China could be without emergency launch capability to Tiangong space station for months, leaving no rapid-response option for any new crisis following the Shenzhou-20 incident.
China faces temporary emergency launch gap after space station lifeboat crisis
5 Comments
Well well well, how can Mr Musk not be behind all these unfortunate events
It sounds like China’s contingency plan is working well. The space station crew has a capsule to return to Earth in an emergency.
It’s no shock to hear the Russians screwed up due to poor maintenance on old launch hardware. And space crap hitting a window on orbit? No shock there either. The space shuttle and space station got/ get hit all the time. The soviets had a capsule hit just a year or two back. Space is space.
So to be clear, they currently have a lifeboat capsule to replace the damaged one docked at the space station, which they managed to launch in just over half the time it usually takes, with the next one set to be completed months ahead of schedule. They are technically not meeting their usually safety requirements of having one ready to launch in case of emergency, but they are well on track to have the issue rectified.
China maintains a backup capsule for emergencies. China used the backup capsule.
Now you’re painting this as a disaster because their backup capsule worked as intended.
Does Starliner maintain a backup capsule? Or Orion? SpaceX probably could given they have plenty of hardware but they probably would have announced it if they did and they would probably expect NASA to pay them to provide that service.