Chinese Space Station

Flyaway

Flyaway

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I'm normally not hysterical about this sort of thing, but I'm legitimately concerned about this one dropping debris on someplace densely populated. Hope data between then and now indicates otherwise.
 
Moose said:
I'm normally not hysterical about this sort of thing, but I'm legitimately concerned about this one dropping debris on someplace densely populated. Hope data between then and now indicates otherwise.
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It will be a non event. Compared to the couple nuclear reactors the Soviets dumped on the world, a spent booster casing is harmless.

EDIT TO ADD: and of course the US dumped skylab on Australia as well.

But the LM 5B booster falling to earth uncontrolled is in stark contrast to SpaceX recovering a Phalcon 1st stage, a Dragon capsule, and a Starship earlier in the week.
 
I suspect there is no easy way to deorbit a CZ5B. The engine might decide to go kaboom if you try to relight. Deorbit boosters and the necessary flight control to orient them cut >100kg in payload, add risk to the payload (what if the deorbit motor goes kaboom in flight?), and the program to develop them would come at a substantial cost. Blowing up the stage in orbit spreads the debris over a larger area with greater risk to those downrange, and runs the risk of creating space junk.

The least bad option is to deorbit in one piece at random, and pay the liability fees of they arise.

And there is no way the Chinese can add a fix within 18 months, and they have at least two more CZ5B launches lined up.

Western negative, decontextualized and sensationalized media coverage check and mate. Darned sharks.
 
chimeric oncogene said:
I suspect there is no easy way to deorbit a CZ5B. The engine might decide to go kaboom if you try to relight. Deorbit boosters and the necessary flight control to orient them cut >100kg in payload, add risk to the payload (what if the deorbit motor goes kaboom in flight?), and the program to develop them would come at a substantial cost.
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Yet everyone else swallows that cost because it's the responsible thing to do.
 
DWG said:
Yet everyone else swallows that cost because it's the responsible thing to do.
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Yes, but it's the expensive thing to do. It might be especially difficult and expensive for the Chinese, who have zero experience with boosters this size and have been flying Titan II tech tree storables for the last fifty years.

Their satellites might be shiny, but their rockets were basically right out the sixties. I wouldn't be surprised if they missed the problem entirely and couldn't figure out a fix within a year that wouldn't mess with the space station system integration. CZ5 is like 4 years behind schedule as is after a launch failure triggered a main engine redesign - and the program was twenty years long - doesn't sound like a happy program to me, even with the conservative design.

With SpaceX and the USSF breathing down their necks, there's no way in hell they'd tolerate a schedule slip for a range safety issue. They already had a bunch of programs backlogged from the CZ5 schedule slip.
 
Xuntian shares very similar technical characteristics to Hubble Space Telescope. Did China decide to make something more powerful than Hubble? It's great that they have such big plans, but I don't think they'll be able to outdo it.
 
This is a bit out of this thread but still, I`d like to mention the chinese Mars mission. Tianwen missions aim to explore Mars’s internal structure, geology, and of course search for the signs of life. Zhurong rover is a part of this mission that aims to study the topology, analyze soil, atmosphere, and survey minerals, rocks, and other elements it’ll find. Zhurong has several instruments, such as a climate station, ground-penetrating radar, magnetic field detector, and several cameras.
 

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