China Rocket Delivers China Astronauts to China Space Station

spacenews.com...

A crew of three astronauts including the first Chinese civilian astronaut has arrived at the Tiangong space station.

A Long March 2F rocket carrying the Shenzhou-16 spacecraft lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 9:31 p.m. Eastern May 29. Rendezvous and docking with a radial Tiangong docking port was completed at 4:29 a.m. May 30, China’s human spaceflight agency, CMSA, confirmed.

not crazy about the Chinese government but we must credit their space program

Bravo China!

an inspiration to the rest of us. best wishes for future endeavors.

I must confess I didn't realize they even had a space station.

(I wonder how much of their tech came from the USA..?)

a reply to: ElGoobero

(I wonder how much of their tech came from the USA..?)

All of it. Courtesy of former President Bill Clinton and friends.

A wonderful feat, but it is odd to be celebrating such a thing. Space stations are about 1/1000th of the way to the moon. If we pretty much mastered lunar missions over 50 years ago, then docking at a space station should be a cake walk by now. This just doesn't add up

Can't wait to see the continuous, uninterrupted footage from launch until the docking.

Oh wait, that footage is never shown? Must simply be an oversight...

a reply to: Jorge1986s


Nooo! Its filmed on a sound stage!

originally posted by: ElGoobero
spacenews.com...

A crew of three astronauts including the first Chinese civilian astronaut has arrived at the Tiangong space station.

A Long March 2F rocket carrying the Shenzhou-16 spacecraft lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 9:31 p.m. Eastern May 29. Rendezvous and docking with a radial Tiangong docking port was completed at 4:29 a.m. May 30, China’s human spaceflight agency, CMSA, confirmed.

not crazy about the Chinese government but we must credit their space program

Bravo China!

an inspiration to the rest of us. best wishes for future endeavors.

I must confess I didn't realize they even had a space station.

(I wonder how much of their tech came from the USA..?)

At this point, almost none.

It was Ronald Reagan who started the policy to export US-made communication satellites (mostly from Hughes and Loral) to China to launch on their Long March rockets. That was the era when the US was trying to engage with China and maybe entice it into the rules-based world order. The policy was continued under George H.W. Bush and Clinton.

By 1996, the Long March rockets were crashing spectacularly and taking ComSats with them. Hughes and Loral had an economic incentive to help China solve their rocket problems, so they did their own analysis and told China how to solve the problem. It worked. It also helped them build more reliable and more accurate ICBMs.

By 2000, the US prohibited further transfer of US-made spacecraft to China for launch on Chinese launchers under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. For the last 20+ years, the two space programs have been totally separate.

However, as a NASA Aerospace Engineer (retired) with a 30+ year career, I have toured the Chinese space manufacturing facilities and talked to their engineers, and the fact is that every space program on the planet plays by the same laws of physics. We all were educated on the same text books, all read the same journal articles, and all produce Aluminum, Titanium, and Carbon Fiber to the same specifications. So all the rockets and spacecraft that all the nations build will all eventually get to the same level of performance. The US space program started before the Chinese program, so we've always maintained a qualitative advantage.

But the Chinese are determined to catch up and they're doing it by mastering each step along the way, just as we did and just as Russia did. They are taking all the same development steps, they are just trying to take them faster.

a reply to: cooperton

Not that odd, when you consider they're about 50 years behind the USA.

Their economy is booming. They're taking over the world stage.

Their citizens are experiencing the best economic times they've seen in a century, just like the US was in the 60's.

They manufacture the goods, they export the labor...


When we were in their shoes, we landed on the moon.

Now we argue about personal pronouns and beer marketing campaigns while they're dominating the world economy.

I hope the CGI they used for the "space station" is convincing....?

What a #ing joke.

Now lets use the US stealth space vehicle to destabilize its orbit and burn up in the atmosphere.

a reply to: yuppa

The CCP might have the resources to blow up the ISS with laser pointers- probably not a good move

There's no outer space.

originally posted by: lordcomac
Their economy is booming. They're taking over the world stage.

The Chinese economy has stalled, and has never managed to displace the US economy. Rising youth unemployment and persistent poverty outside urban areas, coupled with colossal debt and reducing economic growth, does not make the Chinese economy "booming".

To the topic. China have gone for the nationalistic approach to space. I think the hard work in space is the scientific stuff. Money buys a space station, as the science and capability is a known quantity. It will be interesting to see what China does next. Bust as the OP says, all credit to them.

Meanwhile NASA failed an audit of its new space launch system. This is the rocket that was supposed to take us back to the Moon. It's 6 billion over budget and 6 years behind schedule.

oig.nasa.gov...

If our government had any integrity it would #can NASA, fire all the incompetent dumbasses working there, and reform a new space agency with new people.

There is no excuse for this. Heads should roll at NASA.

Defund NASA.

Well done China!

a reply to: ElGoobero

Isn't this like Brazilian rancheros riding Brazilian horses while eating Brazilian beef sliders...in Brazil?

originally posted by: cooperton
A wonderful feat, but it is odd to be celebrating such a thing. Space stations are about 1/1000th of the way to the moon. If we pretty much mastered lunar missions over 50 years ago, then docking at a space station should be a cake walk by now. This just doesn't add up

BC space is fake. IF there are "space stations" they are inside the dome and are supported by magnetic levitation

originally posted by: lordcomac
a reply to: cooperton

Not that odd, when you consider they're about 50 years behind the USA.

Their economy is booming. They're taking over the world stage.

Their citizens are experiencing the best economic times they've seen in a century, just like the US was in the 60's.

They manufacture the goods, they export the labor...


When we were in their shoes, we landed on the moon.

Now we argue about personal pronouns and beer marketing campaigns while they're dominating the world economy.

The US seems equally troubled with how to get to the moon though. Continually pushing back the Artemis missions and what not. I am admittedly biased towards our conception of space being wrong because I've been dialing up some theories that would require some recalibration of the proportions of planetary and solar distances. The public disclosure of our space progress for the past 50 years or so sounds a lot like a pathological liar. We will see with the Artemis missions though, I'd be OK with a confirmation of the old but I doubt that is the case given the necessity of dark matter (undetectable, made-up matter) to resolve the major discrepancies with the contemporary theories.

originally posted by: HUBE007

BC space is fake. IF there are "space stations" they are inside the dome and are supported by magnetic levitation

I do believe our current conception of space is vastly incorrect, but I do think we have space stations. Theyre only about 1/20th of the way to "outer space"... so it's still a far stretch from proving we can successfully exit our exosphere.

originally posted by: lordcomac
a reply to: yuppa

The CCP might have the resources to blow up the ISS with laser pointers- probably not a good move

IF they know what went on sure,hence stealth sat.

Well they are some extraordinarily brave astronauts! Don't they realize they are riding a rocket, to a space station, made in China? Have they not bought a bicycle from Walmart? 🤣🤣🤣