53 ms·

As last module docks, China completes its space station

458 points by rippercushions 4y ago

TOMDM 4y ago
https://archive.ph/2bXGR https://archive.ph/2bXGR
wazoox 4y ago
For some pictures check https://english.news.cn/20221101/9c24720a1d7e4a71ac112a6957209125/c.html https://english.news.cn/20221101/9c24720a1d7e4a71ac112a69572...
jorgesborges 4y ago
Last week I stood outside my apartment and watched Tiangong fly across the sky[0]. What an incredible time to be alive. [0] https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/ https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/
- huhtenberg 4y ago
  The page sits at "Loading" and the console shows "Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: navigator.geolocation is undefined".
  - Yiin 4y ago
    Your browser needs to support sharing geolocation.
    - jason-phillips 4y ago
      No, it does not. An uncaught error where you don't catch and gracefully handle errors in your promises is not the users' fault. It's sloppy workmanship.
      - jdbernard 4y ago
        I'm sure they'd be happy to give you a refund. :)
        jason-phillips 4y ago
        The point is not that one makes available one's site for free. The point is that the quality of the work is sloppy, price of said service notwithstanding. There are many other ways to approximate a client's geolocation so as to prevent displaying an embarrassing error where one did not first check whether the object's property was truthy or not. Justifying terrible UX by saying, "it's free," is a terrible strategy, tbh. Free shit is still shit.
        thedragonline 4y ago
        Uh, then don't use it? Problem solved methinks.
        mbostleman 4y ago
        But, all moral posturing notwithstanding, is it not also true that if the OP just gets a browser or a browser version or a browser configuration that supports geolocation that they will be back in business?
        shadowgovt 4y ago
        It's not just that the key isn't populated; it's that it's undefined. FWIW, my browser (Chrome) works on the site even if I choose not to share geolocation; I assume because the API is populated even if it then refrains from sharing. Your point isn't quite wrong but it also isn't quite right; geolocation is supported by every browser listed on Mozilla's documentation (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/geolocation https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/g...) so if a browser isn't at least stubbing out that API these days, it's not w3c-compliant, and non-w3c-compliant browsers will sometimes just break on some pages. It is, of course, still incumbent on the developer to go that extra mile if they want to catch that last 1% of users, but users of exotic browsers get an exotic experience also.
    - huhtenberg 4y ago
      It's there, but disabled. They had to check for that.
- agambrahma 4y ago
  This is a fantastic website, thank you to whoever made it !!
  - gorkish 4y ago
    I concur! The street view is brilliant.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- peter303 4y ago
  Tiangoon flybys can reaches magnitude -2 now. Bright than most planets. Next bright evening flybys overUS in early December. The ISS, which has five times more modules, reaches magnitude -4 sometimes. Third brightest thing in sky.
  - yencabulator 4y ago
    I have watched the ISS go overhead in the middle of a very sunny cloudless Los Angeles day. It can be very visible, when you know the timing & direction.
  - modeless 4y ago
    For clarity, #1 is the Sun and #2 is the Moon. ISS is brighter than literally everything else in space, including all the other stars and planets.
    - JonathonW 4y ago
      ISS isn't always brighter than Venus, which can get almost to magnitude -5 when things line up right. The ISS will still generally be the first, second, or third brightest thing in the night sky on a good, near-overhead pass.
  - waterhouse 4y ago
    ... looks like "magnitude" numbers farther below zero are brighter? Who came up with that? > The scale used to indicate magnitude originates in the Hellenistic practice of dividing stars visible to the naked eye into six magnitudes. The brightest stars in the night sky were said to be of first magnitude (m = 1), whereas the faintest were of sixth magnitude (m = 6) [...] > In 1856, Norman Robert Pogson formalized the system by defining a first magnitude star as a star that is 100 times as bright as a sixth-magnitude star, thereby establishing the logarithmic scale still in use today. This implies that a star of magnitude m is about 2.512 times as bright as a star of magnitude m + 1. This figure, the fifth root of 100, became known as Pogson's Ratio. Hmmph. I'd prefer a system where higher numbers were brighter, and probably with a different logarithmic base. Oh well.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  It's a shame it's so far south! The ISS is in a far more inclined orbit. Tiangong isn't really much above the horizon for anywhere north of about 42°N.
- whydat_whodat 4y ago
  Very nice! If you don't mind, are you open to discussing your tech stack on that? I am curious as to: - What provides the 3D earth model - What calculates the satellite trajectory and plots its arc - What client side & server side frameworks you used for the web app itself
  - jorgesborges 4y ago
    Not my project but here’s a blog post from the author. https://james.darpinian.com/blog/how-see-a-satellite-tonight-works https://james.darpinian.com/blog/how-see-a-satellite-tonight...
mensetmanusman 4y ago
- RobRivera 4y ago
  the space race sent us to the moon. I'm grateful for the progress we have made and am eager to contribute my bit to the future
- fuoqi 4y ago
  Are you implying that Chinese nationalism prevents the collaboration? Look into why China is not part of ISS, despite its desire to join. Spoiler: the US has blocked it. It's a small miracle that Russia is part of ISS, not in small part because the US wanted to get cheap access to the Soviet Mir-based technology and expertise.
  - ARandomerDude 4y ago
    - hulitu 4y ago
      If you are talking about yankee nationalism, you are right.
  - rvba 4y ago
    Can you go to China and travel freely? Can you even own a business there as a foreigner? How many foreigners received a citizenship?
    - CyanBird 4y ago
      You are not entitled to rights or privileges in a country you are not part of. For example I wish the US and the UK would stop spying on me with their dragnet, but alas I am not a US citizen so I am not privileged to be protected by their own laws
- wellthisisgreat 4y ago
csdvrx 4y ago
Now let's hope it will inspire more countries, or even companies, to launch their own!
- peter303 4y ago
  Like parts of the ISS will be privatized after 2030. Could form parts of new space stations.
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  I'd prefer countries to cooperate more. There's no need to have dozens of national space stations or even launch systems. Some diversity is Ok, but it's just too damn expensive.
  - pharke 4y ago
    It'll remain expensive if only countries are launching things. If commercial space launches continue to pick up steam it will get cheaper.
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
      Nation states are the biggest customers in any case. And there is blurry line between what is a "commercial" offering.
      - pharke 4y ago
        If launches have nation state level prices then of course the only entities that could afford them would be nation states for the most part. Right now I'm pretty sure Starlink is the biggest customer of a private space launch company. Yes I know it's pretty much the same company but look at the other satellite internet providers that are also using SpaceX: Viasat, Echostar (Hughesnet), Iridium, Inmarsat, Intelsat, Globalstar. That's most of the providers that are out there. This goes hand in hand with commercial space launch, as launches become cheaper and more available the share paid for by private business will increase. This is a good thing! Don't you want a college or even a high school to be able to afford to put a small satellite in orbit to do simple experiments? The only way people are going to get interested in space exploration again is if they themselves can actually do things in space, in person or remotely.
Victerius 4y ago
I hope mankind can move beyond building space stations as a handful of modular small cylinders, and start building space stations the way they appear in science fiction: dozens of rooms, cubical exteriors, hallways, human height doors that open and close, stairs, elevators, hangars, a nuclear reactor instead of solar panels, and modules that rotate around an axis to create artificial gravity. And a more diversified color scheme than all white, which is sterile. I would like to see this: https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/futuristic-architecture-scifi-corridor-interior-in-space-station-with-picture-id1223695638 https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/futuristic-architecture... https://t3.ftcdn.net/jpg/04/77/75/80/360_F_477758033_1n2FBtz1ZCE7M1FM70opKJMjKGWYLc19.jpg https://t3.ftcdn.net/jpg/04/77/75/80/360_F_477758033_1n2FBtz...
- Diederich 4y ago
  Some more recent launch providers are focusing on greatly lowering $/kg to orbit, which is an absolutely necessary step for such visions.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Hopefully they solve more important problems first though.
  - vbezhenar 4y ago
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    Isn't this a logical fallacy? Rocket scientists and engineers are going to best suited to getting stuff into orbit, they aren't simply going to be able to go a solve a "more important problem". Other people are already working on those things and are likely specialists.
    - nonethewiser 4y ago
      It's hard to make items that achieve their function and can be transported into space. There are still improvements to be made with functionality and launch-ability. It's more important to focus on those - if you can make something fit a subjective standard of beauty at the same great. Except that's only 1 person's ideal so who cares.
diskzero 4y ago
Does anyone know to what extent China has advanced the state of the Soviet technology that they have (I assume) licensed? I have been to the Russian Star City training facility, Baikonur Cosmodrome and been in the full-size Mir training module and the Chinese station components look very similar. I am sure getting good information is difficult, but perhaps someone here has some more info.
- dr-detroit 4y ago
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  "Licensing" is a strong word when applied to China. I'm pretty sure they have advanced a lot and may have surpassed Russian technology in some areas. As far as I understand it, they have more diverse launch vehicles, for example. Hard to compare what constitutes "better", as long as it works. I don't think they are as cost-efficient as SpaceX or even Atlas and Ariane systems.
  - nordsieck 4y ago
    > I don't think they are as cost-efficient as SpaceX or even Atlas and Ariane systems. It seems unlikely anyone is as cost-efficient as Falcon 9 with reuse. It appears to me, as an outsider, that Atlas and Ariane are 4-5 times as expensive to operate. There is probably plenty of room for China to operate more efficiently than that. Especially with their launch volume, which is second only to SpaceX.
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
      China is not a high-tech nation. There is a thin patina of bling-bling but underneath they have big trouble between corruption and nobody else trusting them. China has lots of money (for now...) so they can throw a lot of resources at the problem. In China, quick public successes always take precedence over doing it right.
vl 4y ago
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shortstuffsushi 4y ago
Wait, in order to build this, they've launched half a dozen rockets up with no idea where the boosters would come back down and land? That seems up there amongst worst ideas I've heard for a while, "good luck everybody else." Edit: didn't realize this would be a controversial comment; per the article, the "norm" is to have a burn again after releasing their payload, to "control" / direct the return. The Chinese aren't doing that, which has apparently lead so far to a village-damaging crash in the Ivory Coast. If the US has done a similar thing, if this was common practice in the past, I'm not familiar with it as I'm entirely naive on the topic.
- wmf 4y ago
  - avmich 4y ago
    > Russia has set decades of precedent by not caring if their space trash lands on nomads. But still paying if something happens.
- jessriedel 4y ago
  Each launch costs hundreds of millions of dollars. The cost of bringing the rocket down in a targeted way can be substantial, in terms of R&D, fuel, and mission constraints. And the risk is absolutely minuscule: Exactly one person has ever been hit by orbital rocket debris after tens of thousands of launches over more than half a century, and it was a tiny piece (which is usually all that survives re-entry) that didn't cause injury: https://theconversation.com/space-debris-is-coming-down-more-frequently-what-are-the-chances-it-could-hit-someone-or-damage-property-188062 https://theconversation.com/space-debris-is-coming-down-more... And of course, the launching nation is responsible for compensating anyone injured or who has property damaged by space debris, and paying for clean-up.
- VictorPath 4y ago
  Can you tell me what country does not launch their rockets in this manner, other than in test flights?
Dig1t 4y ago
Very cool, so are there any particularly interesting science experiments that they plan on doing with it?
bayesian_horse 4y ago
50 years late to the space race..
- Ekaros 4y ago
  They might be late to join, but when the rest of competition have started racing towards start line... Does it matter.
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    It matters when people think China is a High-Tech powerhouse. Until 2017 they weren't even able to produce ball-pens domestically. They had to institute a five year long program to figure out how to make the small balls that go into the tip of it. Also China is unapolegitically militarizing it's space presence, and that should bother you a lot more than any US ambitions in that regard.
    - __m 4y ago
      The US literally has a space force and probably the most military satellites in orbit
      - bayesian_horse 4y ago
        Yes. And they are a basically a democratic country, usually honor their treaties and are allied with my country. Generally countries who are "friends" with the US fare a lot better than "friends" of Russia or China. I do trust the US way more than China. Also there is a big difference between recon satellites and hunter-killer satellites. Russia is threatening to destroy Starlink satellites over support for Ukraine. In my opinion that has voided any treaties or intentions of not weaponizing space in a more direct way. The US (and its allies) now need to figure out how to clean up orbits wrecked by Russia and how to disable Russian satellites without wrecking useful orbits.
        Ekaros 4y ago
rongopo 4y ago
A small step for China, a big step for humanity.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - garmanarnar 4y ago
    Whataboutism
    - ROTMetro 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - jodrellblank 4y ago
        > Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. - hn guidelines
- steve76 4y ago
  [dead]
- deleted 4y ago
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zokier 4y ago
The frustrating aspect for me about CNSA is how little PR they do, at least towards west although I don't think even inside China they are giving that much extra info on the missions and their progress. Just compare the media spectacle around e.g. Perseverance rover wrt Tianwen-1. Sure NASA has more material to work with but still we are getting frequent mission updates and almost daily new pics to ogle; meanwhile there are just couple of press photos from Zhurong and barely any news gets around.
- yrgulation 4y ago
  I’ve noticed that a lot of news about china’s progress is censored, probably so we dont see how fast they are progressing.
  - femto 4y ago
    > probably so we dont see how fast they are progressing. The problem is we don't know either way. They could be super advanced, or it could be that they are covering up shortcomings. It feeds into the bigger question of: why do this stuff? If it is to advance human knowledge the results should be shared. It the results aren't being shared it's an exercise in nationalism with limited significance. A similar situation arose in the history of computing. Colossus might have been the first programmable electronic computer, but it is a historical curiosity since it was kept secret until the 1970s. Humanity already had microprocessors by the time it was made public. Despite being a "first" it made little contribution to progress and is arguably of little import. Any secret research program runs the same risk.
    - yrgulation 4y ago
      > If it is to advance human knowledge the results should be shared. It’s easy for us to imagine that this day and age there are no competing civilisations and that every country will wholeheartedly share their progress. I suspect China, as Russia and perhaps India at some point, sees itself as such a competing civilisation. We assume that those times have ended but i think they haven't. In this context China does it for its own benefit. I somehow doubt they are not already either actively probing, or considering probing, mars, the moon and asteroids. Japan does it - we know this thanks to, albeit anaemic, coverage in the western media. If China has even a little bit of respect for its thousands of years of history it knows that the next meaningful territorial and resource expansion is space and it is only natural that it will try to outcompete us. Secret or not from us it makes no difference for china. Colossus may have been secret but the science that lead to its development wasn't and thats more important than the product itself. Just as the uk had fertile ground for developing it and later on for developing many computing advances, China is now creating fertile ground for space tech. We should keep an eye on it, and promote news about their progress, so the average joe will understand that unless we invest even more in space development then we are on track to becoming a secondary civilisation, ridden by debt and petty goals.
lizardactivist 4y ago
Very impressive! I didn't even know they were working on this.
- beeboop 4y ago
  Same. Funny how US media completely blocks out positive stuff around China
rossdavidh 4y ago
Have we actually had the announcement that Russia is going to switch from sending cosmonauts to the ISS to sending them to China's instead? Or is that just kind of assumed, without announcement?
- twelve40 4y ago
  assumed? Where did you even get this idea? China's station has never been discussed in this context, and the current plan is to continue flying to ISS as is until '27 inclusive, then launch a new one.
- dotnet00 4y ago
  The claims about Russia cooperating on a space station refer to some hypothetical second station as Tiangong is not at an inclination where Soyuz would be able to reach from where it normally launches. IIRC there was some speculation that they might work with ESA to launch crewed Soyuz from other locations, but that's obviously going to be completely off the table for a while now. So the only other option they'd have is launching from China, which doesn't really make much sense. Besides that, recently (mainly after the last guy who ran Roscosmos was 'promoted' to some position related to the Ukraine war) Russia has pulled back on its "we don't need the ISS" rhetoric. Now they claim to be interested in sticking with the station beyond 2024 until their own station is ready, similar to NASA's plan of trying to have the ISS hold out until the 2-3 private space stations in various stages of development/construction are operational. The issue of course being that it's highly unlikely that Russia will ever finish a replacement space station as their space industry has spent decades in decay struggling to get any non-military projects to make significant progress. Thus it's pretty likely that they won't have a station ready and will effectively lose their crewed spaceflight capability from not having any place to go to with it.
holoduke 4y ago
- burkaman 4y ago
  Does completing a space station not count as success? Also, here's a video of this launch, people look pretty happy to be honest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xcgT93s08o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xcgT93s08o
  - holoduke 4y ago
    Where do you see them happy? I saw some people holding a Chinese flag. You really believe that's genuine? Nah I don't buy that
    - burkaman 4y ago
      3:52, 5:00, 5:13. Compare to 6:15 of this recent SpaceX launch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qAbM5Noq48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qAbM5Noq48. How will SpaceX ever succeed with such miserable, unmotivated staff??!?
- SkyMarshal 4y ago
  You can’t really judge other cultures by their outward happiness. That’s really just a US thing. I think what it all comes down to is the probabilistic numbers game - how many clever people do you have hacking at various problems. Some % will succeed, and the larger the population the more results will emerge from it. That’s China’s fundamental advantage. They can still fuck it up though with poor political structure, as they did for several hundred years up until the 2000s, and may yet revert to under Xi Jinping. But they’ll have to really screw things up to lose the numbers game.
- thatfrenchguy 4y ago
  Most people from other countries think Americans are over the top on this.
- aylmao 4y ago
walrus01 4y ago
I am somewhat curious what the (MRE-like???) pre packaged/factory-sealed Chinese astronaut food looks like, in its containers and when prepared for eating. And what the variety of the menu is.
- rippercushions 4y ago
  https://www.space.com/china-astronauts-space-food-menu-shenzhou-12 https://www.space.com/china-astronauts-space-food-menu-shenz...
langsoul-com 4y ago
Only rated for 10 years operation. Given how expensive those space stations are, it seems very short.
- aero-glide2 4y ago
  This is a good thing. Space stations should be retired after 10 years. The ISS is so old that 85% of the time is spent on maintenance.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Aren’t there valuable things to learn from maintaining equipment in space over a long period of time?
    - anaganisk 4y ago
      Once yes, 10 times the same thing no?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
MichaelMoser123 4y ago
Now that could be the only space station, if the ISS gets decommissioned by 2031. https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-missions/international-space-station-retirement/ https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-missions/internatio...
- m0llusk 4y ago
  The current economic implosion in China also brings the future of this station into question. One of Xi's biggest dreams for the future was his vision of the Xiong'An new city which has recently been abandoned after being only partially constructed. Big projects get shelved in hard times.
  - meixg 4y ago
    how much time do you expected to build a entire new city?
Kukumber 4y ago
we'll wave from earth as they build their moon space station our earth shapers, builders of history, failed miserably congrats China, that's how you recognize a great civilization
- petesergeant 4y ago
  Americans plan to have humans on the moon again before China does. Artemis: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program vs Chang’e: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Pr...
  - Kukumber 4y ago
    Artemis, the one that failed to launch recently? EU about to give up Ariane to focus on SpaceX [1] Isn't that a confession of failure, lack of confidence? I suspect the US asked them to help them fund their missions https://phys.org/news/2022-10-european-space-agency-missions-spacex.html https://phys.org/news/2022-10-european-space-agency-missions...

https://archive.ph/2bXGR https://archive.ph/2bXGR

For some pictures check https://english.news.cn/20221101/9c24720a1d7e4a71ac112a6957209125/c.html https://english.news.cn/20221101/9c24720a1d7e4a71ac112a69572...

jorgesborges 4y ago

Last week I stood outside my apartment and watched Tiangong fly across the sky[0]. What an incredible time to be alive. [0] https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/ https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/

huhtenberg 4y ago
The page sits at "Loading" and the console shows "Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: navigator.geolocation is undefined".
- Yiin 4y ago
  Your browser needs to support sharing geolocation.
  - jason-phillips 4y ago
    No, it does not. An uncaught error where you don't catch and gracefully handle errors in your promises is not the users' fault. It's sloppy workmanship.
    - jdbernard 4y ago
      I'm sure they'd be happy to give you a refund. :)
      - jason-phillips 4y ago
        The point is not that one makes available one's site for free. The point is that the quality of the work is sloppy, price of said service notwithstanding. There are many other ways to approximate a client's geolocation so as to prevent displaying an embarrassing error where one did not first check whether the object's property was truthy or not. Justifying terrible UX by saying, "it's free," is a terrible strategy, tbh. Free shit is still shit.
        thedragonline 4y ago
        Uh, then don't use it? Problem solved methinks.
        mbostleman 4y ago
        But, all moral posturing notwithstanding, is it not also true that if the OP just gets a browser or a browser version or a browser configuration that supports geolocation that they will be back in business?
        shadowgovt 4y ago
        It's not just that the key isn't populated; it's that it's undefined. FWIW, my browser (Chrome) works on the site even if I choose not to share geolocation; I assume because the API is populated even if it then refrains from sharing. Your point isn't quite wrong but it also isn't quite right; geolocation is supported by every browser listed on Mozilla's documentation (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/geolocation https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/g...) so if a browser isn't at least stubbing out that API these days, it's not w3c-compliant, and non-w3c-compliant browsers will sometimes just break on some pages. It is, of course, still incumbent on the developer to go that extra mile if they want to catch that last 1% of users, but users of exotic browsers get an exotic experience also.
  - huhtenberg 4y ago
    It's there, but disabled. They had to check for that.
agambrahma 4y ago
This is a fantastic website, thank you to whoever made it !!
- gorkish 4y ago
  I concur! The street view is brilliant.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
peter303 4y ago
Tiangoon flybys can reaches magnitude -2 now. Bright than most planets. Next bright evening flybys overUS in early December. The ISS, which has five times more modules, reaches magnitude -4 sometimes. Third brightest thing in sky.
- yencabulator 4y ago
  I have watched the ISS go overhead in the middle of a very sunny cloudless Los Angeles day. It can be very visible, when you know the timing & direction.
- modeless 4y ago
  For clarity, #1 is the Sun and #2 is the Moon. ISS is brighter than literally everything else in space, including all the other stars and planets.
  - JonathonW 4y ago
    ISS isn't always brighter than Venus, which can get almost to magnitude -5 when things line up right. The ISS will still generally be the first, second, or third brightest thing in the night sky on a good, near-overhead pass.
- waterhouse 4y ago
  ... looks like "magnitude" numbers farther below zero are brighter? Who came up with that? > The scale used to indicate magnitude originates in the Hellenistic practice of dividing stars visible to the naked eye into six magnitudes. The brightest stars in the night sky were said to be of first magnitude (m = 1), whereas the faintest were of sixth magnitude (m = 6) [...] > In 1856, Norman Robert Pogson formalized the system by defining a first magnitude star as a star that is 100 times as bright as a sixth-magnitude star, thereby establishing the logarithmic scale still in use today. This implies that a star of magnitude m is about 2.512 times as bright as a star of magnitude m + 1. This figure, the fifth root of 100, became known as Pogson's Ratio. Hmmph. I'd prefer a system where higher numbers were brighter, and probably with a different logarithmic base. Oh well.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
It's a shame it's so far south! The ISS is in a far more inclined orbit. Tiangong isn't really much above the horizon for anywhere north of about 42°N.
whydat_whodat 4y ago
Very nice! If you don't mind, are you open to discussing your tech stack on that? I am curious as to: - What provides the 3D earth model - What calculates the satellite trajectory and plots its arc - What client side & server side frameworks you used for the web app itself
- jorgesborges 4y ago
  Not my project but here’s a blog post from the author. https://james.darpinian.com/blog/how-see-a-satellite-tonight-works https://james.darpinian.com/blog/how-see-a-satellite-tonight...

mensetmanusman 4y ago

RobRivera 4y ago
the space race sent us to the moon. I'm grateful for the progress we have made and am eager to contribute my bit to the future
fuoqi 4y ago
Are you implying that Chinese nationalism prevents the collaboration? Look into why China is not part of ISS, despite its desire to join. Spoiler: the US has blocked it. It's a small miracle that Russia is part of ISS, not in small part because the US wanted to get cheap access to the Soviet Mir-based technology and expertise.
- ARandomerDude 4y ago
  - hulitu 4y ago
    If you are talking about yankee nationalism, you are right.
- rvba 4y ago
  Can you go to China and travel freely? Can you even own a business there as a foreigner? How many foreigners received a citizenship?
  - CyanBird 4y ago
    You are not entitled to rights or privileges in a country you are not part of. For example I wish the US and the UK would stop spying on me with their dragnet, but alas I am not a US citizen so I am not privileged to be protected by their own laws
wellthisisgreat 4y ago

csdvrx 4y ago

Now let's hope it will inspire more countries, or even companies, to launch their own!

peter303 4y ago
Like parts of the ISS will be privatized after 2030. Could form parts of new space stations.
bayesian_horse 4y ago
I'd prefer countries to cooperate more. There's no need to have dozens of national space stations or even launch systems. Some diversity is Ok, but it's just too damn expensive.
- pharke 4y ago
  It'll remain expensive if only countries are launching things. If commercial space launches continue to pick up steam it will get cheaper.
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    Nation states are the biggest customers in any case. And there is blurry line between what is a "commercial" offering.
    - pharke 4y ago
      If launches have nation state level prices then of course the only entities that could afford them would be nation states for the most part. Right now I'm pretty sure Starlink is the biggest customer of a private space launch company. Yes I know it's pretty much the same company but look at the other satellite internet providers that are also using SpaceX: Viasat, Echostar (Hughesnet), Iridium, Inmarsat, Intelsat, Globalstar. That's most of the providers that are out there. This goes hand in hand with commercial space launch, as launches become cheaper and more available the share paid for by private business will increase. This is a good thing! Don't you want a college or even a high school to be able to afford to put a small satellite in orbit to do simple experiments? The only way people are going to get interested in space exploration again is if they themselves can actually do things in space, in person or remotely.

Victerius 4y ago

I hope mankind can move beyond building space stations as a handful of modular small cylinders, and start building space stations the way they appear in science fiction: dozens of rooms, cubical exteriors, hallways, human height doors that open and close, stairs, elevators, hangars, a nuclear reactor instead of solar panels, and modules that rotate around an axis to create artificial gravity. And a more diversified color scheme than all white, which is sterile. I would like to see this: https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/futuristic-architecture-scifi-corridor-interior-in-space-station-with-picture-id1223695638 https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/futuristic-architecture... https://t3.ftcdn.net/jpg/04/77/75/80/360_F_477758033_1n2FBtz1ZCE7M1FM70opKJMjKGWYLc19.jpg https://t3.ftcdn.net/jpg/04/77/75/80/360_F_477758033_1n2FBtz...

Diederich 4y ago
Some more recent launch providers are focusing on greatly lowering $/kg to orbit, which is an absolutely necessary step for such visions.
nonethewiser 4y ago
Hopefully they solve more important problems first though.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
- ch4s3 4y ago
  Isn't this a logical fallacy? Rocket scientists and engineers are going to best suited to getting stuff into orbit, they aren't simply going to be able to go a solve a "more important problem". Other people are already working on those things and are likely specialists.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    It's hard to make items that achieve their function and can be transported into space. There are still improvements to be made with functionality and launch-ability. It's more important to focus on those - if you can make something fit a subjective standard of beauty at the same great. Except that's only 1 person's ideal so who cares.

diskzero 4y ago

Does anyone know to what extent China has advanced the state of the Soviet technology that they have (I assume) licensed? I have been to the Russian Star City training facility, Baikonur Cosmodrome and been in the full-size Mir training module and the Chinese station components look very similar. I am sure getting good information is difficult, but perhaps someone here has some more info.

dr-detroit 4y ago
bayesian_horse 4y ago
"Licensing" is a strong word when applied to China. I'm pretty sure they have advanced a lot and may have surpassed Russian technology in some areas. As far as I understand it, they have more diverse launch vehicles, for example. Hard to compare what constitutes "better", as long as it works. I don't think they are as cost-efficient as SpaceX or even Atlas and Ariane systems.
- nordsieck 4y ago
  > I don't think they are as cost-efficient as SpaceX or even Atlas and Ariane systems. It seems unlikely anyone is as cost-efficient as Falcon 9 with reuse. It appears to me, as an outsider, that Atlas and Ariane are 4-5 times as expensive to operate. There is probably plenty of room for China to operate more efficiently than that. Especially with their launch volume, which is second only to SpaceX.
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    China is not a high-tech nation. There is a thin patina of bling-bling but underneath they have big trouble between corruption and nobody else trusting them. China has lots of money (for now...) so they can throw a lot of resources at the problem. In China, quick public successes always take precedence over doing it right.

vl 4y ago

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shortstuffsushi 4y ago

Wait, in order to build this, they've launched half a dozen rockets up with no idea where the boosters would come back down and land? That seems up there amongst worst ideas I've heard for a while, "good luck everybody else." Edit: didn't realize this would be a controversial comment; per the article, the "norm" is to have a burn again after releasing their payload, to "control" / direct the return. The Chinese aren't doing that, which has apparently lead so far to a village-damaging crash in the Ivory Coast. If the US has done a similar thing, if this was common practice in the past, I'm not familiar with it as I'm entirely naive on the topic.

wmf 4y ago
- avmich 4y ago
  > Russia has set decades of precedent by not caring if their space trash lands on nomads. But still paying if something happens.
jessriedel 4y ago
Each launch costs hundreds of millions of dollars. The cost of bringing the rocket down in a targeted way can be substantial, in terms of R&D, fuel, and mission constraints. And the risk is absolutely minuscule: Exactly one person has ever been hit by orbital rocket debris after tens of thousands of launches over more than half a century, and it was a tiny piece (which is usually all that survives re-entry) that didn't cause injury: https://theconversation.com/space-debris-is-coming-down-more-frequently-what-are-the-chances-it-could-hit-someone-or-damage-property-188062 https://theconversation.com/space-debris-is-coming-down-more... And of course, the launching nation is responsible for compensating anyone injured or who has property damaged by space debris, and paying for clean-up.
VictorPath 4y ago
Can you tell me what country does not launch their rockets in this manner, other than in test flights?

Dig1t 4y ago

Very cool, so are there any particularly interesting science experiments that they plan on doing with it?

bayesian_horse 4y ago

50 years late to the space race..

Ekaros 4y ago
They might be late to join, but when the rest of competition have started racing towards start line... Does it matter.
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  It matters when people think China is a High-Tech powerhouse. Until 2017 they weren't even able to produce ball-pens domestically. They had to institute a five year long program to figure out how to make the small balls that go into the tip of it. Also China is unapolegitically militarizing it's space presence, and that should bother you a lot more than any US ambitions in that regard.
  - __m 4y ago
    The US literally has a space force and probably the most military satellites in orbit
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
      Yes. And they are a basically a democratic country, usually honor their treaties and are allied with my country. Generally countries who are "friends" with the US fare a lot better than "friends" of Russia or China. I do trust the US way more than China. Also there is a big difference between recon satellites and hunter-killer satellites. Russia is threatening to destroy Starlink satellites over support for Ukraine. In my opinion that has voided any treaties or intentions of not weaponizing space in a more direct way. The US (and its allies) now need to figure out how to clean up orbits wrecked by Russia and how to disable Russian satellites without wrecking useful orbits.
      - Ekaros 4y ago

rongopo 4y ago

A small step for China, a big step for humanity.

ROTMetro 4y ago
[flagged]
- garmanarnar 4y ago
  Whataboutism
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - jodrellblank 4y ago
      > Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. - hn guidelines
steve76 4y ago
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zokier 4y ago

The frustrating aspect for me about CNSA is how little PR they do, at least towards west although I don't think even inside China they are giving that much extra info on the missions and their progress. Just compare the media spectacle around e.g. Perseverance rover wrt Tianwen-1. Sure NASA has more material to work with but still we are getting frequent mission updates and almost daily new pics to ogle; meanwhile there are just couple of press photos from Zhurong and barely any news gets around.

yrgulation 4y ago
I’ve noticed that a lot of news about china’s progress is censored, probably so we dont see how fast they are progressing.
- femto 4y ago
  > probably so we dont see how fast they are progressing. The problem is we don't know either way. They could be super advanced, or it could be that they are covering up shortcomings. It feeds into the bigger question of: why do this stuff? If it is to advance human knowledge the results should be shared. It the results aren't being shared it's an exercise in nationalism with limited significance. A similar situation arose in the history of computing. Colossus might have been the first programmable electronic computer, but it is a historical curiosity since it was kept secret until the 1970s. Humanity already had microprocessors by the time it was made public. Despite being a "first" it made little contribution to progress and is arguably of little import. Any secret research program runs the same risk.
  - yrgulation 4y ago
    > If it is to advance human knowledge the results should be shared. It’s easy for us to imagine that this day and age there are no competing civilisations and that every country will wholeheartedly share their progress. I suspect China, as Russia and perhaps India at some point, sees itself as such a competing civilisation. We assume that those times have ended but i think they haven't. In this context China does it for its own benefit. I somehow doubt they are not already either actively probing, or considering probing, mars, the moon and asteroids. Japan does it - we know this thanks to, albeit anaemic, coverage in the western media. If China has even a little bit of respect for its thousands of years of history it knows that the next meaningful territorial and resource expansion is space and it is only natural that it will try to outcompete us. Secret or not from us it makes no difference for china. Colossus may have been secret but the science that lead to its development wasn't and thats more important than the product itself. Just as the uk had fertile ground for developing it and later on for developing many computing advances, China is now creating fertile ground for space tech. We should keep an eye on it, and promote news about their progress, so the average joe will understand that unless we invest even more in space development then we are on track to becoming a secondary civilisation, ridden by debt and petty goals.

lizardactivist 4y ago

Very impressive! I didn't even know they were working on this.

beeboop 4y ago
Same. Funny how US media completely blocks out positive stuff around China

rossdavidh 4y ago

Have we actually had the announcement that Russia is going to switch from sending cosmonauts to the ISS to sending them to China's instead? Or is that just kind of assumed, without announcement?

twelve40 4y ago
assumed? Where did you even get this idea? China's station has never been discussed in this context, and the current plan is to continue flying to ISS as is until '27 inclusive, then launch a new one.
dotnet00 4y ago
The claims about Russia cooperating on a space station refer to some hypothetical second station as Tiangong is not at an inclination where Soyuz would be able to reach from where it normally launches. IIRC there was some speculation that they might work with ESA to launch crewed Soyuz from other locations, but that's obviously going to be completely off the table for a while now. So the only other option they'd have is launching from China, which doesn't really make much sense. Besides that, recently (mainly after the last guy who ran Roscosmos was 'promoted' to some position related to the Ukraine war) Russia has pulled back on its "we don't need the ISS" rhetoric. Now they claim to be interested in sticking with the station beyond 2024 until their own station is ready, similar to NASA's plan of trying to have the ISS hold out until the 2-3 private space stations in various stages of development/construction are operational. The issue of course being that it's highly unlikely that Russia will ever finish a replacement space station as their space industry has spent decades in decay struggling to get any non-military projects to make significant progress. Thus it's pretty likely that they won't have a station ready and will effectively lose their crewed spaceflight capability from not having any place to go to with it.

holoduke 4y ago

burkaman 4y ago
Does completing a space station not count as success? Also, here's a video of this launch, people look pretty happy to be honest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xcgT93s08o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xcgT93s08o
- holoduke 4y ago
  Where do you see them happy? I saw some people holding a Chinese flag. You really believe that's genuine? Nah I don't buy that
  - burkaman 4y ago
    3:52, 5:00, 5:13. Compare to 6:15 of this recent SpaceX launch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qAbM5Noq48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qAbM5Noq48. How will SpaceX ever succeed with such miserable, unmotivated staff??!?
SkyMarshal 4y ago
You can’t really judge other cultures by their outward happiness. That’s really just a US thing. I think what it all comes down to is the probabilistic numbers game - how many clever people do you have hacking at various problems. Some % will succeed, and the larger the population the more results will emerge from it. That’s China’s fundamental advantage. They can still fuck it up though with poor political structure, as they did for several hundred years up until the 2000s, and may yet revert to under Xi Jinping. But they’ll have to really screw things up to lose the numbers game.
thatfrenchguy 4y ago
Most people from other countries think Americans are over the top on this.
aylmao 4y ago

walrus01 4y ago

I am somewhat curious what the (MRE-like???) pre packaged/factory-sealed Chinese astronaut food looks like, in its containers and when prepared for eating. And what the variety of the menu is.

rippercushions 4y ago
https://www.space.com/china-astronauts-space-food-menu-shenzhou-12 https://www.space.com/china-astronauts-space-food-menu-shenz...

langsoul-com 4y ago

Only rated for 10 years operation. Given how expensive those space stations are, it seems very short.

aero-glide2 4y ago
This is a good thing. Space stations should be retired after 10 years. The ISS is so old that 85% of the time is spent on maintenance.
- kube-system 4y ago
  Aren’t there valuable things to learn from maintaining equipment in space over a long period of time?
  - anaganisk 4y ago
    Once yes, 10 times the same thing no?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

MichaelMoser123 4y ago

Now that could be the only space station, if the ISS gets decommissioned by 2031. https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-missions/international-space-station-retirement/ https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-missions/internatio...

m0llusk 4y ago
The current economic implosion in China also brings the future of this station into question. One of Xi's biggest dreams for the future was his vision of the Xiong'An new city which has recently been abandoned after being only partially constructed. Big projects get shelved in hard times.
- meixg 4y ago
  how much time do you expected to build a entire new city?

Kukumber 4y ago

we'll wave from earth as they build their moon space station our earth shapers, builders of history, failed miserably congrats China, that's how you recognize a great civilization

petesergeant 4y ago
Americans plan to have humans on the moon again before China does. Artemis: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program vs Chang’e: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Pr...
- Kukumber 4y ago
  Artemis, the one that failed to launch recently? EU about to give up Ariane to focus on SpaceX [1] Isn't that a confession of failure, lack of confidence? I suspect the US asked them to help them fund their missions https://phys.org/news/2022-10-european-space-agency-missions-spacex.html https://phys.org/news/2022-10-european-space-agency-missions...