"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
dakotatelephone...

What I can't understand is what this whole thing is about; unless Tiangong
has some sort of a military mission it is to perform, it's so small as to
be pretty much worthless for a manned space station, or even building a
multi-modular design using this small of component modules - you would end
up making a large number of booster launches to build a little space
station where the crew would be constantly going through hatchways between
the small modules.
They really need something in the Proton payload capacity range to make
even a small station really practical.

It's pretty obvious that the size of the station is constrained by the size
of their launch vehicle. The first mission to their station will be
unmanned to test rendezvous and docking. Without first testing this
technique, it's a bit difficult to build a station with more than one
launch.

In other words, they're taking baby steps. They seem to be about as
advanced as the Soviets were in the early 70's (e.g. they're testing
unmanned docking similar to the first Progress docking to a Salyut). The
Chinese seem to lack a launch vehicle big enough to put a Salyut sized
station in orbit on one launch.

Jeff
--
"Take heart amid the deepening gloom
that your dog is finally getting enough cheese" - Deteriorata - National
Lampoon