China Ready to Launch First Part of ISS Knockoff Tiangong This Year
July 27th, 2011
China is getting its own space station ready, since much of the rest of the world is participating on the ISS. The Chinese space station is called the Tiangong, which apparently means “heavenly place.” The Chinese space station will be much, much smaller than the ISS.
The ISS tips the scales at around 450 tons here on Earth. The Chinese station will weigh only 60 tons. It will have one primary module, which you see in the photo here. It will also have two experiment modules and extra docking ports for additional spacecraft.
China plans to launch the main module this year and two other modules will come thereafter. The docking hardware will allow the Chinese station to dock with the ISS, assuming the Chinese are invited to the ISS party.
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Categories: Strange + Wonderful Weird Science
It would be stupid for them not to join with the ISS unless there is some kind of safety benefit in having two functional space stations up there. Disasters at one might be reduced with resources from the other. Scientific experiments might interfere less too.
Actually this separate Chinese way of doing things reflects their erroneous perspective that they are the center of the universe and/or the fact that their space activities are actually a military operation. Perspective adjustments will come over time.
More people in space is a good thing and I’m glad to see the Chinese doing it too. Maybe they’ll scare the Americans and Russians and we’ll have a new space race with even more people going up. As long as things don’t get too heated, it would be a good thing.