There's the normal ship's complement on International Space Station, there's another crew on its way to the ISS, and Chinese have two astronauts who just entered their own space station. (ABC: Chinese Astronauts Enter Space Station Following Docking)
That's quite a cadre of high flyers all in orbit at the same time. It seems the Chinese follow a strategy generally similar to America in the evolution of their space stations. They did some preliminary docking as with the Gemini / Agena program and then there was the Skylab as another intermediate step. Then the ISS came and likely the Chinese will emulate that as well since how many possible ways can there be to put airtight bubbles in space.
A pair of Chinese astronauts entered the country's orbiting space station for a month-long stay early Wednesday, as China's sixth and longest crewed mission gets underway in earnest.
The Shenzhou 11 spacecraft that blasted off Monday morning docked with the Tiangong 2 station using an automated maneuver worked out during missions to an earlier experimental station.
Having changed from his space suit into blue overalls, veteran mission commander Jing Haipeng opened the hatch and entered the station shortly after 6 a.m. Beijing time (2200 GMT), followed by astronaut Chen Dong, who is making his first journey into space, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
The Tiangong, or "Heavenly Palace," space stations are considered stepping stones to a mission to send a rover to Mars by the end of the decade. Communications with the disused Tiangong 1 station have been cut and it is expected to burn up on entering the atmosphere next year.
That's quite a cadre of high flyers all in orbit at the same time. It seems the Chinese follow a strategy generally similar to America in the evolution of their space stations. They did some preliminary docking as with the Gemini / Agena program and then there was the Skylab as another intermediate step. Then the ISS came and likely the Chinese will emulate that as well since how many possible ways can there be to put airtight bubbles in space.
A pair of Chinese astronauts entered the country's orbiting space station for a month-long stay early Wednesday, as China's sixth and longest crewed mission gets underway in earnest.
The Shenzhou 11 spacecraft that blasted off Monday morning docked with the Tiangong 2 station using an automated maneuver worked out during missions to an earlier experimental station.
Having changed from his space suit into blue overalls, veteran mission commander Jing Haipeng opened the hatch and entered the station shortly after 6 a.m. Beijing time (2200 GMT), followed by astronaut Chen Dong, who is making his first journey into space, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
- AP via ABC
We're proud for them for their success and wish them success in their mission. The article goes further to describe some mechanics of the mission but the main interest here is the evolution.
- AP via ABC
That shows the stepwise evolution they're following and this branches two ways. The competitive development of this type of space technology may yield a faster evolution for both development teams. It may also waste a whole lot of time on duplicated development and, here at the Rockhouse, we're thinking Door #2 is most likely.
The reason there are competing programs is US provincialism since they refused to allow China to join the league of spacefaring nations to assist in building the ISS. China's response was screw this. We will just build our own and you see they are well on their way.
The appalling wastefulness in this is due to wasting some of the best Chinese minds in years of development of things which already existed. That it was not necessary is proven by the number of articles I see in Science Daily which are co-authored with scientists in China. Scientists will cross any border if the science requires it and only political absurdity ever prevents that ... as we see with independent space stations.
Pursue the political aspect as you will but the concern here is the sheer wastefulness of all this mind power and technology without a whole lot of regard for common sense. The thinking here is the common sense is united projects are much less likely to wind up in any conflict.
The provincialism is also indicative of an intellectual arrogance which makes just about zero common sense either since the Chinese will take things from it or militarize it, they say, but they disregard altogether contribution since 'what could those dumb (insert derogatory term regarding Chinese) possibly bring.'
(Ed: that's inferring a whole lot of unwarranted racism into this!)
Perhaps but I do believe it's a fair question since where's the common sense.
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