China Is Doing What NASA Used To Do
Shenzhou-11 Is In Orbit, SpaceRef
“China placed the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft with two astronauts aboard into orbit today. The launch happened exactly on time at 7:30 am local time at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. Shenzhou-11 is in its planned orbit and will dock with China’s second space station Tiangong-2 on Tuesday. The two astronauts will remain onboard Tiangong-2 for a month.”
#NASA will not be able to do this again for another 4-5 years. Private sector will not be able to do so for another 2 years. https://t.co/hozkfJnjDV
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) October 16, 2016
The US, both via Commercial and with the SLS, is aiming to do something a good deal more ambitious and capable than what China is doing.
The pause in US spaceflight while these news systems were developed has been a big nothingburger since day one. Remember the grand ol’ freakout when *gasp* Ares I and Orion wouldn’t launch in the far, far future of March 2014? It should have been a big “so-what?”. It’s more important to do it right than do it quick.
A quick and dirty capsule on top of a re-purposed ballistic missile or satellite launcher is nothing to write home about. The US could have done that over a decade ago with Delta IV or Atlas V, but chose new systems (and a new private sector) and some more ambitious plans.
I’ll worry when China can develop anything remotely close to the sheer mass launch capability of SLS, or land like Falcon (and Dragon V2) can/will be able to.
I think the pauses in the American space program are a concern. You can say that we could have continued using on vehicle until the next one was available, if we had wanted to do so. You can say that we didn’t, because we didn’t consider the pauses to be a problem. But doesn’t that we don’t really care about continuity or a sustainable space program?
The issue with that is that this country knew exactly what it was getting into. There was no mystery. With CxP, with SLS and with commercial, when all three were/are the planned “next thing”, there was always going to be a substantial post-shuttle gap in order to pay for it. The US made that decision. It was the opportunity cost of a grander plan than just staying in LEO with the shuttle because we already had it.
Was it the wrong one? Really… what would the shuttle have done through 2016 had it kept flying while the successor programs were worked on? 3 or 4 times a year flights to the ISS to deliver MPLMs and another *(unfunded) module? Maybe one more Hubble Servicing mission about now? But really the purpose would have been to show the flag. To say “we have hugely expensive and technically complex independent manned spaceflight”
Worth a few billion dollars a year? Not nearly.
The country made a strategic decision to hand LEO flight into the hands of private industry to focus government space on flights deeper into space. If the President announced tomorrow, that with the support of Congress, a crash program to restore “independent manned launched capability” by May 2017 by dropping $20 billion and putting a quick and dirty capsule on a Atlas V, would that fundamentally change anything about AMerican spaceflight? Not remotely either. Showing the flag isn’t worth $20 billion.
The point is that these programs have to have a clear purpose. Even the maligned SLS has a purpose – nominally to be the biggest heavy lift vehicle active in the world to open the way to deep space exploration. That is the “why” to it.
The Shuttle exhausted its purpose the day the ISS was finished construction. It’s why was over. Let’s not forget, the entire motivation behind the Ares I “stick” was a “Space Taxi”, an “American Soyuz” (phrases thrown around at the time). Because using an 18 wheeler, which the Shuttle was designed as as a taxi, which is what the shuttle was being utilized for, was absurd.
So no. I don’t care about continuity. And neither should you. Continuity for continuity’s sake is meaningless. It’s like the factoid that since the first ISS crew, we’ve had a continous human presence in space – nice milestone, but meaningless. There are no awards for a perfect attendance record.
The fact is this. By the time the SLS flies, it will have taken about 15 years to build. By the time DragonV2 docks with the ISS with a crew inside the first time, it will have taken about 17 years to happen. Both represent something that if China started on today, it would take a similar timescale, if not more, for them to accomplish. They have no experience building anything remotely the size of the SLS, and the Chinese space vehicle is still heavily Russian derived.
We really need to decide what we want for our space program as a country. Quick and dirty one offs? Man in space in probably 12-18 months. We could probably do a lunar landing with EELVs and Falcons in five years or less. Mars? If you’re you’re willing to greatly risk killing a crew in the process probably less than a decade.But if we want to do this stuff properly, then waiting for enhanced capability is the only way to go.
Couldn’t the point be made that poor planning decades before SLS retired is the true lesson learned?
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The CAIB did not recommend the Shuttle be terminated at ISS assembly complete. They recommended Shuttle be terminated when the replacement human launch system became operational, so there would be no gap. They also recommended the replacement system be designed only for LEO access (i.e. like Commercial Crew), not for BEO, because they did not believe the funds were available to develop and sustain a system that would allow safe human flight to more challenging objectives with the technology then available.
“We land on the Moon if we wanted to” – except we don’t, and we can’t
Lets be frank – the capsule on top of D-IV or Atlas choice more than a decade ago was discarded in favor of something that was supposed to be safer, simpler and sooner. It was none of these things.
It wasn’t selected (not discarded) because NASA (and Congress) wanted a different archecture than EELVs. It’s as simple as that. Ares I was supposed to be cheaper for crewed orbital flights. Ares V was supposed to offer far more capability than any Delta or Atlas could. It’s really as simple as that. On paper, it looked like the right call.
I read the LSAS and ESAS carefully. To me it never looked like the right call. The rationale for the tradeoff going against the EELVs was not credible. The LOC estimate for the Delta IV, which uses no solids, was based on the Titan IV, a design that uses segmented SRBs, while the LOC estimate for the Ares neglected the Challenger.
Who would o launch a 6mT capsule on a 100mT LV to LEO?
o design a 20 day capsule for a 6 month journey to Mars?
o design Ares I that could not loft Orion nor close 2009 ‘gap’?
o design a HLV with solids were LAS mass ~ 10mT ?
o certify an Atlas 422 that rarely flies 2 Centaurs; retire it
o try to return to the moon after China with no budget?
o build HLV high fixed costs, low flight rate, excess capacity
o write the VSE then not read it? “resuse” “common h/w”
o design a capsule that could not reach Mars nor an asteroid?
o keep Ares I alive 5 yrs after it was shown infeasible?
o adopt LV24/25/SLS after it lost out to Ares(which could not get off the ground) and had to rely DOD/IPS for LEO?”
o blame others for cancelling their program to nowhere?
USA. USA. USA……
ARES – “Together, these two vehicles combine to provide America a practical, affordable, and achievable means to realize missions to the Moon and Mars.”
https://web.archive.org/web…
“A quick and dirty capsule on top of a re-purposed ballistic missile or satellite launcher is nothing to write home about.”
I’ve always thought a “small is beautiful” R&D effort to develop a 1 or 2 person launch vehicle and capsule with state of the art technology would be a nice counterbalance to all these gargantuan programs people seem so enamored with. A return to mercury/gemini class projects, but with a modern twist, while developing the heavy launch capability in parallel.
In essence that is what Ares I was (with an over-designed capsule for LEO purposes) with Ares V filling your “heavy lift launch capability”: role. Ares I had it’s share of technical challenges of course (such as the vibration), but there was simply immense opposition regardless to using an SRB, for some reason, as the first stage, despite being launched on over a hundred shuttle flights. I think you’re talking about something even smaller though, which wouldn’t be a be a bad option.
Still had commercial not been viable, I would totally be in favor of that. But SpaceX DragonV2 + Falcon makes it superfluous. And it should be noted, only SpaceX. The Boeing Atlas V+Starliner option will already be far more expensive than either this “small and simple” idea or DragonV2, because the Atlas V is an expensive rocket no matter its form.
“immense opposition regardless to using an SRB, for some reason, as the first stage, despite being launched on over a hundred shuttle flights.”
Immense opposition because we have seen it used on a hundred Shuttle flights, and we have come to understand the uncontrollable costs and risks of doing so.
Actually, now that I think about it, the whole concept of saying, “A quick and dirty capsule on top of a re-purposed ballistic missile or satellite launcher is nothing to write home about.” bothers me.
What, exactly, are the goals of the American space program? If sending people into orbit is a goal, in and of itself, or if the goal is to advance launch technology, then no, China isn’t very far along. But if the goal is for astronauts to accomplish something once on orbit, the the launch vehicle and capsule are just a transportation service. That service just need to work, not to be something “to write home about”, in the same way the bus taking the astronauts to the launch pad doesn’t need to be “something to write home about.”
The LM-2F is only distantly related to a missile from decades ago. More importantly, the new LM-7 is a clean sheet design.
The LM-2F is by far smaller than any manned space launch vehicle America has flown since the Titan IIs of Gemini. It is the definition of a “quick and dirty capsule” on top of a small ballistic-missile sourced launch vehicle.
The LM-7 has flown exactly once and is as capable as a mid-sized Atlas V.
I’m missing the part why we should be envious of this.
So in two years or so when America has two commercial launch launch vendors flying larger, more capable capsules on better rockets, and has a 70t launcher capable of sending a capsule to lunar orbit (which will also have flown once), do we get to have a series of posts discussing the fact that China is decades behind American launch capability brought about by the advent of SLS, Falcon9+Dragon and AtlasV+Starliner?
I mean this road goes both ways. They are working on things this country is not. This country is working on things they are not. What the US is working on is more ambitious than what China is. Why should we trade the historic things the US will achieve in a few years for modest repeat achievement now?
Don’t get me wrong. Good for China. But we’d be completely out of our minds to trade the capability this country is building for a 2 man capsule on a modest launcher like the LM-2F.
That would be trading a capability the US will have in 2 years (Commercial) to somewhere in the potential future (SLS) for a capability China has had for over a decade and is going to replace soon with a CST-style capsule on the LM-7, which, as you say, is comparable to the Atlas, except that the Atlas needs a solid fuel booster and an engine made in Russia to do it.
Aren’t we past the point where we think the only thing that matters is size? What about cost?
“China Is Doing What NASA Used To Do”
What would that be? Launch a two man crew every three years?
I believe it was 1981 the last time NASA launched a two man crew after a several year break in space flight.
I’m happy for them, we need to become a spacefaring species globally. The Chinese are building momentum and while we make fun of them for doing things the US/Russia did decades ago there is no reason why they can’t blow right past us with enough elbow grease and funding. At some point they may even have to use their own IP to do it.
Indeed just as the US did to the USSR…. What is the old Santayana saw about those who cannot remember the past being condemned to repeat it? I guess our more truculent commentators would argue that NASA HSF is pretty much embedded in the past so we are all good there. China has always played a long game. The century of humiliation will be assuaged by boiling the western frog.
On the bright side, by 2019/2020 the US will have 3 heterogenous launch platforms and 3 heterogeneous space craft. Each has its own path to meet NASA’s high manned safety standards
Additionally, by that time the US will probably have 4 or more private cargo only systems. and 2 or 3 Military grade cargo systems. I would imagine the (quite iterative) system from China will be playing catch-up by that point- even if the Russians move to a closer space relationship with China.
That said, there is absolutely no excuse for Congress’ underfunding of Commercial Crew in its initial years. Russians see their space efforts as a source of national pride. How cool it would have been to stop relying on Putin’s taxi service after his moves in Ukraine or Syria.
“That said, there is absolutely no excuse for Congress’ underfunding of Commercial Crew in its initial years.”
I can think of about 20 trillion reasons.
China is in the testing phase of a new generation of launch vehicles using RP/LOX/LH2 propellants, eliminating all toxics from the launch vehicles. The LM-6 light LV and the LM-7 medium LV have already been tested and both initial launches were nominal. The heavy lift LM-5 will be tested soon. A new crew module similar in configuration to the CST is under development. The new launch site at Wenchang has entered service. China is not in a race. Rather it is carrying out a methodical development program for manned and unmanned launchers that will meet its long term needs and be competitive in cost.
Keith had it right the first time: “China IS doing what NASA used to do”. And he could add, NASA no longer knows how to do it. NASA is trying to relearn but its apparently on the slooooowwww path…….
The system that launched in 1981 was a very sophisticated system with tremendous capability. We should have learned from it and improved upon it. But instead, just as with Apollo, Saturn, Gemni….first no improvements were made and then NASA threw it away. None of the systems now in development in the US or elsewhere will have that kind of capability.
Danl Woodard said that China “is carrying out a methodical development program”. He is very correct. The US started out that way, a half century ago, but has long since lost its way. NASA does not seem able to put together a vision, a strategy, or a plan. NASA just hopes one of these new systems that are in development will be ready in time to support the ISS, before it crashes into the ocean.
fCrary said “we don’t really care about continuity or a sustainable space program”.
Putting all of these together you now have a clear picture of where the US space program is and where it is going. Today we have no capability. We are developing some limited capabilities, but not sure what we will do with them once we have them. We have no idea of where we are going.
Spot on my friend
I agree for the most part, but this (develop/fly/scrap/start over) is not what NASA did in the 1960s. The Mercury, Gemini and Apollo (CM) were a clear progression of similar designs, each building on the lessons learned from the previous design.
Most amusing. Post a headline that can be interpreted any number of different ways…and folks chime in, interpreting it any number of different ways.