China has now done 6 crewed missions to space in the last 3 years. In that time, Russia has had 13 manned missions many of which NASA astronauts have hitched a ride on. NASA is still on the ground since discontinuing the shuttle program in 2011.
True, but is it not the case that NASA is focused beyond the level that's being achieved by the Chinese? I appreciate that the sls has its detractors (I'm from the UK so I don't think I have the same internal political perspective that a US commenter might), but aside from that the US government appears to have helped create a nascent private space industry that will yield real fruit in terms of both leo capacity and also beyond in the future?
My statements above were neutral but yes I do think that the US and the western world in general are falling behind. What happens if US and Russian relations break down? Privatization of the US space industry is interesting but has yet to prove itself. No private institution has achieved manned orbit.
> What happens if US and Russian relations break down?
Isn't it literally the case that if the US wanted to send people into space on their own hardware they could do it with months of lead time with the Falcon 9, Delta IV etc.?
Those rockets aren't "human rated", but are they (particularly the Delta IV) any less safe then the Soyuz or Chinese rockets?
I.e. this seems more of a "we have some rockets, but it's cheaper to launch with the Russians" rather than "we can't do it" problem to me.
We can launch things to space, yes. But we don't have any vehicles that have life support, abort, or re-entry capabilities. It would be a short, one-way trip.
So no, we really can't send anyone to space right now.
And the Soyuz is actually pretty safe, relatively speaking. Aside from two notable failures early on, Soyuz hasn't had a fatality in 27 years.
> We can launch things to space, yes. But we don't have any vehicles that have life support, abort, or re-entry capabilities.
Dragon has all three. The reason there are not people it right now is just that there is not enough experience with it to rule it safe. If the risk was ruled worth it, the very next CRS mission could take people up to the ISS.
Big problem for NASA: once they discontinued manned space flight, they now have a very hard time getting back into it. The Russians spacecraft is considered relatively safe because they are building upon a proven technology that has been "debugged" for decades now. NASA just has a prototype that hasn't proven anything yet, and I doubt it will be ready by 2023.
The decision to go for a lander with wings and wheels looked so progressive then, and looks so misguided from today's point of view. NASA could build upon decades of expertise with Apollo-like spacecrafts today in order to build their Orion. Having switched to a shuttle, now they have to begin from scratch.
If there were some extremely urgent problem, like if aliens showed up in orbit tomorrow and demanded we send an emissary, then no doubt it could be done pretty quickly.
The current commercial crew program is aiming for manned flight in August of next year. I'd give extremely good odds for that to slip, but 2018 is probably a pretty safe bet right now. And that's without a big sense of urgency driving things.
The Western world isn't falling behind. It's just not so push-over ahead.
What China is doing right now, the USSR did in the 1960s, and the US did in the 70s (it had a ten year detour to go to the moon first).
While NASA hasn't done anything innovative in manned space-flight since 1980 (sunk costs, politics, no _real_ need, etc), they've done crazy work with unmanned spacecraft.
Think landing a _car_ on Mars (and then driving it around), launching routine missions to outer planets (and beyond!), being the only agency to get a probe out of the solar system.
Honestly, if Congress ever feels it necessary to launch someone to the Moon, they'll get it done in less than a decade.
And 'driving it around' is not as simple as it might sound, due to the time taken for commands to travel 4 light-minutes (minimum, and almost always a lot more). Feedback similarly.
Not really, there are commercial agreements in place between both SpaceX and Boeing, and Nasa, as part of its Commercial Crew Programme. The current estimates are that they will not launch until 2018, three years behind the original schedule:
I also have customers who have been sold slots for their satellites on Falcon Heavy which is now 4 years behind schedule (the first demo flight was originally meant to be 2012, with the first commercial flight in 2013, as yet nothing has flown, with the current estimate being 2017). It's frustrating for these customers.
I point this out here just because HN can have too many credulous website designers saying [to the effect of] 'No but Elon will be on Mars in 10 years so we should just fund private companies' and the reality for everyone in the industry is somewhat different. The Indian Government is currently about the cheapest and most reliable commercial satellite launcher in the world with its PSLV vehicle:
Countering "there's no economic reason to put humans into orbit" with "but look at these commercial programs 100% paid by the government" isn't really a rebuke, you're just making the OPs point for them.
It's only commercial in the sense that say there's say commercial manufacturing of ballistic missile submarines. It's just an implementation detail of how the US (v.s. say China) does manufacturing for purely state-sponsored projects, not something indicating that there's an economic incentive to put people into orbit outside of government sponsored programs.
Whilst it's frustrating for the customers whose launches are delayed, I'm sure they're accepting the delay for rational economic reasons, otherwise they would switch to an alternative supplier.
Having people in space is kind of pointless right now. Yes, it's a low G environment, but ISS is in such a low orbit that people in my state can be further from me than an overhead ISS 'Astronauts'. It's even protected by earths magnetic field making it a poor test of long term space flight.
Absolutely wrong. Having a manned station is a boon for the research taking place. Without a station anyone wanting to do research like the packed bed or the docking and refueling experiments would require the investigating institution to design and launch a vastly more complicated automated satellite or to rely on short manned missions that would have more competition for space and time. Instead it's much easier to package an experiment and send it to the station which has a lot of equipment to support experiments and humans that can troubleshoot and modify experiments.
As for studying long term space flight the only thing it really doesn't provide a model for is radiation which we can model on the ground pretty well. You still get the other health impacts from microgravity that we're still trying to figure out how to effectively combat.
ISS cost ~200 billion, saying we can't do the same research for less is kind of a high hurdle when it's close enough for minimal lag, nobody tried, and people need a lot of ridiculously expensive consumables.
I won't take a strong position on the larger point of whether humans in space are worth it, but there are other uses for a space station than "being far away", "being low g", and "seeing how many astronauts get cancer".
Dude, we were already behind. The only significant US first in space was the lunar landing - the USSR thrashed the US with everything from Sputnik to venera to Gagarin to salyut.
The only difference is that you now have a window out of your propaganda bubble.
There's a reason that Chinese space progress is barely reported, if at all, in the west. It's embarrassing, and doesn't tie in with the deluded "west is best" worldview.
But we were not _really_ behind. We were about a year behind (if not less), and much was due to other American advantages: we didn't need huge rockets (which would launch humans into space) since American nuclear bombs were smaller.
The reason we don't hear much about China is because that don't do much:
Launch a man into space once a year? Land a rover on the Moon? That's 1960s news.
If it would be more serious, there would be a "Sputnik scare" like in the 60s, not silence
The big difference between the execution of the US and Soviet space races is that the Soviets produced the Soyuz - a very capable space craft and launch vehicle that still flies today. On top of that they pioneered space stations and long duration manned space missions.
The US on the other hand built an impractically large moonshot rocket that was too expensive to keep on producing. Then the US moved on the the Space Shuttle, which overpromised and underdelivered (e.g. did not serve the air force and get funding from there) and didn't provide a contingency into the future and had to be retired leaving the US with no manned space launch capability.
The US does actually have some other significant firsts in space, especially in the outer solar system:
- First probe to reach Jupiter (Pioneer 10)
- First probe to reach escape velocity needed to leave the solar system (Pioneer 10)
- Arguably, first probe to leave the solar system (Pioneer 10 or Voyager 1, depending on the definition of "leave the solar system")
- First probe to orbit Jupiter (Galileo)
- First probe to fly-by an asteroid (Galileo) -- passed by 951 Gaspra
- First probe to reach Saturn (Pioneer 11)
- First (and only) probe to visit Uranus (Voyager 2)
- First (and only) probe to visit Neptune (Voyager 2)
- First (and only) probe to visit Pluto (New Horizons)
- First probe to reach Mercury (Mariner 10)
- First probe to orbit Mercury (MESSENGER) -- also, to date, these are the only two probes to visit Mercury
- First probe to orbit two different celestial bodies (Dawn) -- it orbited the asteroids Vesta and Ceres. Also, the first time either body has been visited by a probe.
- First photograph of Earth from orbit (Explorer 6) -- not a particularly good image by modern standards, but a pretty significant first given the importance spy satellites have played in international relations since then (You can see the image here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:First_satellite_photo_-_E... )
Somewhat less significant by modern standards, but still interesting:
- First probe to send back data from Venus (Mariner 2) -- the USSR had a fly-by before this (Venera 1), but lost contact with the probe and so couldn't get any data from the fly-by, unfortunately. Mariner 2 didn't have a camera though.
- First probe to successfully return images from Mars (Mariner 4) -- the USSR had the first fly-by (Mars 1), a few years earlier but they lost contact with the probe before it actually reached Mars.
- First probe to orbit Mars (Mariner 9) -- also the first to orbit another planet. Only just barely beat the USSR Mars 2 probe by about two weeks though.
Only in movies. A lot of people (including poliicians deciding about treaties and budgets) do not believe there's really anything at stake, and instead think of space exploration as a very expensive nerd hobby with some possible military applications.
All space tech is necessarily dual-use military. I'm certain the concern is that space launch cooperation with PR China will result in unintentional transfer of militarily relevant technologies.
Also, China is responsible for the largest single space debris generating event in history, from the intentional destruction of Fengyun-1C in 2007. That kind of thing doesn't matter to the politicians so much, but it was kind of a dick move, and had all the appearances of gratuitous saber-rattling. Space is too important for nationalist dick-measuring contests in LEO when it is already perilously close to Kessler cascade.
Or you could also look at it like this: the Chinese have made it to the early-70s "Skylab" stage (minus the Apollo program that came before it), the Russians are content to stick with 1990s Soyuz/Mir/early ISS technology and their orbital shots. NASA has little to show of their manned space program since the shuttle retired in 2011, but still leads the world in robotic exploration of the solar system.
Russia and China can continue to push their space program with its costs simply because their societies are not geared around hand outs and pandering for the votes of those seeking hand outs.
Space is portrayed as having been there, done that. Worse, there are some trying to portray it as a rich man's place with the advent of space tourism and thus not a place government should be except to regulate it.
With regards to NASA, the shuttles, and such. Losing the shuttle was probably the best thing to happen to NASA long term. In the short term it wasn't and not because of the decision but because the management is so dysfunctional they don't know what they need. They have enough wants to fill a Sears Christmas catalog but none spark the imagination of the public and as such get little support.
They need a good spokesman, a long term goal, and some flashy steps that are achieved along the way to keep people interested and thereby keeping the funding alive. I would love to see a permanent moon settlement for more than just a few astronauts, more like a few dozen. Tie it in eventually with private trips to help keep it up and expanding...
If it wasn't for the national dick waving contest that we call space exploration, it wouldn't matter that NASA isn't from the nation running a vehicle project. But out of everything that NASA does what gets attention? The fact that it's not the nation sending rockets up. Why? Because it's not about exploration and expanding knowledge, it's about dick waving.
I laugh at all this talk about going to Mars to save the human race. We're just going to show up, if we get there at all, and fuck it up just as hard as we have on Earth. We're a species of idiotic assholes.
I think you are being too harsh. If all the humans had all the information available all the time and not dependent on their community then it would be just a matter of character.
Humans are humans - and at least currently it appears we learn and improve all the time.
Taikonaut is the word sometimes used for Chinese astronauts in English language journals and Taiwan and Hong Kong. It's mix of Mandarin and Greek (naut = sailor in Greek). Chinese call their astronauts hang tian yuan.Indian astronauts will be vyomanauts.
Astronaut is still valid name for crew member of a spacecraft in any nation.
After a quick google, I believe you are correct. The term doesn't seem to be very well known outside of space circles, though. Maybe that's why the BBC opted for the familiar.
Astronaut is the original English word. Cosmonaut is a transliteration from the Russian word for astronaut. So if we're speaking English, we should use astronaut regardless of the country they're from. Otherwise we're forced to invent silly new words that nobody understands like taikonaut and what will we call Indian astronauts or whoever's next?
Astronaut translated to Chinese is 太空人 which is spelled by the romanisation system in mainland China as tai-kong-ren or taikongren. Not the extra 'g'.
A quick search of matches in actual translated texts returns 'astronauts' as the term in the vast majority, and a few cases of 'spaceman' and 'man in space'. 人 'ren' in Chinese is genderless.
Taikonaut is however used by the Global Times and China Daily, tabloid and broadsheet papers published in the mainland. Am pretty sure the term wasn't termed in China, however. Otherwise the pinyin would be correct.
Chinese reportedly use APAS-89/APAS-95 system docking adapters (jointly developed by Americans and Russians) so they be able to dock with currently used Soyuz spacecraft in principle. They should also be legacy compatible with new International Docking System Standard (IDSS).
Emphasis on principle. Until they confirm that their intent is to be compatible and some testing is done to verify it, I don't think anyone wants to dock.
It sounds like there are mixed opinions on that - the Chinese docking system is reportedly a clone of the Russian APAS-89/APAS-95 docking system (which is also in use on the ISS).
So it's possible, but there doesn't seem to be a definitive answer at the moment.
I would have thought there would have been a technology transfer amongst the spacefaring nations, so that just in case they could dock with each other.
they are not "astronauts", but taïkonauts. The chinese term for going into space.
Astronauts are for US.
Cosmonauts for Russians.
and Spationauts for Europeans.
Actually, the Russian call their space people "Cosmonauts".
"Astronaut" has been chosen by NASA, while the USSR chose "Cosmonaut".
But you're right regarding the chinese. They are not called Taikonaut in their own country. But neither "astronaut".
link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronaut
Check the terminology section.
I just wanted to highligth that only NASA (or English speaker world) call their astronaut "astronaut".
In europe, we call them spationauts. And in russia, they call them "cosmonauts".
I do hear you, buddy.
I'm french, and I do say "Astronaut" when I speaking about space. I'm just stating that in newspaper (not always), they say "spationaut".
It's just how it's supposed to be said. But not everyone is following this. And it's ok.
I was just highlighting the fact that there is a different name for people going to space regarding the country they are from. That's all.
But yeah, the american word it has probably won in the popular culture and in the day-to-day language.
Sorry. I didn't want to sound like Mr. know it all.
