View Single Post
  #4  
Old March 10th 21, 12:08 PM posted to sci.space.policy
snidely
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,303
Default Russia and China agree to build joint lunar space station

Frank Scrooby was thinking very hard :
Greetings all,

much snipped

"memorandum of understanding" are easy and cheap to draw up, and look pretty
for the clueless press.

Bending metal and testing metal is expensive and hard. Getting said bent and
tested metal anywhere useful (preferably without killing a bunch of people)
is even more expensive and harder.

In short I'll believe it when I see it.

I don't doubt that that China and Russia have the knowledge and even some of
the expertise, but realistically:

What has Russia done in space in the last twenty years except build
cookie-cutter copies of the Soyuz and Progress, and their launch vehicle, and
mostly get them to ISS on time? No great interplanetary probes, no new
modules for ISS, no independent space station development.


New module for ISS scheduled to launch in July.

The Chinese launched a couple of people into space, and even a short lived
space station where (I think) 3 astronauts had fun and did experiments for a
couple of days. Then??? Nothing on the human in space front. No follow up
program, no Chinese astronauts going to ISS.


Moon lander, Mars orbiter with upcoming Mars lander attempt, a whole
flock of new rockets.

Musk and SpaceX have a better chance of building a lunar orbiting space
station first. Musk probably is spending more money on SpaceX that the
Russians are on their space program.


Russia does have a recent history of many new paper rockets, and budget
shortfalls have been blamed for workmanship issues. It looks like
Russia is spending $2 billion annually, or about 10% of NASA's budget.
The Starship development program bandies about a figure of $5 billion
to complete. (That's over about 5 years at this point, no?)


It is quite possible that Russia will provide the human space flight
expertise and China will provide the nav and guidance. It almost
certainly makes "far away" cheaper for Russia.

Musk is pushing an aggressive schedule, but the Chinese seem to be as
well. Make of it what you will.

/dps

--
"That’s where I end with this kind of conversation: Language is
crucial, and yet not the answer."
Jonathan Rosa, sociocultural and linguistic anthropologist,
Stanford.,2020