The first time that Soviet and American spacemen were in space at the same time was Skylab SL-4 (space station) and the Soviet Soyuz 13, which never docked with a space station. This was the final flight to Skylab, and that crew left before the follow-on Soyuz 14 docked with Salyut 3, so at no point during the US-Soviet space race were there two separately crewed space stations in orbit.
But just as a pedantic note, I really object to calling this China's first space station. The Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2 both were just as much a space station as Skylab or a Salyut[1]. The current Tiangong is indeed the first complex, ISS like space-station, of multiple components launched separately, but that's not the same thing as a space station. So I would say that the three previous Chinese flights to Tiangong-1 and -2 (Shenzhou-9, Shenzhou-10, and Shenzhou-11) all should count as the first times that there were two separately crewed space stations in orbit. Obviously, the other station in all three cases was the International Space Station program, which has had people in space continuously since November 1st, 2000 (it is my hope and dream that October 31st of the year 2000 becomes a very important day in human history- that last day that all of humanity was together on the same planet).
[1]: Technically two separate programs, the military OPS and the Civilian DOS programs, but both were the same as far as assembly goes: launched in one piece from a heavy lift rocket.
The pressurised volume of Tiangong-1 and 2 is said to be 15 cubic metres. Contrast to the space shuttle at 74 cubic metres, and Skylab at 350 cubic metres. They're a sixth the size of any space station to have flown previously.
Both were also only occupied for about 20 days, not far off the longest space shuttle missions.
I think it makes sense to look at them more as orbital testbeds than space stations as such.
What I find interesting is that there are no photos of Tiangong-1 or Tiangong-2.
There are plenty of renders, but it seems the secretive Chinese Government have not released any photos of either of their stations so far, at least none that I can find in a reasonable time.
>> Apollo–Soyuz was the first crewed international space mission, carried out jointly by the United States and the Soviet Union in July 1975. Millions of people around the world watched on television as a United States Apollo spacecraft docked with a Soviet Soyuz capsule.
Mir and ISS were up at the same time, but not manned at the same time. The last mission to Mir, Soyuz TM-30, came home on June 16, 2000, and Expedition 1 to the ISS launched on November 1st, 2000.
The first component of the ISS, the Zarya, was launched in November 1998, and the Mir deorbited March 23, 2001, so for that time there were two stations in space, but never manned at the same time.
> The word “Lyappa” does not exist in Russian. It is probably a corruption of Russian: лапа, romanized: lapa, lit. 'paw'
does not seem to be completely accurate to me, since 'ляпа' is a word in Russian that is pronounced more or less like "lyappa"; The only reason I'm hesitant is that ляпа means blunder or mistake, which would be a rather ominous name to give you a component of your pride-of-the-nation space station. Almost seems like the 'paw' nickname somehow got out to western media, and someone decided to play a little linguistic joke.
This mission marks the completion of the Chinese space station Tiangong and the start of its permanent habitation, since all three modules are now in place and it will be the first time they do an in-orbit crew exchange. Politics aside, it's quite a remarkable achievement, as to date every single mission they've launched, crewed or uncrewed, has been successful. (Yes, really. China livestreams all their launches, and it's not like you can hide rockets going boom in these days of satellite imagery.)
China has yet to announce their space station plans for 2023 and beyond, but the Xuntian space telescope that can dock and undock autonomously is under development, and they also plan to bring in astronauts from other countries.
> the Xuntian space telescope that can dock and undock autonomously is under development
Was under the impression it was on track to be launched mid next year? Will be basically Hubble tier, but with 400x field of vision and easily maintained/upgraded. A huge boon for astronomers worldwide.
Qingming Deng who will be on board the SZ-15 mission has been on training for the past >26 years for this. best wishes for him as he deserves a safe and pleasant 6 months stay in space.
Some regular spaceship launch should never ever be used to shadow or censor the hardship currently being experienced by hundreds of millions.
Yes, it is a fun moment if you are into space tech or tech in general. Most people here on HN are the same, they love such stuff. WE love it because WE believe it can make life BETTER - that is not the case in China at the moment. Hundreds of millions are being locked up in China. We are talking about real lives, not some random figures on paper. Talking about paper, do you know the fact that you can now be arrested on the street by simply holding a piece of white paper?
Sorry, but I am not going to celebrate the launch or the completion of the Chinese space station, hundreds of millions Chinese are suffering on the ground.
I think OP may referring to "flooding", a tried and true technique used by Chinese state media during politically sensitive times. To flood is to "prioritize the consumption of government-produced news over news produced by other groups or by citizens themselves."
Fair enough. Not sure I'm ready to call all attempts to manipulate public attention "censorship" (are Friday news dumps censorship?), but I suppose it's just semantics.
Russia is abandoning the ISS, China will replace it, we should be thankful, we can continue research and dream about space exploration again
We should also be thankful for all the scientific breakthroughs that will allow humankind to step on the moon for a 2nd time
Mixing up your political agenda with science reminds me of how in the Middle Age, the Church was burning people alive for claiming that Earth was not flat and it rotates around the sun
Can we really not have a thread on HN about the accomplishments of a country, in this case China, without bringing whatever protests are currently going on? US/Europe has accomplishments related to space all the time but I don't see people mentioning anti-government protests that happen all the time in the same threads?
Chinese living in China here, btw, also used to be pro-CCP.
tell me, when was the last time when US/EU had a significant percentage of their own citizens locked up? talking about hard lock down, back in April/May, we didn't even have food supply when locked up at home. My neighbors were discussing online whether they should dispose their meat already gone bad, I had to share food (from my own very limited stock) with 90 years old living downstairs.
It is not like people don't have food because they didn't work hard or because they chose some funny life style - I am talking about hard working people who worked their ass off but still couldn't get food when they have ton of cash saved.
Here in Shanghai, the restriction is upgraded again today, we now have to have PCR tests every 48 hours. You get yourself tested 3.5 times a week, or you can't even allowed to set foot into a supermarket or restaurant. Again they want cut your food supply because there is COVID.
"Accomplishments of a country"? Sorry, but I didn't see that.
Taking science more seriously and acknowledge the fact that COVID is here to stay would be an accomplishment for the CCP.
Taking its own citizens in a more respectful way would be an accomplishment for the CCP.
Taking the constitution written by the CCP itself more seriously would be an accomplishment for the CCP.
Sure if you say 1% is a significant amount*. The percentage in China is likely in the double digits if you count the people who have been under "house arrest" for the past couple months (or longer).
* It should be lower, the USA should do better. Comparing it to the current situation in China is disingenuous.
US/EU/most of world are systemically incapable of doing a hard lockdown even if they wanted to. Most of PRC including SH managed to coast through a year with relative normality on zero covid and now you're forced to experience what people who took covid seriously went through in countries that couldn't prevent spread and had to live with covid because vax ended up not being able to either. Yes, much more rigorous version, but not so exceptional relative to vunerable people who needs to take max precautions, and still do since the start.
Yeah, sucks you don't have a choice, but comparing notes with cousins in SH their lockdown experience is about as shit as experiences of some people I know in here in CAN, and on par according to friend went through UAE lockdown earlier then SH. Granted my cousins were well prepared due to advice to stockup from abroad, and of course people in CAN are not forced to do what they do, but merely had to exercise maximum caution due to being part of extra vunerable demographic. Who had to functionally impose harsh self quarantining while covid spreads rampant and seething at unfairness of others breaking basic guidelines while wishing powerless gov could do something about it, because ultimately people don't give a shit about each other when gov doesn't enforce. Personally lived with frontline worker and constantly worrying about their safety and mine for a year+ sucked balls, even after vax because you still risk spreading to others, from family to strangers whose vunerability status you do not know.
Maybe you don't care anymore - most people stopped caring. Low-risk people who just want covid to be "over" are the first ones to move on. Seems like you're a decent person, who shared food with your 90 year old neighbour. You're justifiably frustrated, everyone in my Canadian city was after a year of mild mandates and their first vax shot. But just understand once zero covid breaks, and it will, you're going to have to deal with the anxiety of spreading covid to that neighbour or your loved ones because that's also acknowledging the fact of covid. You're not going to be surrounded by deaths, but statistically and with respect to PRC's med infra, it will likely happen to someone in your extended social circle, and you'll understand exactly how little citizens "respect" each other when left to their own devices. Maybe you'll even be one of the first ones to contract covid and spread covid to people you care about, but likely everyone your age will dodge severe cases. You'll likely still feel a little guilty, but otherwise won't lose sleep over it. Or maybe your accomplishment will be killing that 90 year old downstairs. TBH at this point you're probably fine with that. I convinced myself I was. This isn't meant to be advice or criticism, but something to keep in mind when shit hits fan in the next few months.
> Or maybe your accomplishment will be killing that 90 year old downstairs
It is called rule of nature. With 1.4 billion people and an life expectancy of 77 years, you'd expect 15 million people to pass away each year. At 90 years age with reasonable medical care, if some elderly who still couldn't make it to the other end of the COVID, that sad fact is just a part of normal life on earth. There are seasonal flus every single year, that kills 90 years old folks on daily basis. It is a sad reality everyone have to accept.
It's a bit strange to complain about having to spend 4 weeks at home due to a pandemic, but then to turn around and say that people dying is the rule of nature, don't you think?
> accomplishments of a country, in this case China, without bringing whatever protests are currently going on?
Eh, this is a mission being launched by the same Chinese state that's being protested. Apollo-era aerospace history commonly touches on the concurrent civil rights movement because they had a common political nexus.
Also, to the extent there is non-technical commentary in the top comments on this thread, it's yours.
People who were previously entirely unaware tend to get uncomfortable when they learn about operation paperclip, Nazi rocket scientists, the v2 program, and the early history of NACA/NASA
> People who were previously entirely unaware tend to get uncomfortable when they learn about operation paperclip, Nazi rocket scientists, the v2 program, and the early history of NACA/NASA
Yeah labeling China as developing is silly when other developing nations have 3 orders of magnitude lower GDP. And all but 1 ‘developed
‘ nation have lower GDP .
Yeah, even Iceland, a "developed" country, has almost three orders of magnitude lower GDP! But Iceland also has a tiny population, so maybe we should look at per-capita measures instead. After all, a country with 100 million subsistence farmers merging with another of the same size doesn't suddenly become twice as developed just because there are now 200 million subsistence farmers.
I dont really care what the per-capita measures look like.
If you are claiming concessions as a "developing economy" whilst spending money on Mars rovers, space stations, building the world's biggest nuclear arsenal etc, then you are not acting in good faith.
> the west likes to exaggerate everything that's happening in foreign countries
Chinese living in China here. I don't see any western involvement.
There were protests in almost every tier-1 and tier-2 cities in China during the last few days. This is totally unheard of since the Tiananmen Square incident back in 1989. Police were ordered to randomly stop people to search their phones, they want to see whether you are part of wechat groups discussing the ongoing protests. Here in Shanghai, they even had the street nameplate removed because it contains the word Urumqi, which is the name of the city where 10 people who were locked up at home for zero-covid crap were burned to death due to a fire accident.
3 full years after the outbreak of the COVID, enough is enough, you just can't treat people like crap forever just because there are COVID.
I’d like to remind you that western media were the first to fling blame on China during the beginning of Covid, for not restricting China nationals from traveling and spreading Covid.
Damned if they lockdown, damned if they don’t lockdown.
I'd like to remind you that the current situation is vastly different from the beginning of 2020.
According to official figures, 240k cases confirmed in China in the last 7 days, there are now a total of 106 people in serious condition across the country. Locking down a big percentage of the country home to 1.4 billion people for illness like this is beyond imagination.
I don't think the "white paper" statement in these protests is about zero-covid policy exactly - it's clearly about censorship and freedom of expression.
The zero-covid policy precipitated the unrest - guess where covid policy and freedom of expression intersect? That's right, self-determination / democracy.
Most of these protests are not directly about democracy yet, but they are definitely hinting toward it.
Do a search for "Beijing Sitong Bridge" in your favorite search engine. The protest was about Xi's third term as president. That's enough to be a pro-democracy protest for me.
For Western media everything in China is about political protest. If a person cry on the street it must be a "democracy fighter" trying to "destroy that government that we don't like"...
It is definitely not only about the zero-covid policy. There are certain slogans in there that people rarely say because that takes a serious danger. So not much, but that means more.
I understand media skepticism, but your comment is just as reductive and misinformed as saying that all the protests are pro-democracy.
There are both types of protest right now in China. Many are anti-local government, asking for the central government to help rein in the provincial and city-level officials who are the ones actually responsible for enforcing zero-Covid.
But there are also many pro-democracy/human rights type people coming out as well, especially in Shanghai and on university campuses. There are tons of videos of them calling for democracy, for Xi Jinping to step down, that kind of thing. You can find them on Twitter, but you’ll have to sort through all of the spam that the Chinese government is flooding relevant hashtags with.
I suspect political pressure would be to at least match competing programs current safety record. I don’t think they can hide failures / would want anyone to see that happen.
China still declares to be a WTO developing country while having a space station all alone. That's insane and that's why I won't cheer to their space success.
Fwiw, more than 600mil ppl earn less than 200 dollars per month in China while the living standard in major city like Beijing is not much different from the US or other developed countries.
I mean west free to start propaganda campaign to claim PRC is underreporting GDP and overreporting population (so far only focused on latter), and conclude PRC is finally reached high-income status. Afterall, PRC's already pretty close to the threshold, with incentive to juke stats to continue being developing economy for the perks. But west would have to accept that CCP did good enough to avoid middle income trap.
China's median income is lower than many other nations universally regarded as developing. Just because they excel in the sciences doesn't mean they should be punished in other areas.
When was the last time there were two separately crewed space stations in orbit?
At some point during the US-Soviet space race?
Pretty cool to think about. Space is hard, so no matter what I’m always going to applaud efforts to get there.
The first time that Soviet and American spacemen were in space at the same time was Skylab SL-4 (space station) and the Soviet Soyuz 13, which never docked with a space station. This was the final flight to Skylab, and that crew left before the follow-on Soyuz 14 docked with Salyut 3, so at no point during the US-Soviet space race were there two separately crewed space stations in orbit.
But just as a pedantic note, I really object to calling this China's first space station. The Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2 both were just as much a space station as Skylab or a Salyut[1]. The current Tiangong is indeed the first complex, ISS like space-station, of multiple components launched separately, but that's not the same thing as a space station. So I would say that the three previous Chinese flights to Tiangong-1 and -2 (Shenzhou-9, Shenzhou-10, and Shenzhou-11) all should count as the first times that there were two separately crewed space stations in orbit. Obviously, the other station in all three cases was the International Space Station program, which has had people in space continuously since November 1st, 2000 (it is my hope and dream that October 31st of the year 2000 becomes a very important day in human history- that last day that all of humanity was together on the same planet).
[1]: Technically two separate programs, the military OPS and the Civilian DOS programs, but both were the same as far as assembly goes: launched in one piece from a heavy lift rocket.
The pressurised volume of Tiangong-1 and 2 is said to be 15 cubic metres. Contrast to the space shuttle at 74 cubic metres, and Skylab at 350 cubic metres. They're a sixth the size of any space station to have flown previously.
Both were also only occupied for about 20 days, not far off the longest space shuttle missions.
I think it makes sense to look at them more as orbital testbeds than space stations as such.
What I find interesting is that there are no photos of Tiangong-1 or Tiangong-2.
There are plenty of renders, but it seems the secretive Chinese Government have not released any photos of either of their stations so far, at least none that I can find in a reasonable time.
Definitely a loss for the history books.
Not space stations, but...
>> Apollo–Soyuz was the first crewed international space mission, carried out jointly by the United States and the Soviet Union in July 1975. Millions of people around the world watched on television as a United States Apollo spacecraft docked with a Soviet Soyuz capsule.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo%E2%80%93Soyuz#:~:text....
Edit - by comparison, for sibling comment
>> Soyuz 13 (Russian: Союз 13, Union 13) was a December, 1973, Soviet crewed space flight
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_13
Mir and ISS were both up together and crewed for a brief time around 2000/2001 I believe.
Mir and ISS were up at the same time, but not manned at the same time. The last mission to Mir, Soyuz TM-30, came home on June 16, 2000, and Expedition 1 to the ISS launched on November 1st, 2000.
The first component of the ISS, the Zarya, was launched in November 1998, and the Mir deorbited March 23, 2001, so for that time there were two stations in space, but never manned at the same time.
All of the time that Mir was in orbit there was no US/EU space station. Skylab overlapped with the Salyut program in late 70s.
Yes, a good point.
The Chinese space station (to which this mission flies) recently relocated its Mengtian module in a neat robotic procedure [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Module_relocation_with_ro...
Note that this is very similar to the way modules were relocated on Mir.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyappa_arm
As an aside, this:
> The word “Lyappa” does not exist in Russian. It is probably a corruption of Russian: лапа, romanized: lapa, lit. 'paw'
does not seem to be completely accurate to me, since 'ляпа' is a word in Russian that is pronounced more or less like "lyappa"; The only reason I'm hesitant is that ляпа means blunder or mistake, which would be a rather ominous name to give you a component of your pride-of-the-nation space station. Almost seems like the 'paw' nickname somehow got out to western media, and someone decided to play a little linguistic joke.
Or someone misread and thought that л is always soft, so lyappa. Not the first chinese speaker mistake I've seen today.
That's super neat!
This mission marks the completion of the Chinese space station Tiangong and the start of its permanent habitation, since all three modules are now in place and it will be the first time they do an in-orbit crew exchange. Politics aside, it's quite a remarkable achievement, as to date every single mission they've launched, crewed or uncrewed, has been successful. (Yes, really. China livestreams all their launches, and it's not like you can hide rockets going boom in these days of satellite imagery.)
China has yet to announce their space station plans for 2023 and beyond, but the Xuntian space telescope that can dock and undock autonomously is under development, and they also plan to bring in astronauts from other countries.
> the Xuntian space telescope that can dock and undock autonomously is under development
Was under the impression it was on track to be launched mid next year? Will be basically Hubble tier, but with 400x field of vision and easily maintained/upgraded. A huge boon for astronomers worldwide.
Yes, Wikipedia says launch target is end of year 2023. It's the only confirmed remaining part of the current program.
Just a reminder that no “livestream” in China is actually live. Ever.
Not even the Superbowl. Although that's not China.
on the positive side -
Qingming Deng who will be on board the SZ-15 mission has been on training for the past >26 years for this. best wishes for him as he deserves a safe and pleasant 6 months stay in space.
Some regular spaceship launch should never ever be used to shadow or censor the hardship currently being experienced by hundreds of millions.
Yes, it is a fun moment if you are into space tech or tech in general. Most people here on HN are the same, they love such stuff. WE love it because WE believe it can make life BETTER - that is not the case in China at the moment. Hundreds of millions are being locked up in China. We are talking about real lives, not some random figures on paper. Talking about paper, do you know the fact that you can now be arrested on the street by simply holding a piece of white paper?
Sorry, but I am not going to celebrate the launch or the completion of the Chinese space station, hundreds of millions Chinese are suffering on the ground.
I’m not following how the launch is “censoring the hardship”. Can you elaborate?
I think OP may referring to "flooding", a tried and true technique used by Chinese state media during politically sensitive times. To flood is to "prioritize the consumption of government-produced news over news produced by other groups or by citizens themselves."
You can read more about it here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799749
Fair enough. Not sure I'm ready to call all attempts to manipulate public attention "censorship" (are Friday news dumps censorship?), but I suppose it's just semantics.
What kind of obscurantism is that?
Russia is abandoning the ISS, China will replace it, we should be thankful, we can continue research and dream about space exploration again
We should also be thankful for all the scientific breakthroughs that will allow humankind to step on the moon for a 2nd time
Mixing up your political agenda with science reminds me of how in the Middle Age, the Church was burning people alive for claiming that Earth was not flat and it rotates around the sun
Can we really not have a thread on HN about the accomplishments of a country, in this case China, without bringing whatever protests are currently going on? US/Europe has accomplishments related to space all the time but I don't see people mentioning anti-government protests that happen all the time in the same threads?
Chinese living in China here, btw, also used to be pro-CCP.
tell me, when was the last time when US/EU had a significant percentage of their own citizens locked up? talking about hard lock down, back in April/May, we didn't even have food supply when locked up at home. My neighbors were discussing online whether they should dispose their meat already gone bad, I had to share food (from my own very limited stock) with 90 years old living downstairs.
It is not like people don't have food because they didn't work hard or because they chose some funny life style - I am talking about hard working people who worked their ass off but still couldn't get food when they have ton of cash saved.
Here in Shanghai, the restriction is upgraded again today, we now have to have PCR tests every 48 hours. You get yourself tested 3.5 times a week, or you can't even allowed to set foot into a supermarket or restaurant. Again they want cut your food supply because there is COVID.
"Accomplishments of a country"? Sorry, but I didn't see that.
Taking science more seriously and acknowledge the fact that COVID is here to stay would be an accomplishment for the CCP. Taking its own citizens in a more respectful way would be an accomplishment for the CCP. Taking the constitution written by the CCP itself more seriously would be an accomplishment for the CCP.
I'm sorry you've had to go through this. Good luck, man. I hope you get what you want.
Sure if you say 1% is a significant amount*. The percentage in China is likely in the double digits if you count the people who have been under "house arrest" for the past couple months (or longer).
* It should be lower, the USA should do better. Comparing it to the current situation in China is disingenuous.
What crime were these people in china convicted of? What was the trial process? What is was the oversight?
US/EU/most of world are systemically incapable of doing a hard lockdown even if they wanted to. Most of PRC including SH managed to coast through a year with relative normality on zero covid and now you're forced to experience what people who took covid seriously went through in countries that couldn't prevent spread and had to live with covid because vax ended up not being able to either. Yes, much more rigorous version, but not so exceptional relative to vunerable people who needs to take max precautions, and still do since the start.
Yeah, sucks you don't have a choice, but comparing notes with cousins in SH their lockdown experience is about as shit as experiences of some people I know in here in CAN, and on par according to friend went through UAE lockdown earlier then SH. Granted my cousins were well prepared due to advice to stockup from abroad, and of course people in CAN are not forced to do what they do, but merely had to exercise maximum caution due to being part of extra vunerable demographic. Who had to functionally impose harsh self quarantining while covid spreads rampant and seething at unfairness of others breaking basic guidelines while wishing powerless gov could do something about it, because ultimately people don't give a shit about each other when gov doesn't enforce. Personally lived with frontline worker and constantly worrying about their safety and mine for a year+ sucked balls, even after vax because you still risk spreading to others, from family to strangers whose vunerability status you do not know.
Maybe you don't care anymore - most people stopped caring. Low-risk people who just want covid to be "over" are the first ones to move on. Seems like you're a decent person, who shared food with your 90 year old neighbour. You're justifiably frustrated, everyone in my Canadian city was after a year of mild mandates and their first vax shot. But just understand once zero covid breaks, and it will, you're going to have to deal with the anxiety of spreading covid to that neighbour or your loved ones because that's also acknowledging the fact of covid. You're not going to be surrounded by deaths, but statistically and with respect to PRC's med infra, it will likely happen to someone in your extended social circle, and you'll understand exactly how little citizens "respect" each other when left to their own devices. Maybe you'll even be one of the first ones to contract covid and spread covid to people you care about, but likely everyone your age will dodge severe cases. You'll likely still feel a little guilty, but otherwise won't lose sleep over it. Or maybe your accomplishment will be killing that 90 year old downstairs. TBH at this point you're probably fine with that. I convinced myself I was. This isn't meant to be advice or criticism, but something to keep in mind when shit hits fan in the next few months.
> Or maybe your accomplishment will be killing that 90 year old downstairs
It is called rule of nature. With 1.4 billion people and an life expectancy of 77 years, you'd expect 15 million people to pass away each year. At 90 years age with reasonable medical care, if some elderly who still couldn't make it to the other end of the COVID, that sad fact is just a part of normal life on earth. There are seasonal flus every single year, that kills 90 years old folks on daily basis. It is a sad reality everyone have to accept.
It's a bit strange to complain about having to spend 4 weeks at home due to a pandemic, but then to turn around and say that people dying is the rule of nature, don't you think?
> accomplishments of a country, in this case China, without bringing whatever protests are currently going on?
Eh, this is a mission being launched by the same Chinese state that's being protested. Apollo-era aerospace history commonly touches on the concurrent civil rights movement because they had a common political nexus.
Also, to the extent there is non-technical commentary in the top comments on this thread, it's yours.
The same reason you don’t talk about Nazi Germany’s accomplishments without bringing up the holocaust.
People who were previously entirely unaware tend to get uncomfortable when they learn about operation paperclip, Nazi rocket scientists, the v2 program, and the early history of NACA/NASA
> People who were previously entirely unaware tend to get uncomfortable when they learn about operation paperclip, Nazi rocket scientists, the v2 program, and the early history of NACA/NASA
This is why we talk about it.
So does musk and lots of other western capitalist elites. If musk were to run the future off space flight I bet outcomes would be equally grim.
They do, but you could say that about any sufficiently large polity.
Folks in greenhouses shouldn't start throwing stones.
What is the purpose of such adventure when your own citizens are locked up or beaten up for not willing to be locked up.
Yeah labeling China as developing is silly when other developing nations have 3 orders of magnitude lower GDP. And all but 1 ‘developed ‘ nation have lower GDP .
Yeah, even Iceland, a "developed" country, has almost three orders of magnitude lower GDP! But Iceland also has a tiny population, so maybe we should look at per-capita measures instead. After all, a country with 100 million subsistence farmers merging with another of the same size doesn't suddenly become twice as developed just because there are now 200 million subsistence farmers.
I dont really care what the per-capita measures look like.
If you are claiming concessions as a "developing economy" whilst spending money on Mars rovers, space stations, building the world's biggest nuclear arsenal etc, then you are not acting in good faith.
My dearest factoid about that is what China is in Group III in UPU terminal dues list.
> Also, this is reminiscent to the cold war's race to the moon, a useless nationalist showoff...
Maybe the best nationalist showoff in history. If there is anything good about the cold war, that's it. Do it again please.
I agree. Better a war stay cold than go hot; if winning some space race does that, that's great, even if it's largely meaningless (imo).
> All in the middle of Chinese pro democracy demonstrations like in the good ol'days of 1989
pro-democracy?
the west likes to exaggerate everything that's happening in foreign countries
it's just about the zero-covid policy
do you call the anti mask mandate protests in the US "pro-democracy demonstrations"?
Also what's up with that website, every articles are broken, there is no text, just a picture, some noise in the network?
> the west likes to exaggerate everything that's happening in foreign countries
Chinese living in China here. I don't see any western involvement.
There were protests in almost every tier-1 and tier-2 cities in China during the last few days. This is totally unheard of since the Tiananmen Square incident back in 1989. Police were ordered to randomly stop people to search their phones, they want to see whether you are part of wechat groups discussing the ongoing protests. Here in Shanghai, they even had the street nameplate removed because it contains the word Urumqi, which is the name of the city where 10 people who were locked up at home for zero-covid crap were burned to death due to a fire accident.
3 full years after the outbreak of the COVID, enough is enough, you just can't treat people like crap forever just because there are COVID.
I’d like to remind you that western media were the first to fling blame on China during the beginning of Covid, for not restricting China nationals from traveling and spreading Covid.
Damned if they lockdown, damned if they don’t lockdown.
I'd like to remind you that the current situation is vastly different from the beginning of 2020.
According to official figures, 240k cases confirmed in China in the last 7 days, there are now a total of 106 people in serious condition across the country. Locking down a big percentage of the country home to 1.4 billion people for illness like this is beyond imagination.
I don't think the "white paper" statement in these protests is about zero-covid policy exactly - it's clearly about censorship and freedom of expression.
The zero-covid policy precipitated the unrest - guess where covid policy and freedom of expression intersect? That's right, self-determination / democracy.
Most of these protests are not directly about democracy yet, but they are definitely hinting toward it.
Do a search for "Beijing Sitong Bridge" in your favorite search engine. The protest was about Xi's third term as president. That's enough to be a pro-democracy protest for me.
For Western media everything in China is about political protest. If a person cry on the street it must be a "democracy fighter" trying to "destroy that government that we don't like"...
It is definitely not only about the zero-covid policy. There are certain slogans in there that people rarely say because that takes a serious danger. So not much, but that means more.
I understand media skepticism, but your comment is just as reductive and misinformed as saying that all the protests are pro-democracy.
There are both types of protest right now in China. Many are anti-local government, asking for the central government to help rein in the provincial and city-level officials who are the ones actually responsible for enforcing zero-Covid.
But there are also many pro-democracy/human rights type people coming out as well, especially in Shanghai and on university campuses. There are tons of videos of them calling for democracy, for Xi Jinping to step down, that kind of thing. You can find them on Twitter, but you’ll have to sort through all of the spam that the Chinese government is flooding relevant hashtags with.
I wouldn’t underestimate the Chinese. They have a much larger tolerance for loss of human life so they may progress faster.
> have a much larger tolerance for loss of human life so they may progress faster
Launch systems work virtually autonomously. Tolerance to loss of life isn't as meaningful as it was in the Apollo era.
I suspect political pressure would be to at least match competing programs current safety record. I don’t think they can hide failures / would want anyone to see that happen.
Unfortunately the facts don't back up this speculation.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/09/another-chinese-rock...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jan/19/health-f...
I don’t think clean up issues are the kind of risk taking that advances anything.
I agree. The fact that they are willing to launch hydrazine rockets over villages says the don't care about safety. That was the point I was making.
China still declares to be a WTO developing country while having a space station all alone. That's insane and that's why I won't cheer to their space success.
Fwiw, more than 600mil ppl earn less than 200 dollars per month in China while the living standard in major city like Beijing is not much different from the US or other developed countries.
I mean west free to start propaganda campaign to claim PRC is underreporting GDP and overreporting population (so far only focused on latter), and conclude PRC is finally reached high-income status. Afterall, PRC's already pretty close to the threshold, with incentive to juke stats to continue being developing economy for the perks. But west would have to accept that CCP did good enough to avoid middle income trap.
China's median income is lower than many other nations universally regarded as developing. Just because they excel in the sciences doesn't mean they should be punished in other areas.