EvilNalu t1_j1jlwwi wrote on December 24, 2022 at 9:55 PM

Reply to comment by rshorning in China hoping rocket that can send people to the moon will be ready to launch by 2027 by Saltedline

I'm really not sure what dozens of flights they would need. They know everything we learned in Gemini and more. They have an operational space station. All the remaining challenges are solved engineering problems that they just need to throw a bit of time, money, and effort at. It'll probably be a bit longer than 2027 but you are talking like they are in their infancy when they have a pretty well developed space program at this point.

rshorning t1_j1jp1rw wrote on December 24, 2022 at 10:19 PM

No, they don't know everything learned in Gemini and Apollo missions 6 through 10. Yes, some shortcuts can happen from that prior experience but China is still missing so much more too.

Going from orbital spaceflight to the Moon is as bit of a leap technologically as going from suborbital flight to orbital flight. There is a damn good reason why nobody has returned since Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt were last there. It is far harder than just money and theory.

Yes, China's space program is in comparative infancy for such missions. And this is literally going to the ultimate frontier of human existence. The more I learn about what was accomplished on Apollo and how much on a knife's edge they were with all that those Apollo astronauts did amazes me the deeper I go into the details.

Perhaps China doesn't care about the lives of its astronauts. Rushing to the Moon without those earlier test flights will just get people killed and mask other issues that need to be addressed. China also lacks traditions of pushing technology and creating innovation like will be needed on these missions. Simply copying what has already been done will not be sufficient for such a mission to the Moon.

EvilNalu t1_j1k4jrq wrote on December 25, 2022 at 12:25 AM

I'm not trying to take anything away from Apollo. But there's no reason the Chinese can't basically follow the Apollo playbook while adding improvements from the last 50 years of spaceflight. You keep talking as if they are so far away. They have landed on the moon and returned already. They just need to scale it up to include humans, which involves solved engineering problems. It's not easy or cheap but it's well within their mid term capacities.

rshorning t1_j1k6gp0 wrote on December 25, 2022 at 12:42 AM

> But there's no reason the Chinese can't basically follow the Apollo playbook while adding improvements from the last 50 years of spaceflight.

Which in turn would require dozens of test flights to get that capability.

> You keep talking as if they are so far away.

NASA is still close to a decade away from being able to duplicate the Apollo 17 mission. And they went to the Moon in 1969. This is not trivial nor easy and even NASA is going to be doing several test flights before actually landing. Why should CNSA be taking even fewer steps and being throwing caution to the wind for what is obviously an incredibly difficult task?

> They have landed on the moon and returned already. They just need to scale it up to include humans

It is not trivial to include crewed spaceflight. You completely miss the technical and engineering problems involved. Nor even really realize what was actually learned from Apollo and some pretty bad mistakes NASA made that could have and should have been fatal except for just plain dumb blind luck. These engineering problems are not wholly solved and really is something akin to creating an epic national monument that will be remembered for millennia to come. Like the Pyramids of Giza.

I am not saying this is impossible, but I am saying that it will take far more than you give credit here and these issues are incredibly daunting simply to return to the Moon by any nation. And China needs to develop this capacity themselves that they simply don't have right now. Copying and pasting engineering plans from another country simply isn't going to cut it here with this particular task.

EvilNalu t1_j1k8y09 wrote on December 25, 2022 at 1:04 AM

>Which in turn would require dozens of test flights to get that capability.

Of course there will be test fights involved in any program. No reason why it would take dozens. Several, like the Artemis program, is probably what we should expect.

>NASA is still close to a decade away from being able to duplicate the Apollo 17 mission.

NASA is not trying to duplicate Apollo. If they were they would be much closer.

I feel like at this point we are saying fairly similar things. There are engineering challenges that China is likely capable of solving in the medium term. We agree it's not necessarily easy but it also doesn't require any new breakthroughs.