China ready for next space leap

BBC News ^ | 28 September 2011 | Jonathan Amos

[MinorityRepublican]

China is taking a stepped approach to the development of its human spaceflight programme

China is about to launch its first space laboratory, Tiangong-1.

The 10.5m-long, cylindrical module will be unmanned for the time being, but the country's astronauts, or yuhangyuans, are expected to visit it next year.

Tiangong-1 will demonstrate the critical technologies needed by China to build a fully fledged space station - something it has promised to do at the end of the decade.

The space lab is set to ride to orbit atop a Long March 2F rocket.

State media say the lift-off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in Gansu Province is likely to occur between 21:16 and 21:31 local time (13:16-13:31 GMT).

The Long March will put Tiangong in a near-circular path around the Earth, just a few hundred km above the surface.

It will operate in an autonomous mode, monitored from the ground. Then, in a few weeks' time, China will launch another unmanned spacecraft, Shenzhou 8, and try to link the pair together.

This rendezvous and docking capability is a prerequisite if larger structures are ever to be assembled in orbit.

Commentators say Russian technology, or a close copy of it, will be used to bring the two craft into line.

[YankeeReb]

Oh Yeah!!! Well I bet our muslim outreach is better then China’s

[al baby]

They should have named it The Bent One

[Dallas59]

It would be racism to start our space program again...especially when Muslims feel so bad.

[Army Air Corps]

Ping.

[KevinDavis]

[posterchild]

“China cannot even put a potato in space.” - Mao Zedong

[GonzoGOP]

Part of me wants to throw a jab because the capabilities of this station are less than what we and the Russians were putting up in the early 1970s. And we were doing rendezvous and docking in 1965.

On the other hand at least they are flying. The fact that we did it better and did it first are of little comfort. The fact is they are doing it now, and we are not. Nor will NASA be flying for another decade, except as cargo on a Russian or Chinese ship. Space-X may be able to fly, but only if NASA is willing to pay for it. And NASA suffers from a serious case of the Not Build Here blues.

[FlingWingFlyer]

And in America, we’re teaching Muzzie fanatics how to like themselves.

[BikerJoe]

but the country's astronauts, or yuhangyuans, are expected to visit it next year

I think it's funny that the astronauts are called "You Hang On"

[Vaquero]

looks to me to be pronounced

‘Wang-Juans’....

sounds like a latino porn star, or a group of them....

[BenLurkin]

Indeed.

[PIF]

Oh Yeah!!! Well I bet our muslim outreach is better then China’s

—

In deed it is better. We dialogue with their hearts and minds; China reaches out to muslims for live testing of neutron bombs...