12 ms·

China launches first module of new space station

46 points by Clewza313 5y ago

simion314 5y ago
I am disappointed that as always politicians blocked the collaborations between scientists - it would have been nice to at least in space to have less nationalism and politics. Hopefully the 3rd world war prediction in Trek is not needed before we can get over this.
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  The exclusion of China from the ISS was really a terrible mistake both in a moral sense and also in a strategic sense. Russia has announced its withdrawal from the ISS, so now the world is really gearing up for an absurd and completely avoidable cold war 2.0 in outer space.
  - bildung 5y ago
    This comment is downvoted but nonetheless true: US congress essentially excluded China from cooperating with NASA in 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_exclusion_policy_of_NASA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_exclusion_policy_of_NASA
    - simion314 5y ago
      I think most people know, I made my comment referring at humanity in general, like looking back in history and all the wars and suffering and realizing that collaboration would have resulted in more riches then all those costly wars.
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        I wholeheartedly agree, but before humans set aside our childish “my rocket is bigger than yours” thing, humankind will need to stop being childish.
        simion314 5y ago
        After sciences , space could be the next thing. I am curious if we can find any downsides of the collaboration on the international space station, was some super secret leaked? From what I see without the Russian rockets the space station could not have been supplied anymore , so I only see the positives.
      - bildung 5y ago
        Absolutely, I was replying in agreement (and read throwaway4good's comment in the same way). My intent wasn't to pass blame, but rather highlight the man-made decision behind this, as that also means a more cooperative decision could be made in the future.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Cold war in space is an outgrowth of cold war on Earth, not an independent development. People do not want to share important know-how with other people who may plausibly use the same know-how against them. And having a new Space Race may actually be good for our capabilities. The stagnation in space technology after the USSR disintegrated looks like a bad case of winner complacency.
    - simion314 5y ago
      >People do not want to share important know-how with other people who may plausibly use the same know-how against them. Won't mathematics and sciences contradict this? If we stop antagonizing each other and create doom scenarios and propaganda we could avoid the "use against each other part". Also in a few years China will have a space station(and nobody else) and then you will want they share information with the science community . I am wondering is some older US citizen that reads this and also played Fallout, was US such a paranoid and propaganda filled country? do they see communist everywhere? I still hope that the number of paranoid and nationalistic people will go down. world wide (I am not accusing any specific country, so no need to defend )
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        Most Americans I know in the same age group as me grew up thinking Communism is a political model, not an economic one, and to conflate democracy with capitalism. And to think only the extremes can exist. We don’t need to look further than China to see clearly capitalism works a lot better without a democracy holding it back.
      - inglor_cz 5y ago
        Well, I am a Czech and we had a Communist regime here in practice, people being hanged for thoughtcrimes or forced to process uranium ore with their bare hands as a punishment. I am aware that in US discourse, anti-Communist paranoia serves as an example of stupid panic, but I must say that it wasn't entirely unfounded. Early 1950s were very bad behind the Iron Curtain. Very, very violent and unjust times. The regimes mostly tamed themselves once Stalin was dead, that is true. ---------- "If we stop antagonizing each other and create doom scenarios and propaganda we could avoid the "use against each other part"." People will never stop antagonizing one another, just visit Twitter and look at the hostile bubbles that emerge there. If anything, Twitter revealed just how much hate for the other is in hearts of men. Removing it is equivalent for a major redesign of human beings as they are. That said, antagonism does not have to lead to violence and war, most Twitter opponents do not bash their heads in reality either. But the fundamental game theory is against your wish. You need everybody on board for lasting peace. You need just one defector from the peace contract to create a need for military for everyone else. This is a classical hawk vs. dove game. https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/game-theory-evolutionary-stable-strategies-and-the-25953132/ https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/game-theor...
  - rich_sasha 5y ago
    Is cold war really a 20th century invention? Posturing and proxy wars were going on forever between the then-superpowers, they just didn't have nuclear ICBMs. Unless somehow weapons get less effective with time, or we reenter a unipolar world, I should imagine cold war of varying intensity is the Nash equilibrium for all time to come. Better get used to it.
- admissionsguy 5y ago
  As terrible and inefficient as it is, humans are primarily motivated by competing with each other at every level: international, national, local, interpersonal. United Earth would necessarily be a terrible, repressive thing going agains everything that our monkey brain stands for. That is, unless some more remote out-group appears, say United Colonies of Musk, or Lunar Robot Empire.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    As anyone who works with open source software can tell you, cooperation beats competition in the long run. Or, as the old saying goes, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”
    - admissionsguy 5y ago
      > cooperation beats competition It would. A civilisation of intelligent ants would be unstoppable. But there is (currently) no way to make monkey-people cooperate at scale.
    - hnbad 5y ago
      Cooperation is literally why we are humans. Individualism doesn't require the complex brains we have. Our brains are this complex because we evolved as a highly social species. We didn't hunt the megafauna as individual superwarriors, we hunted them as a group. If prehistoric megafauna was shown a zombie movie, it would recognize us as the zombies: there's too many of us and we never tire. They tried to sprint away but we jogged after them, hurling a dozen spears at them like death from a thousand paper cuts. Yes, we value excellence, but only because it brings us forward as a group. The goal of competing for being the best isn't to find out who's best but to encourage us all to be better.
      - admissionsguy 5y ago
        > Cooperation is literally why we are humans. Cooperation within the tribe. (Often violent) competition against the others. And the evolution of human intelligence was driven largely by the need to deceive, out-compete and achieve domination over others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_intelligenc...
f6v 5y ago
Is there a scientific utility in orbital space station? We’ve already had MIR and ISS. NASA seems to be focused on Moon and Mars. I don’t understand why Roscosmos is talking about launching new station in 2025. I mean, it’s useful for Chinese since they didn’t do that before, but for others? Maybe if it was used as a space hub for other missions...
- smhost 5y ago
  the 2025 station they're talking about is the sino-russian moon base[0], not an earth satellite. [0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-russia-moon-base-space/2021/03/10/aa629748-8186-11eb-be22-32d331d87530_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-russ...
  - f6v 5y ago
    AFAIK they're building an orbital station [1]. > The Deputy Prime Minister also noted that Russia will be able to cope with the construction on its own, but if anyone wants to take part in the project, they will not refuse. [1]: https://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/20/04/2021/607e83219a79470f2ef1084d https://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/20/04/2021/607e83219...
    - smhost 5y ago
      yeah, but the 2025 one is the moon base. i think the main reason russia wants to build the space station is for arctic surveillance. when global warming opens up arctic trade routes and resources (oil), there's going to be a lot of geopolitical shenanigans. idk if you remember when trump wanted to buy greenland and everyone laughed at him, it was related to this.
      - f6v 5y ago
        Can't you do that with simple satellites?
        5y ago
Clewza313 5y ago
Wikipedia has some more detail on what this will look like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_large_modular_space_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_large_modular_space_st...
ehnto 5y ago
I hope we get a booming space race. The innovation and excitement in engineering would be a really refreshing lens to view the world from, albeit a distorted lens no doubt.
Dah00n 5y ago
Very exciting new chapter! Soon-ish the only spacestation left says PRC on the side (and maybe RUS) and it is the only place with a space production capability and permanent scientific research in space. I really don't understand the nationalism that causes the US to ban scientists working with China (NASA that is).
mrlonglong 5y ago
Hopefully this will provide a swift kick to the pants to encourage peaceful competition to get out there in space.

46 points by Clewza313 5y ago

I am disappointed that as always politicians blocked the collaborations between scientists - it would have been nice to at least in space to have less nationalism and politics. Hopefully the 3rd world war prediction in Trek is not needed before we can get over this.

throwaway4good 5y ago
The exclusion of China from the ISS was really a terrible mistake both in a moral sense and also in a strategic sense. Russia has announced its withdrawal from the ISS, so now the world is really gearing up for an absurd and completely avoidable cold war 2.0 in outer space.
- bildung 5y ago
  This comment is downvoted but nonetheless true: US congress essentially excluded China from cooperating with NASA in 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_exclusion_policy_of_NASA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_exclusion_policy_of_NASA
  - simion314 5y ago
    I think most people know, I made my comment referring at humanity in general, like looking back in history and all the wars and suffering and realizing that collaboration would have resulted in more riches then all those costly wars.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      I wholeheartedly agree, but before humans set aside our childish “my rocket is bigger than yours” thing, humankind will need to stop being childish.
      - simion314 5y ago
        After sciences , space could be the next thing. I am curious if we can find any downsides of the collaboration on the international space station, was some super secret leaked? From what I see without the Russian rockets the space station could not have been supplied anymore , so I only see the positives.
    - bildung 5y ago
      Absolutely, I was replying in agreement (and read throwaway4good's comment in the same way). My intent wasn't to pass blame, but rather highlight the man-made decision behind this, as that also means a more cooperative decision could be made in the future.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Cold war in space is an outgrowth of cold war on Earth, not an independent development. People do not want to share important know-how with other people who may plausibly use the same know-how against them. And having a new Space Race may actually be good for our capabilities. The stagnation in space technology after the USSR disintegrated looks like a bad case of winner complacency.
  - simion314 5y ago
    >People do not want to share important know-how with other people who may plausibly use the same know-how against them. Won't mathematics and sciences contradict this? If we stop antagonizing each other and create doom scenarios and propaganda we could avoid the "use against each other part". Also in a few years China will have a space station(and nobody else) and then you will want they share information with the science community . I am wondering is some older US citizen that reads this and also played Fallout, was US such a paranoid and propaganda filled country? do they see communist everywhere? I still hope that the number of paranoid and nationalistic people will go down. world wide (I am not accusing any specific country, so no need to defend )
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      Most Americans I know in the same age group as me grew up thinking Communism is a political model, not an economic one, and to conflate democracy with capitalism. And to think only the extremes can exist. We don’t need to look further than China to see clearly capitalism works a lot better without a democracy holding it back.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      Well, I am a Czech and we had a Communist regime here in practice, people being hanged for thoughtcrimes or forced to process uranium ore with their bare hands as a punishment. I am aware that in US discourse, anti-Communist paranoia serves as an example of stupid panic, but I must say that it wasn't entirely unfounded. Early 1950s were very bad behind the Iron Curtain. Very, very violent and unjust times. The regimes mostly tamed themselves once Stalin was dead, that is true. ---------- "If we stop antagonizing each other and create doom scenarios and propaganda we could avoid the "use against each other part"." People will never stop antagonizing one another, just visit Twitter and look at the hostile bubbles that emerge there. If anything, Twitter revealed just how much hate for the other is in hearts of men. Removing it is equivalent for a major redesign of human beings as they are. That said, antagonism does not have to lead to violence and war, most Twitter opponents do not bash their heads in reality either. But the fundamental game theory is against your wish. You need everybody on board for lasting peace. You need just one defector from the peace contract to create a need for military for everyone else. This is a classical hawk vs. dove game. https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/game-theory-evolutionary-stable-strategies-and-the-25953132/ https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/game-theor...
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  Is cold war really a 20th century invention? Posturing and proxy wars were going on forever between the then-superpowers, they just didn't have nuclear ICBMs. Unless somehow weapons get less effective with time, or we reenter a unipolar world, I should imagine cold war of varying intensity is the Nash equilibrium for all time to come. Better get used to it.
admissionsguy 5y ago
As terrible and inefficient as it is, humans are primarily motivated by competing with each other at every level: international, national, local, interpersonal. United Earth would necessarily be a terrible, repressive thing going agains everything that our monkey brain stands for. That is, unless some more remote out-group appears, say United Colonies of Musk, or Lunar Robot Empire.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  As anyone who works with open source software can tell you, cooperation beats competition in the long run. Or, as the old saying goes, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”
  - admissionsguy 5y ago
    > cooperation beats competition It would. A civilisation of intelligent ants would be unstoppable. But there is (currently) no way to make monkey-people cooperate at scale.
  - hnbad 5y ago
    Cooperation is literally why we are humans. Individualism doesn't require the complex brains we have. Our brains are this complex because we evolved as a highly social species. We didn't hunt the megafauna as individual superwarriors, we hunted them as a group. If prehistoric megafauna was shown a zombie movie, it would recognize us as the zombies: there's too many of us and we never tire. They tried to sprint away but we jogged after them, hurling a dozen spears at them like death from a thousand paper cuts. Yes, we value excellence, but only because it brings us forward as a group. The goal of competing for being the best isn't to find out who's best but to encourage us all to be better.
    - admissionsguy 5y ago
      > Cooperation is literally why we are humans. Cooperation within the tribe. (Often violent) competition against the others. And the evolution of human intelligence was driven largely by the need to deceive, out-compete and achieve domination over others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_intelligenc...

f6v 5y ago

Is there a scientific utility in orbital space station? We’ve already had MIR and ISS. NASA seems to be focused on Moon and Mars. I don’t understand why Roscosmos is talking about launching new station in 2025. I mean, it’s useful for Chinese since they didn’t do that before, but for others? Maybe if it was used as a space hub for other missions...

smhost 5y ago
the 2025 station they're talking about is the sino-russian moon base[0], not an earth satellite. [0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-russia-moon-base-space/2021/03/10/aa629748-8186-11eb-be22-32d331d87530_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-russ...
- f6v 5y ago
  AFAIK they're building an orbital station [1]. > The Deputy Prime Minister also noted that Russia will be able to cope with the construction on its own, but if anyone wants to take part in the project, they will not refuse. [1]: https://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/20/04/2021/607e83219a79470f2ef1084d https://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/20/04/2021/607e83219...
  - smhost 5y ago
    yeah, but the 2025 one is the moon base. i think the main reason russia wants to build the space station is for arctic surveillance. when global warming opens up arctic trade routes and resources (oil), there's going to be a lot of geopolitical shenanigans. idk if you remember when trump wanted to buy greenland and everyone laughed at him, it was related to this.
    - f6v 5y ago
      Can't you do that with simple satellites?
      - 5y ago

Clewza313 5y ago

Wikipedia has some more detail on what this will look like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_large_modular_space_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_large_modular_space_st...

ehnto 5y ago

I hope we get a booming space race. The innovation and excitement in engineering would be a really refreshing lens to view the world from, albeit a distorted lens no doubt.

Dah00n 5y ago

Very exciting new chapter! Soon-ish the only spacestation left says PRC on the side (and maybe RUS) and it is the only place with a space production capability and permanent scientific research in space. I really don't understand the nationalism that causes the US to ban scientists working with China (NASA that is).

mrlonglong 5y ago

Hopefully this will provide a swift kick to the pants to encourage peaceful competition to get out there in space.