China's Space Program News Thread

[Richard Santos]

It's worthwhile to notch up milestones regarding the technologies nations deploy in their mars Probes.

But it's also important to note that neither China or USA has explored the limits regarding the technologies that can be deployed in mars. Both are hamstrung by the peanuts allocated in funding.

Hope that they find hydrocarbons in Mars.

It’s not so much the funding is slander, as the cost is enormous. it cost something like $300,000 to send 1 kilogram to Mars.

When weight is so critical, what you chose to send and what you leave behind tells much about exactly where the priorities lay in the

 

[Temstar]

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Oh, foreign news have started picking up on the SSPS part of that presentation (the one with LM-5DY and LM-9(21))

 

[quantumlight]

It’s not so much the funding is slander, as the cost is enormous. it cost something like $300,000 to send 1 kilogram to Mars.

When weight is so critical, what you chose to send and what you leave behind tells much about exactly where the priorities lay in the

Plus you would burn more energy than you would ever get back from any said hydrocarbon....

net energy sink just like the ethanol scam

 

[quantumlight]

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Oh, foreign news have started picking up on the SSPS part of that presentation (the one with LM-5DY and LM-9(21))

Most of the commenters feel like this project is a economic and energy losslead to advance China reusable rocket tech and not a real peak oil mitigation strategy... its not the beginnings of a dyson sphere or anything like that

 

[gelgoog]

SSPS for terrestrial users does not make sense unless they solve several technical problems first.
They need low transmission losses and a way to manufacture the solar panel structure cheaply.
For low transmission losses you basically need to use microwaves. But no one has built a working prototype with the right characteristics.
Using lasers is out of the question because the atmosphere would absorb a lot of the power.
Also you need to have cheap launches. Anything other than a reusable rocket will likely not be cheap enough.

SSPS for in space power users (like satellites) makes more sense than terrestrial.

 

[Temstar]

SSPS for terrestrial users does not make sense unless they solve several technical problems first.
They need low transmission losses and a way to manufacture the solar panel structure cheaply.
For low transmission losses you basically need to use microwaves. But no one has built a working prototype with the right characteristics.
Using lasers is out of the question because the atmosphere would absorb a lot of the power.
Also you need to have cheap launches. Anything other than a reusable rocket will likely not be cheap enough.

SSPS for in space power users (like satellites) makes more sense than terrestrial.

What about both a giant orbital power plant, as well as a spaceborne super weapon in one?

 

[gelgoog]

What about both a giant orbital power plant, as well as a spaceborne super weapon in one?

Using a space based energy weapon to blow up satellites? Yeah that in practice would work.

 

[by78]

Blast from the past. Images taken by

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during the Shenzhou-5 mission, China's first manned spaceflight.

 

[Nutrient]

For low transmission losses you basically need to use microwaves. But no one has built a working prototype with the right characteristics.

True. But efficient microwave transmission is possible in principle; I am not too worried about that. And China has a lot of desert AND the start of a million-volt electrical grid.

Also you need to have cheap launches. Anything other than a reusable rocket will likely not be cheap enough.

Not necessarily. Launching mirrors from the moon, built using lunar materials, should be very cheap -- assuming we can obtain propellants somewhere, like Phobos.

Weren't you complaining a while back that CZ-9 would be a waste of resources? Solar power satellites (SPS) should pay back the CZ-9 and ILRS investment many times over. They may even save the world from global warming: once the SPS production starts on the moon, there's no reason the powersats can't be sold to lots of other countries, thereby drastically reducing global carbon emissions.

 

[gelgoog]

There are proposals to put a giant solar power generation facility in the Moon with locally sourced materials.

But that would require having industrial facilities in the Moon. It is theoretically way more affordable than SPS. Doing that would not require any large mass transfers and launch facilities.

The problem with the SPS is once you factor in the launch cost and construction cost and compare it with building it on Earth it stops making sense. The only way to make it work is to massively reduce launch costs and solve the technical problems.

For example this was a proposed launch vehicle Boeing come up with in the 1970s to launch SPS.

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