Latest stage in China's space station.

Noticed this morning, (1st November 2011) on the BBC home page, that China launched today the next stage of their proposed space station.

Looks like they are planning some interesting docking and undocking manoeuvres.

There is also a German based experiment aboard.

Their "Long March" is taking some big steps.

www.bbc.co.uk...

well done China, here is the video



what amazes me is the escape tower which is mentioned and can be seen @ 3:13 what a brilliant idea

the u.s. spent all their money bailing out banks and invading deserts now they can't even afford to go to space for the next 10 years and are going to have to hitch rides with russia.

or it's all b.s. and they are way behind solid booster rockets and antique space shuttles and are using top secret anti-gravity vehicles that people all over the world are mistaking for extraterrestrial u.f.o.'s.

but i'm leaning on flat broke.

Originally posted by randomname
the u.s. spent all their money bailing out banks and invading deserts now they can't even afford to go to space for the next 10 years and are going to have to hitch rides with russia.

or it's all b.s. and they are way behind solid booster rockets and antique space shuttles and are using top secret anti-gravity vehicles that people all over the world are mistaking for extraterrestrial u.f.o.'s.

but i'm leaning on flat broke.

I'm thinking advanced craft. Shuttle tech was 60's stuff, surely by now they (especially the military) have something we will see when China gets their station done or someone else gets to the moon. They're just waiting to steal the spotlight.

reply to post by dowot

That's good for several reasons:
1. It's nice to see China making technological progress, and
2. Now they can also be a target for the 35000 pieces of debris 1 cm and larger they created with their satellite weapon test:

China's Anti-Satellite Test: Worrisome Debris Cloud Circles Earth

The intentional destruction on Jan. 11 of China's Fengyun-1C weather satellite via an anti-satellite (ASAT) device launched by the Chinese has created a mess of fragments fluttering through space. ...

NASA estimates that the number of debris larger than 1 centimeter is greater than 35,000 bits of riff-raff.

"Any of these debris has the potential for seriously disrupting or terminating the mission of operational spacecraft in low Earth orbit," Johnson pointed out. "This satellite breakup represents the most prolific and serious fragmentation in the course of 50 years of space operations," he said.

I don't want to see China's or anyone else's craft get hit by that debris, but I hope that as it narrowly misses them when it zips by their space station, they will realize that satellite test was probably a really bad idea.

reply to post by Dr UAE


The big pole on the Apollo spacecrafts were the 'escape tower'. You did not know that? It housed a rocket and parachute that would detach from the rest of the craft with the command module and return it to the surface, a 1960's design.