blindly supportive of Constellation.
During the landing and at the press conference afterwards, the Chinese aerospace officials were asked “Is it worth it?” “Will China lead in space after the ISS ceases to function?” The answers were that 1)historically, the US and USSR/Russia enjoyed (conservatively) a $6 dollar return on every dollar spent in advancing aerospace technology. Therefore, it is definitely a worth and necessary activity for any country of significance, and every significant country must be present in space. 2)China is achieving what it deems necessary to advance its civil technology with presence in space, and is not pacing itself by the activity of other countries. It expects that many more countries will raise themselves by developing space technology, and welcomes cooperative ventures, and expects that the US will find its way to keep NASA an important investment of the country. They are also interested in, but not wholly convinced by, the role of private providers of space services (the name Elon Musk was mentioned often in the Beijing broadcasts).
The CCTV coverage was excellent and exemplary of what coverage for the public should be like, with technically illuminating commetary, and discussions between Chinese space officials and U of A planetary scientist John Lewis to put things in historical perspective. To counter the charge that China was just learning to do what the US and USSR did in the 1960’s, I showed my 13 year-old daughter what our first docking was like in the reenactment of the near disaster of Gemini 8 in “From the Earth to the Moon.”
Is
NASA really relevant to anything in human spaceflight anymore, apart from
buying tickets on commercial or foreign flights and in a regulatory role? It’s
pretty much in the same area now as the British space program was after it
stopped the Black Arrow program, but with far more cash.
NASA
has done great things in the past, but let’s look at their development record
post Apollo, and it’s not all their fault.
The
shuttle benefited from the Apollo project staff and the USAF’s desire to fund a
space plane, which then stuffed it with various needs for cold war polar orbits
and made it so expensive and dangerous that the USAF ditched it like a read
headed stepchild. It was never the vehicle it could have been, fantastic though
it was and three cheers to all to people who did what they could with what the comities
tasked them to design, build, run and fly.
Every
attempt at designing a successor to the shuttle was stymied by a combination
technical hitches, bureaucratic incompetence, over engineering, or government
cancelling the program and moving the goal posts just as the ball was nearing
the net.
And
nobody ever seems to be sure where the goal posts are. One decade it’s a space
plane, the next it’s SSTO, the next it’s Apollo2 and off to the moon or Mars.
Just as NASA start to get close to getting their heads around it, WHAM! it’s
changed.
Frankly,
unless the US decides what it actually wants to do in space, then how the heck
can anyone make a plan to do it? At least China seems to have a roadmap and
stick to it. The only thing the US seems to have committed to is commercial
flights to LEO, and at least that gives Space-ex et al something to aim at.
The USA Does have a plan. They just don’t know it yet lol. Spacex is designing their hardware to go to Mars or the moon. Musk is not waiting for our fickle fools in Washington to direct him. He is getting us USA or the world ready for missions to either or both. I heard they will release some kind of plan this year. Anyway it very obvious to me that at some time in the future just like he has done with red dragon Musk will say to some congress or president we have this much for these missions. You want to help??? And we will be on a short path to the moon and or Mars.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see this.
It right there in front of our eyes.
Parallel lines
Since USA really hasn’t found anything useful in space, I’m not too worried about China going into space. No need to “race” them or worry that they’ll “own” space. Does USA “own” the moon today because it was first to get there ?
Sure, there are military implications of having orbital capabilities, but I’m POSITIVE the USA’s orbital military capability will never hurt for money.
We should kill NASA’s manned space program until we find something worth sending humans to. Something with a big benefit, worth the big cost. We haven’t found any such thing yet. Keep the unmanned program going.