Russia and China agree to build joint lunar space station

"Russia and China signed a memorandum of understanding on Tuesday to
set up an international lunar research station as both countries seek to
catch up with the United States in the space race.

Russia, which sent the first man into space during the Soviet Union, has
been lagging behind Washington and Beijing in the exploration of the Moon
and Mars.

Russia's space agency Roscosmos said in a statement that a memorandum
was signed by its head, Dmitry Rogozin, and Zhang Kejian of China's
National Space Administration (CNSA)."

See:

https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pac...-space-station

" writes:

Russia, which sent the first man into space during the Soviet Union, has
been lagging behind Washington and Beijing in the exploration of the Moon
and Mars.


/sarc

Clearly Russia needs to design and build a gigantic expendable liquid
hyrdolox rocket with strap on solid boosters and no viable second stage
in order to catch up. Building a heavy capsule by bolting together two
Soyuz spacecraft would also help.

Dave

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.

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.

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.

Regards
Frank

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