Quickie
Colonel
The U.S./NASA would always say China is not open on its Space programs and yet I don't see them publishing this much technical details on the development of their rocket/spacecraft.
China's Space Program News Thread
- Thread starter crazyinsane105
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The U.S./NASA would always say China is not open on its Space programs and yet I don't see them publishing this much technical details on the development of their rocket/spacecraft.
Manipulator arm of CSS in action. It's performing a 'crawl' where it moves around the station.
Some errors in my previous comment on Solar Power Satellites (SPSs). One is a typo, and the other is an outright mistake. Fortunately, neither affect my major conclusion, that SPSs can supply all of Earth's energy needs many times over.
The typo, a transcription error, is the total power collected by the geosynchronous solar band. Please change "277 terawatts" to "273 terawatts". There's many a slip 'twixt the calculator and the keyboard. Luckily, there's no effect on the power generated by the orbital solar band: it's still 15 times more than all the Earth is using now.
The mistake is the comparison of the angular diameter of the moon and the solar satellites. Please change "each solar farm would seem less than 1/60 as wide as the full Moon" to "1/30 as wide". Having forgotten the Moon's size, I initially estimated its angular diameter as one degree. The real figure is half a degree, and I revised my comment accordingly. However, I forgot to change 1/60 to 1/30. Oops.
We can still collect twice as much power as the Earth is using now with only 3800 solar power satellites, each 10 km x 10 km in size. If we make the SPSs on the Moon, from the Moon's materials, the satellites will be cheap. And they could save the Earth from global warming. Surely that is worth investing a minor fraction of the world's resources.
The typo, a transcription error, is the total power collected by the geosynchronous solar band. Please change "277 terawatts" to "273 terawatts". There's many a slip 'twixt the calculator and the keyboard. Luckily, there's no effect on the power generated by the orbital solar band: it's still 15 times more than all the Earth is using now.
The mistake is the comparison of the angular diameter of the moon and the solar satellites. Please change "each solar farm would seem less than 1/60 as wide as the full Moon" to "1/30 as wide". Having forgotten the Moon's size, I initially estimated its angular diameter as one degree. The real figure is half a degree, and I revised my comment accordingly. However, I forgot to change 1/60 to 1/30. Oops.
We can still collect twice as much power as the Earth is using now with only 3800 solar power satellites, each 10 km x 10 km in size. If we make the SPSs on the Moon, from the Moon's materials, the satellites will be cheap. And they could save the Earth from global warming. Surely that is worth investing a minor fraction of the world's resources.
broadsword
Brigadier
Martian dung?
It as traveled over 300 meters as per the official weibo.
I like how the Weibo account is Zhurong in first person, that's a nice touch.
Great news. They will benefit space manufacturing R&D and commercialisation.
I hope it has some ambition behind it, such as making it modular, able to expand it by putting more solar panels, involving more commercial companies to the project etc
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