Monday, August 15, 2011

China To Launch 1st Space Station

The Chinese space agency appears to be poised to become only the third nation to launch a space station into low Earth orbit, and liftoff could come by the end of the month.

That's the word going around in a small community of analysts who track the progress of the Chinese space program.

Our colleague Dan Vergano of USA TODAY provides us with an interesting update HERE

11 comments:

fmpbob said...

Maybe we can afford to send Obama up to it with a one way ticket.
This is unbelievable that China is now ahead of our country in space related issues.

Unknown said...

NO! READ the article!

This is smaller than Skylab and is akin to what we did 50 years ago with Gemini.

steele-environmental said...

In the wake of the final shuttle mission, is this what the future holds for "The Flame Trench"?

Poorly written stories from "USA Today", for goodness' sake?

Perhaps the photo on the mast of the "Flame Trench" website should be changed to something else. I don't know what.

MIMouth said...

With what our President and Congress have decided, you can count on watching China become the world's dominant spacefaring nation very soon. Our own Senator Bill Nelson is one of those who deserves much of the blame and we need to get him out of office ASAP.

zerricane said...

Boy, did the media do a number on some of you. Are you following SpaceX? They have an aggressive launch schedule of missions carrying astronauts. They have their first cargo craft docking with the space station at the end of the year. Then there is Dream Chaser, a reusable craft and Boeing is building a capsule. Manned space flights are not ending. Private enterprise is doing the job - NASA never built rockets or spacecraft anyway - private companies did. The middleman of mismanagement is simply being cut out of the equation.

SpaceHorizons.com said...

Excactly. All the negativists here seem to be poorly informed. Sure it is sad to see a good operational system like the Shuttle being retired before there's a replacement vehicle ready. But there are many serious projects in the works to get back a US manned launch capability.
Take a look here http://www.spacehorizons.com/id9.html to get an impression of future (and operational) spacecraft.

Dr. Dan Woodard said...

Strange that it took Obama to recognize that private enterprise could move faster and more efficiently than a massive government program?

Gaetano Marano said...

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exactly TWO YEARS ago I've explained WHY China will WIN the new Moon-race:
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http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts/049chinamoonrace.html
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Dr. Dan Woodard said...

What purpose would be served by another moon race?

Graham From England said...

Personally i think you need to get a grip if you think china could leapfrog the U.S.A just like that in a very short space of time.!!You have 50 YEARS start. Zerricane makes some very valid points.

The chinese are certainly begining to get a start in space,and the U.S needs to keep forging ahead,it's a question of how to proceed.I didn't like NASA bringing in privateers at first.But now i think it's the best way to get your astronauts to and from the ISS in the long run.

That way NASA has a chance to concentrate on making a long term plan, to get out of LEO and back out to DEEP space again. That should be a very large part of it's goal.

John said...

I do wonder what all the manned capsules currently being designed ill be used for in three or four years time. The ISS needs four manned launches a year, and Russia won't want to be elbowed out completely. So unless crews spend less than six months aboard, that means only two American flights a year.
Bigelow will need some of them, but I still can't see four or five manned vehicles being needed. It would be nice if they were though. Whatever, the next four years look interesting.
And SpaceX with the Falcon Heavy and Falcon XX looks the best option for manned flights beyond Earth orbit.