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#180 by thirtyone on 25 Jul, 2020 01:41
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Yeah, don't ever underestimate how biased most of us are in terms of searching for information because of language and cultural barriers. Even in technical fields it's often the case that if you don't know the correct jargon, you'll often think some information isn't available simply because you're searching for the wrong word. I've run into this problem before looking for things in China - don't forget that there's more native Chinese speakers than any other language in the world, and a lot of Chinese sites just don't bother translating because, well, it's a lot of work to translate everything. I'm pretty sure almost no one has Google as their homepage in China, for example, and I'd bet there are links to articles with oodles of information on half the native Chinese news sites in China.
With that said I still have no idea where to look for some of these press releases on Chinese launches. It'd be a great service if someone could cross-post more of these daily updates. I don't think it's fair to blame anyone for not making it available in English; I mean, really, the target audience is probably the Chinese domestic market anyway.
Just a reminder of how disconnected things are - remember, no one in China really thinks of this launch as "Tianwen-1." That's just the English transliteration of the native name of the launch, and that sequence of characters will never show up on 99.9% of Chinese social media postings, articles, etc. I'd actually suggest copy-pasting the actual Chinese name into first posts for foreign launches, because it helps people search for a lot more results, pictures, videos, and information. In this case it's "天问一号" (correct me if I'm wrong, but I saw a lot of results from that). Actually, a recommendation for an article in this forum section - a "glossary" of Chinese technical rocketry terms could help people find more technical information about launchers (e.g. "booster," "engine," "hydrazine," "specific impulse," etc.) My understanding is that the the Chinese government made a push to come up with native Chinese words for many technical concepts to sort of make everything their own, so it's pretty difficult to figure out what all these are. -
#181 by jcm on 25 Jul, 2020 01:57
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Yeah, don't ever underestimate how biased most of us are in terms of searching for information because of language and cultural barriers. Even in technical fields it's often the case that if you don't know the correct jargon, you'll often think some information isn't available simply because you're searching for the wrong word. I've run into this problem before looking for things in China - don't forget that there's more native Chinese speakers than any other language in the world, and a lot of Chinese sites just don't bother translating because, well, it's a lot of work to translate everything. I'm pretty sure almost no one has Google as their homepage in China, for example, and I'd bet there are links to articles with oodles of information on half the native Chinese news sites in China.
With that said I still have no idea where to look for some of these press releases on Chinese launches. It'd be a great service if someone could cross-post more of these daily updates. I don't think it's fair to blame anyone for not making it available in English; I mean, really, the target audience is probably the Chinese domestic market anyway.
Just a reminder of how disconnected things are - remember, no one in China really thinks of this launch as "Tianwen-1." That's just the English transliteration of the native name of the launch, and that sequence of characters will never show up on 99.9% of Chinese social media postings, articles, etc. I'd actually suggest copy-pasting the actual Chinese name into first posts for foreign launches, because it helps people search for a lot more results, pictures, videos, and information. In this case it's "天问一号" (correct me if I'm wrong, but I saw a lot of results from that). Actually, a recommendation for an article in this forum section - a "glossary" of Chinese technical rocketry terms could help people find more technical information about launchers (e.g. "booster," "engine," "hydrazine," "specific impulse," etc.) My understanding is that the the Chinese government made a push to come up with native Chinese words for many technical concepts to sort of make everything their own, so it's pretty difficult to figure out what all these are.
Yes, that's one reason I've started including the name in Chinese characters in my twitter posts about space launches. -
#182 by shijiav on 25 Jul, 2020 02:23
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Yeah, don't ever underestimate how biased most of us are in terms of searching for information because of language and cultural barriers. Even in technical fields it's often the case that if you don't know the correct jargon, you'll often think some information isn't available simply because you're searching for the wrong word. I've run into this problem before looking for things in China - don't forget that there's more native Chinese speakers than any other language in the world, and a lot of Chinese sites just don't bother translating because, well, it's a lot of work to translate everything. I'm pretty sure almost no one has Google as their homepage in China, for example, and I'd bet there are links to articles with oodles of information on half the native Chinese news sites in China.
you can just use google translation
With that said I still have no idea where to look for some of these press releases on Chinese launches. It'd be a great service if someone could cross-post more of these daily updates. I don't think it's fair to blame anyone for not making it available in English; I mean, really, the target audience is probably the Chinese domestic market anyway.
Just a reminder of how disconnected things are - remember, no one in China really thinks of this launch as "Tianwen-1." That's just the English transliteration of the native name of the launch, and that sequence of characters will never show up on 99.9% of Chinese social media postings, articles, etc. I'd actually suggest copy-pasting the actual Chinese name into first posts for foreign launches, because it helps people search for a lot more results, pictures, videos, and information. In this case it's "天问一号" (correct me if I'm wrong, but I saw a lot of results from that). Actually, a recommendation for an article in this forum section - a "glossary" of Chinese technical rocketry terms could help people find more technical information about launchers (e.g. "booster," "engine," "hydrazine," "specific impulse," etc.) My understanding is that the the Chinese government made a push to come up with native Chinese words for many technical concepts to sort of make everything their own, so it's pretty difficult to figure out what all these are.
go to 9ifly
it should work most of the time
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#183 by Lars-J on 25 Jul, 2020 04:08
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Right. While there is a language barrier, most of it can be eliminated with Google translate. (I read 9ifly as well)Yeah, don't ever underestimate how biased most of us are in terms of searching for information because of language and cultural barriers. Even in technical fields it's often the case that if you don't know the correct jargon, you'll often think some information isn't available simply because you're searching for the wrong word. I've run into this problem before looking for things in China - don't forget that there's more native Chinese speakers than any other language in the world, and a lot of Chinese sites just don't bother translating because, well, it's a lot of work to translate everything. I'm pretty sure almost no one has Google as their homepage in China, for example, and I'd bet there are links to articles with oodles of information on half the native Chinese news sites in China.
you can just use google translation
With that said I still have no idea where to look for some of these press releases on Chinese launches. It'd be a great service if someone could cross-post more of these daily updates. I don't think it's fair to blame anyone for not making it available in English; I mean, really, the target audience is probably the Chinese domestic market anyway.
Just a reminder of how disconnected things are - remember, no one in China really thinks of this launch as "Tianwen-1." That's just the English transliteration of the native name of the launch, and that sequence of characters will never show up on 99.9% of Chinese social media postings, articles, etc. I'd actually suggest copy-pasting the actual Chinese name into first posts for foreign launches, because it helps people search for a lot more results, pictures, videos, and information. In this case it's "" (correct me if I'm wrong, but I saw a lot of results from that). Actually, a recommendation for an article in this forum section - a "glossary" of Chinese technical rocketry terms could help people find more technical information about launchers (e.g. "booster," "engine," "hydrazine," "specific impulse," etc.) My understanding is that the the Chinese government made a push to come up with native Chinese words for many technical concepts to sort of make everything their own, so it's pretty difficult to figure out what all these are.
go to 9ifly
it should work most of the time
BUT it still does not mean that any of us should pretend that “the information is out there but it just is in Chinese” (@thirtyone did not say this exactly but essentially argued it) ... that just isn’t true. The Chinese space enthusiasts are just as much in the dark as we are on most things about the Chinese space efforts. -
#184 by shijiav on 25 Jul, 2020 05:50
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Ofc they were no way near NASA`s transparency policy. But my point is some of the information is truly there but you will have to dig very deep into it, this needs, of course, fluent Chinese. For example, there was paper in the Chinese paper database talking about how they build YF-220 or other stuff.
Right. While there is a language barrier, most of it can be eliminated with Google translate. (I read 9ifly as well)Yeah, don't ever underestimate how biased most of us are in terms of searching for information because of language and cultural barriers. Even in technical fields it's often the case that if you don't know the correct jargon, you'll often think some information isn't available simply because you're searching for the wrong word. I've run into this problem before looking for things in China - don't forget that there's more native Chinese speakers than any other language in the world, and a lot of Chinese sites just don't bother translating because, well, it's a lot of work to translate everything. I'm pretty sure almost no one has Google as their homepage in China, for example, and I'd bet there are links to articles with oodles of information on half the native Chinese news sites in China.
you can just use google translation
With that said I still have no idea where to look for some of these press releases on Chinese launches. It'd be a great service if someone could cross-post more of these daily updates. I don't think it's fair to blame anyone for not making it available in English; I mean, really, the target audience is probably the Chinese domestic market anyway.
Just a reminder of how disconnected things are - remember, no one in China really thinks of this launch as "Tianwen-1." That's just the English transliteration of the native name of the launch, and that sequence of characters will never show up on 99.9% of Chinese social media postings, articles, etc. I'd actually suggest copy-pasting the actual Chinese name into first posts for foreign launches, because it helps people search for a lot more results, pictures, videos, and information. In this case it's "" (correct me if I'm wrong, but I saw a lot of results from that). Actually, a recommendation for an article in this forum section - a "glossary" of Chinese technical rocketry terms could help people find more technical information about launchers (e.g. "booster," "engine," "hydrazine," "specific impulse," etc.) My understanding is that the the Chinese government made a push to come up with native Chinese words for many technical concepts to sort of make everything their own, so it's pretty difficult to figure out what all these are.
go to 9ifly
it should work most of the time
BUT it still does not mean that any of us should pretend that “the information is out there but it just is in Chinese” (@thirtyone did not say this exactly but essentially argued it) ... that just isn’t true. The Chinese space enthusiasts are just as much in the dark as we are on most things about the Chinese space efforts.
If someone really likes to go over all these papers, they truly were real space enthusiasts, but really there were not that many people I believe. There were more threads/replies in 9ifly than NASA spaceflight, but in reality, it`s just because there were 1.4 billion Chinese people.
About launch live stream stuff, as I assume most people in China would just like to hear news about success or fail, most people were not real space enthusiasts, so...they won`t pay much attention to promote those kinds of space stuff. In fact, they do not need to promote because 1.4billion people will have space talents in the end. Also, one other really important thing is they really afraid of failure, you gotta know for Chinese people The face is more important than anything.
The public opinion environment in China is relatively complicated with all kinds of pussy stuff. Take the no live stream tianwen-1 as an example, is like, before the launch, two parties one pro-livestream the other pro-nolivestream fighting each other with words all day long, do remember those were just inside the space enthusiasts. This still goes on after the successful launch and already rise to personal attack all day.
No live stream for tianwen-1 is a pitty, but it`s a bit strange considering there were CCTV 4k live stream vehicles already in wenchang at the beginning of July, after the beidou launch, CCTV also claim tianwen-1 live stream would be as good as beidou`s. But suddenly three days before launch, it seems all the live stream got canceled, during the launch they even block the personal Livestream. Some conjecture it`s related to the south China sea stuff, there might be USA reconnaissance aircraft around Hainan island during the launch. but who knows...Let`s hope all the tension would be gone and we would have a great CE5 live stream(good news is that the launch date is nov.24th). -
#185 by luhai167 on 25 Jul, 2020 07:52
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Most English language outside mainstream media are done by volunteers, as official and unofficial Chinese release are almost always at Chinese sites in the Chinese language. Most of so called secrecy is really just a problem of language barrier. Plus Chinese forums are generally high on the speculation side, if official release is 1 2 3, the online forums will go the extra mile with leaks and rumors about 4 5 6. When in fact 4 is not a sure thing yet, there are multiple proposals on 5 and the nobody actually knows what 6 would look like...You have missed them. They are out there. I usually post on this topic in Unmannedspaceflight rather than here.
Well in that case it is not surprising that the OP drew that conclusion being as that is hardly a mainstream site even amongst spaceflight followers. Nor to my mind is it that user friendly being as it doesn’t even reformat for mobile devices, something most sites manage these days.
Also while 9ifly is good and professional, it's actually not that active. WeChat and Weibo account generally will give more up to date information, but with that you will get bombarded with much more rumors or just useless information. (For example, most of CALT's official posts are not about space or rocket, but about meeting held, festivals and other new items. Such as recent floods and why satellites are good and helpful)
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#186 by plutogno on 25 Jul, 2020 09:18
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this remembers me of when I had a personal site in the early 2000s and I decided to go beyond the few information published by press agencies on the just-approved Chang'E lunar exploration program.
what I discovered was that a wealth of information was available in the form of technical papers in English or more often in Chinese. Online translator (anyone remembers Altavista's Babel Fish?) back then gave often unreadable results, but still allowed me to get some ideas (some correct, others not so correct...) of what was cooking in China. apparently my work was even mentioned in a session of the US Congress
I even found a few papers published in the 1960s. As far as I know no lunar exploration study has ever been acknowledged to have been carried out.
the site is still available on the Internet Archive
https://web.archive.org/web/20090902035119/http://utenti.lycos.it/paoloulivi/chinamoo.html
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#187 by ntk0701 on 25 Jul, 2020 09:22
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About launch live stream stuff, as I assume most people in China would just like to hear news about success or fail, most people were not real space enthusiasts, so...they won`t pay much attention to promote those kinds of space stuff. In fact, they do not need to promote because 1.4billion people will have space talents in the end. Also, one other really important thing is they really afraid of failure, you gotta know for Chinese people The face is more important than anything.
The problem with live streams, though, is that things really weren't this way a decade or two ago. While regular launches weren't usually live streamed either, all Shenzhou crewed missions were (up to Shenzhou 11 in October 2016), including launches, dockings, a space walk, and reentries. I'd argue that the potential of losing a crewed mission is a far greater risk & loss of face than losing your first Mars probe during launch, and yet the former missions were live streamed while the latter wasn't. This shift occurred rather abruptly following the failure of CZ-5 Y2 in July 2017 (while some later missions, notably CZ-5 Y3, were still live streamed, there have been far fewer), and I wholeheartedly hope that, with CZ-5 finally starting to mature and prove its reliability, we can get more live-streamed missions again in the future. Especially the crewed CSS missions. -
#188 by newfrontiers on 25 Jul, 2020 09:41
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forgive me for the grainy screenshot. But this is what Tianwen-1 rover really looks like.
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#189 by newfrontiers on 25 Jul, 2020 11:02
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#190 by shijiav on 25 Jul, 2020 18:08
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maybe it`s just because LM-5 is not that mature, you got the point.About launch live stream stuff, as I assume most people in China would just like to hear news about success or fail, most people were not real space enthusiasts, so...they won`t pay much attention to promote those kinds of space stuff. In fact, they do not need to promote because 1.4billion people will have space talents in the end. Also, one other really important thing is they really afraid of failure, you gotta know for Chinese people The face is more important than anything.
The problem with live streams, though, is that things really weren't this way a decade or two ago. While regular launches weren't usually live streamed either, all Shenzhou crewed missions were (up to Shenzhou 11 in October 2016), including launches, dockings, a space walk, and reentries. I'd argue that the potential of losing a crewed mission is a far greater risk & loss of face than losing your first Mars probe during launch, and yet the former missions were live streamed while the latter wasn't. This shift occurred rather abruptly following the failure of CZ-5 Y2 in July 2017 (while some later missions, notably CZ-5 Y3, were still live streamed, there have been far fewer), and I wholeheartedly hope that, with CZ-5 finally starting to mature and prove its reliability, we can get more live-streamed missions again in the future. Especially the crewed CSS missions.
But crewed CSS mission mostly would go on CZ2F, so maybe the live stream would continue as normal I would say..
The strange thing about tianwen-1 launch is pretty obvious since LM5 Y3 is more dangerous than this Y4 mission, and Y3 still got livestreamed, and all the evidence before launch lead us to believe there will be a great livestream for the Y4 launch but it suddenly got canceled 3 days before the launch. Which is super wired and we will not know why it got canceled, all we can do is just hope we have a great CE5 launch livestream. -
#191 by ntk0701 on 25 Jul, 2020 21:44
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maybe it`s just because LM-5 is not that mature, you got the point.
Indeed, part of the reason why Shenzhou missions were live-streamed was probably due to CZ-2F's reliability, and it would be a disappointment of tremendous proportions if even they stop being live-streamed in the future. Here's hoping that we'll get as many live streams as possible for future high-profile missions, starting with CE-5 this November of course.
But crewed CSS mission mostly would go on CZ2F, so maybe the live stream would continue as normal I would say..
The strange thing about tianwen-1 launch is pretty obvious since LM5 Y3 is more dangerous than this Y4 mission, and Y3 still got livestreamed, and all the evidence before launch lead us to believe there will be a great livestream for the Y4 launch but it suddenly got canceled 3 days before the launch. Which is super wired and we will not know why it got canceled, all we can do is just hope we have a great CE5 launch livestream. -
#192 by edkyle99 on 25 Jul, 2020 22:54
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Of what are they afraid? We all know rockets fail, including the most reliable rockets, and from every country. Show it on a 20 second delay if you are afraid of actually showing a failure. It's not that hard. Rocket Lab didn't shirk. Roskosmos showed a Soyuz launch failure live while a U.S. astronaut was on board. NASA showed its failures on NASA TV, Arianespace too on its stream. Kudos to them all.
- Ed Kyle -
#193 by Zed_Noir on 26 Jul, 2020 01:25
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Of what are they afraid? We all know rockets fail, including the most reliable rockets, and from every country. Show it on a 20 second delay if you are afraid of actually showing a failure. It's not that hard. Rocket Lab didn't shirk. Roskosmos showed a Soyuz launch failure live while a U.S. astronaut was on board. NASA showed its failures on NASA TV, Arianespace too on its stream. Kudos to them all.
- Ed Kyle
My guess is that someone on the political side, not the launch and mission side. Have some last minute case of the nerves and not a good understanding that once you launch other people will tracked the flight from the pad to orbit. You can't hide a launch failure by not broadcasting. -
#194 by shijiav on 26 Jul, 2020 01:46
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Of what are they afraid? We all know rockets fail, including the most reliable rockets, and from every country. Show it on a 20 second delay if you are afraid of actually showing a failure. It's not that hard. Rocket Lab didn't shirk. Roskosmos showed a Soyuz launch failure live while a U.S. astronaut was on board. NASA showed its failures on NASA TV, Arianespace too on its stream. Kudos to them all.
As I said this tianwen mission might not be the "afraid-of-failure" stuff. You can imagine everything happening towards a great live stream suddenly got everything canceled (even personal live stream got blocked during the launch) 3 days before launch. If it`s really "afraid-of-failure" they won`t even bring those live stream vehicles at the beginning of July. There must something changed. But what is it...we will never know.
- Ed Kyle -
#195 by SciNews on 27 Jul, 2020 16:09
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Tianwen-1 rover tested in a simulated Martian landscape.
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#196 by luhai167 on 27 Jul, 2020 16:09
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Not really hiding, since Chinese media tend to report failures rather quickly. The only case I could think of is pictures of exploding rockets could be exploited as propaganda for the otherwise as political critique.Of what are they afraid? We all know rockets fail, including the most reliable rockets, and from every country. Show it on a 20 second delay if you are afraid of actually showing a failure. It's not that hard. Rocket Lab didn't shirk. Roskosmos showed a Soyuz launch failure live while a U.S. astronaut was on board. NASA showed its failures on NASA TV, Arianespace too on its stream. Kudos to them all.
- Ed Kyle
My guess is that someone on the political side, not the launch and mission side. Have some last minute case of the nerves and not a good understanding that once you launch other people will tracked the flight from the pad to orbit. You can't hide a launch failure by not broadcasting. -
#197 by shijiav on 27 Jul, 2020 21:38
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this remembers me of when I had a personal site in the early 2000s and I decided to go beyond the few information published by press agencies on the just-approved Chang'E lunar exploration program.
WOW look back at the information from 2003.
what I discovered was that a wealth of information was available in the form of technical papers in English or more often in Chinese. Online translator (anyone remembers Altavista's Babel Fish?) back then gave often unreadable results, but still allowed me to get some ideas (some correct, others not so correct...) of what was cooking in China. apparently my work was even mentioned in a session of the US Congress
I even found a few papers published in the 1960s. As far as I know no lunar exploration study has ever been acknowledged to have been carried out.
the site is still available on the Internet Archive
https://web.archive.org/web/20090902035119/http://utenti.lycos.it/paoloulivi/chinamoo.html
That is so-called "all according to plan"...
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#198 by luhai167 on 27 Jul, 2020 22:38
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I actually posed a photocopy of the article on a 2020 rover mission from 2003. Unfortunately no details was given in the article, it would be interesting to see how things morphed from initial studies in 2003 to when a plan was approved in 2016.this remembers me of when I had a personal site in the early 2000s and I decided to go beyond the few information published by press agencies on the just-approved Chang'E lunar exploration program.
WOW look back at the information from 2003.
what I discovered was that a wealth of information was available in the form of technical papers in English or more often in Chinese. Online translator (anyone remembers Altavista's Babel Fish?) back then gave often unreadable results, but still allowed me to get some ideas (some correct, others not so correct...) of what was cooking in China. apparently my work was even mentioned in a session of the US Congress
I even found a few papers published in the 1960s. As far as I know no lunar exploration study has ever been acknowledged to have been carried out.
the site is still available on the Internet Archive
https://web.archive.org/web/20090902035119/http://utenti.lycos.it/paoloulivi/chinamoo.html
That is so-called "all according to plan"... -
#199 by Phil Stooke on 28 Jul, 2020 00:02
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http://9ifly.spacety.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=93048&page=84#pid756198
This post on the Chinese 9ifly forum says (Google translation):
"The landing site was mentioned in the article "Running the Fire: Flying to "Utopia"" published by the China Aerospace Journal.
The preferred landing site for the "Tianwen-1" Mars exploration mission is located at the southern end of the Martian Utopia Plain, which belongs to the lowland unit of the late Hesperia period (110.318 degrees east longitude, 24.748 degrees north latitude). The alternative location is located in the southeastern part of the Utopia Plain, in the Erythian Volcanic magma flow zone, close to the entrance of the Erythian Volcanic magma into the Utopian Plain."
I have not been able to find the article but if anyone has a source I would like to know about it.
