AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
I'm sure someone will try to pass international law to stop China's space program because it's a danger to people on the ground in guise of they just don't want China going into space.
China's Space Program News Thread
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Early 1960s for military applications, all the way to mid 1970s for civilian applications.
The US developed several parallel lines of early photo reconnaissance satellites. The Carona series took pictures on film and returned the film in recoverable capsules for development on the ground. Samos series took pictures on film, return some to earth in capsules, and developed others onboard and then scanned the film in the satellite, and transmitted the scanned image of the film to earth.
The reason Samos satellite developed the film onboard and sent back as a film scan is this allowed the satellite to supply near real-time stream of image without have to use up it recoverable film capsules. Early photo reconnaissance satellites had only one recoverable capsule, so using it up effectively ends the life of the satellite. So the photos it takes can’t be examined for days or weeks after they were taken. Later photo reconnsaisance satellites had several capsules. This allowed some film to be reviewed before the end of the satellite’s life, But the image still is not fully Real time. In addition, there is no way to know what was on the photos until the film capsule was recovered, so there was no way to trigger film recovery based on what was seen by the camera.
The film scan method of returning images was also the main means by which images of the moon, planets and earth were returned to earthen by early civilian satellites and early lunar and planetary probes. Film scan method allowed far higher quality of image than was possible with early television transmission. The first ever image of the far side of the moon, taken by the Soviet probe Luna 3 in 1959, was also taken and transmitted using the film scan method.
Btw, no US photo reconnaissance satellite AFAIK, was designed to drop its film capsule into the sea. They were all designed for the film capsule to be recovered in the air by an aircraft fitted with long booms with a snare in between. The snare is designed to snag the capsule’s parachute and reel the capsule in.
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The launches from Inner Mongolia overfly mainly Chinese territory. So it mostly fall outside the jurisdiction of international laws.
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
The key word is "try". It's not illegal for China to rise technologically yet some want to stop it.
But the rise in technology also demands a level of responsibility. In this case, I have to sideline China's arguments a bit. China must device some plans and methods to do away with debris.
How about reusable launch vehicles that land back after the launch like SpaceX?
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
Most of the garbage floating around in space doesn't come from China.
I was talking about the spent fairings and boosters that fall back onto Chinese mainland.
That's priority number 1.
Space debris is also a concern but it needs a multinational effort.
AFAIK, the most complained "debris" are upper stage which is almost in orbit and thus hard to predict drop zone. And reusable rocket won't solve this problem because they only land lower stage. In fact, there are ~20 upper stages of spaceX rockets floating in space at this very time, and they can fall back to earth "uncontrolled" at any time.
I do agree though that chinese rockets design, usually with 4 boosters, increased the possibility of unwanted damages even if they have tried to warn and clean drop zone before launches. And hope china can develop some technology to at least reuse these boosters, which they are doing according to the "parachute" photo.
There are already some private companies which are working on this in China. However they got in the game too late so we are years away from seeing them produce anything close to SpaceX' Falcon 9
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
All I said that someone will use an excuse to try to stop China's space program all together by claiming it's a danger to people. It has nothing to do with responsibility. That's a fake concern. It has to do with finding any excuse to stop China whether it regards space or anything else. Reusable rockets is a recent thing and all the garbage in space or falling to ground was no concern to the US before that. Being responsible is a empty argument because the past shows they had none. They're only talking about it to vilify China in the world's public opinion to stop China's space program because they hate China's accomplishments hence why they're saying it is a threat to the world. They have no other means to stop it.
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