Author Topic: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station  (Read 436124 times)

Offline baldusi

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #100 on: 05/10/2015 04:20 pm »
The term electric propulsion is sometime used in reference to ion drives. It would make sense to use this sort of technology to counteract drag. There may be implications to the micro-gravity environment available for science.
If it is used in continuous thrust mode, exactly to cancel the drag, it would not affect the environment at all. But, having a continuous thrust SEP engine running for years would be quite an achievement. Weight and size might not matter much for this application, and it would be relatively tiny. We calculated that to counteract the drag of the ISS you needed around 250mN of thrust. It will depend on the solar panels drag, of course, but I would guess that if they do 100mN with the ability to throttle down, it will be more than fine. Girded ion engines technology would be out, though.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #101 on: 05/12/2015 12:30 am »
Is there any difference using an ion engine in LEO compared to higher orbits? There's a bit of free oxygen floating around in LEO (where you get that drag) and I wonder if that creates any problems with the emitter or charged particles or anything like that.

Offline simonbp

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #102 on: 05/12/2015 03:37 am »
Is there any difference using an ion engine in LEO compared to higher orbits? There's a bit of free oxygen floating around in LEO (where you get that drag) and I wonder if that creates any problems with the emitter or charged particles or anything like that.

Typical grided or Hall ion engines use argon or xenon; IIRC, argon will never form an oxide and xenon oxide is really difficult. So, I doubt oxygen is an issue. A greater challenge might be keeping any crew on EVA from touching the high-voltage systems.

Also, *somewhere* on this very forum is presentation on putting an electrodynamic tether on ISS to change its orbital inclination...
« Last Edit: 05/12/2015 03:40 am by simonbp »

Offline Burninate

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #103 on: 05/12/2015 12:08 pm »
It makes little sense at this point to design a station for LEO without SEP - it reduces the mass requirement per year substantially for not a lot of cost.

The EM Drive remains unexplained fringe theory that everything we know about physics says will eventually be explained away in terms of poor testing methodology.  Ion thrusters are COTS flight-proven hardware.  Electrodynamic tethers are physically well-modelled but untested tech.  It's a safe bet they're talking about ion thrusters.

Offline Star One

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #104 on: 05/12/2015 01:15 pm »

It makes little sense at this point to design a station for LEO without SEP - it reduces the mass requirement per year substantially for not a lot of cost.

The EM Drive remains unexplained fringe theory that everything we know about physics says will eventually be explained away in terms of poor testing methodology.  Ion thrusters are COTS flight-proven hardware.  Electrodynamic tethers are physically well-modelled but untested tech.  It's a safe bet they're talking about ion thrusters.

It would be best if you didn't engage in speculation about the EM thruster here, especially making such short hand assumptions as it will only probably lead to the thread lurching wildly off topic.

Offline Star One

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #105 on: 10/13/2015 05:56 pm »
Informative article on this from Space News reporting from the IAC, especially intrigued by the dock able astronomy telescope & their reaching out to the international community for cooperation.

China's Space Station Planners Put out Welcome Mat

Quote
JERUSALEM — China is soliciting international participation in its future manned space station in the form of foreign modules that would attach to the three-module core system, visits by foreign crew-transport vehicles for short stays and the involvement of non-Chinese researchers in placing experiments on the complex, the chief designer of China’s manned space program said Oct. 12.

But he declined to commit to an international orbital docking technology that would facilitate international participation in the Chinese facility.

The Chinese orbital station, consisting of a core module and two experiment-carrying modules, can be expanded to a total of six modules if international partners want to invest in their own components, said Zhou Jianping, chief designer of the China Manned Space Program at the China Manned Space Agency.

Zhou said China plans to launch an astronomy telescope into an orbit near enough to the space station to dock to it for upgrades and servicing. He declined to specify the telescope’s size.

http://spacenews.com/chinas-space-station-planners-put-out-welcome-mat/
« Last Edit: 10/13/2015 06:03 pm by Star One »

Offline B. Hendrickx

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #106 on: 06/02/2016 11:22 pm »
Time to breathe new life into this thread. There have been several updates on the "Novosti kosmonavtiki" forum in the last few weeks (with interesting comments from Konstantin Lantratov, a former NK journalist) :

http://novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/forum/forum10/topic8751/?PAGEN_1=40

Most notably, a 35-page document (unfortunately, in Chinese) on the space station published by the Chinese Manned Space Agency :
http://cmse.gov.cn/uploadfile/news/uploadfile/201604/20160427104809225.pdf

A short summary of that in English can be found here :
http://www.popsci.com/chinas-space-station-plans-in-powerpoint-closer-look-at-tiangong-3

The name Tiangong-3 used in the summary does not appear to be correct. This was the name of a Tiangong with two docking ports (ala Salyut-6 and Salyut-7) that was cancelled a while ago.

Interesting plans for a Hubble-class space telescope (Xuntian) that will periodically dock with the station for servicing. More here (in Chinese) :

http://www.chinaspaceflight.com/css/Xuntian/Xuntian.html

Yang Liwei recently gave the following launch schedule in a meeting with students :
- core module (Tianhe) : approximately 2018
- first research module (Wentian) : approximately 2020
- second research module (recently renamed Mengtian or "Heavenly Dream") : approximately 2021
- completion of station assembly : 2022

Another source (in Chinese) says assembly will be completed "after 2022" and the Xuntian space telescope will be launched after 2022. It refers to the core module as Tianhe-1 (which implies there will also be a Tianhe-2 at a later stage) :
http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-04/21/c_1118695895.htm

Finally, a model of the space station is shown at a science and technology exhibition that opened in Beijing on 1 June. Note Wentian with its EVA airlock, very reminiscent of Mir's Kvant-2 module. Lantratov says that prior to the arrival of Wentian, cosmonauts will exit the station via a hatch on the "zenith" side of the docking node (where there is no docking port).
 




Offline Steven Pietrobon

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #107 on: 06/03/2016 05:14 am »
Time to breathe new life into this thread. There have been several updates on the "Novosti kosmonavtiki" forum in the last few weeks (with interesting comments from Konstantin Lantratov, a former NK journalist) :

http://novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/forum/forum10/topic8751/?PAGEN_1=40

Most notably, a 35-page document (unfortunately, in Chinese) on the space station published by the Chinese Manned Space Agency :
http://cmse.gov.cn/uploadfile/news/uploadfile/201604/20160427104809225.pdf

That is old news. I have a full translation of that document here.

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=7058.msg1525636#msg1525636
Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design #1:  Engineering is done with numbers.  Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.

Offline Phillip Clark

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #108 on: 06/03/2016 07:10 am »
I shall be referring to this as "The Tiangong Complex", just as I did with The Mir Complex and The Zarya Complex (although for some reason the latter didn't catch on).
I've always been crazy but it's kept me from going insane - WJ.

Offline Steven Pietrobon

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #109 on: 06/05/2016 07:13 am »
Wouldn't it be better to call this the Tian He complex? That's the name of the core module.
Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design #1:  Engineering is done with numbers.  Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.

Offline Phillip Clark

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #110 on: 06/05/2016 08:13 am »
Wouldn't it be better to call this the Tian He complex? That's the name of the core module.

I thought that the overall name of the station was to be Tiangong - whether a serial number is added or not.   Of course, I could be out of date!
« Last Edit: 06/05/2016 03:52 pm by Phillip Clark »
I've always been crazy but it's kept me from going insane - WJ.

Online ace5

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #111 on: 06/05/2016 03:41 pm »
Some details

Online Satori

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #112 on: 06/07/2016 10:34 am »
Wouldn't it be better to call this the Tian He complex? That's the name of the core module.

I thought that the overall name of the station was to be Tiangong - whether a serial number is added or not.   Of course, I could be out of date!

China calls the station Tiangong without serial number.

Offline Star One

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #113 on: 06/20/2016 04:44 pm »
Interesting move  by China here. Quite a bit of useful info about the station in general as well.

China prepares assembly of its space station, invites collaboration through U.N.

http://spacenews.com/china-prepares-assembly-of-its-space-station-invites-collaboration-through-u-n/
« Last Edit: 06/20/2016 04:47 pm by Star One »

Offline Phillip Clark

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #114 on: 06/20/2016 05:18 pm »
Interesting move  by China here. Quite a bit of useful info about the station in general as well.
China prepares assembly of its space station, invites collaboration through U.N.
http://spacenews.com/china-prepares-assembly-of-its-space-station-invites-collaboration-through-u-n/

It claims that Tiangong 2 will be launched atop a CZ-5B vehicle from Wenchang in September.   Hopefully the rest of the piece is more accurate than this.
I've always been crazy but it's kept me from going insane - WJ.

Offline AS_501

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #115 on: 06/20/2016 06:26 pm »
I assume the Chinese use Kurs (or their own version) for automated docking.
Launches attended:  Apollo 11, ASTP (@KSC, not Baikonur!), STS-41G, STS-125, EFT-1, Starlink G4-24, Artemis 1
Notable Spacecraft Observed:  Echo 1, Skylab/S-II, Salyuts 6&7, Mir Core/Complete, HST, ISS Zarya/Present, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, Dragon Demo-2, Starlink G4-14 (8 hrs. post-launch), Tiangong

Offline baldusi

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #116 on: 06/20/2016 07:47 pm »
AIUI, they have a docking system patterned after the APAS, so I would guess their aproach ops could be similar to Kurs. But I don't have any information.
I understand that the new IDSS does include some approach ops definitions and that the Chinese desire to be compatible with it.

Offline russianhalo117

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #117 on: 06/20/2016 09:27 pm »
I assume the Chinese use Kurs (or their own version) for automated docking.
AIUI, they have a docking system patterned after the APAS, so I would guess their aproach ops could be similar to Kurs. But I don't have any information.
I understand that the new IDSS does include some approach ops definitions and that the Chinese desire to be compatible with it.
As I understand, the Russians did a complete technology transfer in the 2000's to China on firstly the analog Kurs versions and much more recently the digital Kurs (both Kurs ATV, NA and MM versions). Transfer of the European rendezvous and avionics systems used in the Kurs ATV System was through a MoU and cooperation agreement with ESA.

Offline Star One

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #118 on: 06/20/2016 10:40 pm »
Interesting move  by China here. Quite a bit of useful info about the station in general as well.
China prepares assembly of its space station, invites collaboration through U.N.
http://spacenews.com/china-prepares-assembly-of-its-space-station-invites-collaboration-through-u-n/

It claims that Tiangong 2 will be launched atop a CZ-5B vehicle from Wenchang in September.   Hopefully the rest of the piece is more accurate than this.

Well ok then what is being launched on and where from with quoted sources if your going to dispute this?

Offline russianhalo117

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Re: Tiangong - Chinese Space Station
« Reply #119 on: 06/20/2016 10:56 pm »
Interesting move  by China here. Quite a bit of useful info about the station in general as well.
China prepares assembly of its space station, invites collaboration through U.N.
http://spacenews.com/china-prepares-assembly-of-its-space-station-invites-collaboration-through-u-n/

It claims that Tiangong 2 will be launched atop a CZ-5B vehicle from Wenchang in September.   Hopefully the rest of the piece is more accurate than this.

Well ok then what is being launched on and where from with quoted sources if your going to dispute this?
Here is what currently stands in the latest version of the reliable NSF Chinese Launch Schedule: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=5060.msg1542311#msg1542311
2016:
September - CZ-2F/T2 - JSLC, LC43/921 - TG-2 Tiangong-2; Banxing-2
October - CZ-5/YZ-2 - WSLC, LC101 - ??
October 17 (?) - CZ-2F/G - JSLC, LC43/921 - SZ-11 Shenzhou-11

2017:
April - CZ-7 - WSLC, LC201 - TZ-1 Tianzhou-1
?? - CZ-2F/G - JSLC, LC43/921 - SZ-12 Shenzhou-12

2018:
?? - CZ-5 - WSLC, LC101 - TH Tianhe Space Station Core Module
« Last Edit: 06/20/2016 11:14 pm by russianhalo117 »

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