Author Archives: Gray Rinehart

Why does the Chinese military need a space station?

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Back in the early days of space launch, the U.S. conceived the idea of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, or MOL (pronounced “mole”), and built Space Launch Complex 6 at Vandenberg AFB from which it would be launched. But when unmanned satellites proved both capable and robust, DoD dropped the idea of a manned military outpost as both unnecessary and cost-prohibitive. The MOL program was cancelled, and SLC-6 mothballed until the next program came along.

I have to wonder, then, why the Chinese have apparently decided that they want to orbit a military space station as early as next year.

As I wrote yesterday in the Space Warfare Forum,

That’s right, folks: a Chinese MILITARY space station. Not a Chinese module on the International Space Station, not a Chinese civilian, scientific space station, but a Chinese MILITARY space station.

Here’s the story, complete with images of the model unveiled during Chinese New Year celebrations.

And here’s what we have in the works: .

Looks as if we’re giving up the high ground.

I haven’t seen much other discussion about this, and that bothers me. I can only hope that my old Air Force compadres are on the case, but keeping mum about it.

Meanwhile, maybe I’ll dust off the nonfiction space superiority book I wrote a few years ago and see if I can update it and interest someone in publishing it.

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Apollo Prep Mission, 40 Years Ago Today

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On March 3, 1969, a Saturn-V rocket lofted the Apollo-9 mission into earth orbit from the Kennedy Space Center, carrying astronauts James A. McDivitt, David R. Scott, and Russell L. Schweickart. This mission accomplished a number of objectives in advance of the first manned mission to the moon:

  • It was the first launch of the complete Apollo configuration, including the Command Service Module and the Lunar Module, aboard a Saturn V.
  • It was the first time a human crew tested the lunar module in space, with the first docking between the CSM and LM and the first time astronauts fired the LM ascent and descent engines in space.
  • On this mission, LM pilot Rusty Schweickart made the first EVA by an astronaut without being attached to spaceship life support equipment.
  • The mission tested the Portable Life Support System in space for the first time.

Apollo-9 was a great success, and paved the way for all the moon missions to come.

And in more space history with a lunar component: Ten years before Apollo-9, on March 3, 1959, the U.S. launched Pioneer-4 from Cape Canaveral in an International Geophysical Year launch. Pioneer-4 was the country’s first sun-orbiting space probe, and marked the first successful flyby of the Moon en route to another destination.

Now, if we could only get back there ….

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Recent Space History: Cometary Explorer Launched

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Five years ago today — March 2, 2004 — the European Space Agency launched their Rosetta space probe on an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana. Rosetta is headed toward comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which it should reach in 2014. Its study of the comet will include releasing the “Philae” lander.

(And, because I missed posting yesterday because of a raucous headache: 85 years ago yesterday, NASA astronaut “Deke” Slayton was born. I wrote an alternate history story which referenced an Apollo mission that never happened, but because of which Deke Slayton was a hero and inspiration to the main character. No one’s read that little story, because no one’s published it yet. But that’s how it goes.)

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Space History (That Repeats Again and Again)

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Fifty years ago today — February 28, 1959 — the Discoverer-1 satellite was launched by a Thor Agena rocket from Vandenberg AFB. It was the first joint U.S. Air Force/Advanced Research Projects Agency launch of a reconnaissance satellite — what would eventually become the CORONA satellite program.

Unfortunately, the Agena upper stage apparently malfunctioned and the satellite is believed to have landed near the South Pole. And fifty years later, the OCO satellite earlier this week also failed to make orbit — and ended up in the ocean near Antarctica.

I look forward to the day when space launch is routine and reliable — and if it can be affordable, too, so much the better.

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Angst Over North Korean Launch Prep

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So now the North Koreans are planning to get into space, and their preparations seem to be generating much higher levels of concern and much deeper analysis than the Iranian space launch the other day.

Here’s the Spaceflight Now story, which refers to the “105 ft. Taepo-Dong-2 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile disguised as a satellite launch vehicle.” Disguised? That’s an editorial comment, which is fine as far as it goes, but where was the same editorializing in reports of the Iranian launch? I don’t remember any. And why didn’t articles about the Iranian launch include quotes from Congresswoman Harmon about the dangers it represented?

(By the way, in case you’re wondering: yes, most of this rant is cross-posted in the Space Warfare Forum.)

The article discusses the link between ICBM technology and space launch technology in the first few paragraphs, whereas every article I saw about the Iranian launch buried that information at the end. It mentions that Iranian satellite technology may be involved, but not whether Iranian rocket technology may have been shared with the North Koreans. And the article goes into terrific detail about all the intelligence preparation for this launch — which may or may not be accurate, and I’m not telling — that again was absent in articles about the Iranian launch.

I hope — emphasis on hope — that these and other writers are waking up to the danger these launches in general present. I wonder, though.

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A Space Trifecta

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Three space-related items in today’s blog!

First, NASA is accepting votes and suggestions for naming Node 3 of the International Space Station (ISS). (Hat tip: Eric James Stone.) The four candidate names are Earthrise, Legacy, Serenity, and Venture. Quick, FIREFLY fans: which one do you think is winning? Here’s the link for casting your vote. (Voting ends March 20th, and the selected name will be announced in April.)

Second, five years ago today — February 26, 2004 — the ISS Expedition 8 crew made the first spacewalk outside a space station without a human crewmember inside. That is, C. Michael Foale and Alexander Y. Kaleri, the only two station inhabitants, were both outside the station at the same time.

Third, Spaceflight Now ran a piece based on a University of Arizona press release that, in my opinion, needed a little scrutiny. Entitled “Scientists find asteroids are missing, and possibly why”, the article makes two incredible claims in one paragraph:

[They] looked at the distribution of all asteroids with diameters greater than 50 kilometers, or about 30 miles. All asteroids of this size have been found, giving the UA researchers an observationally complete set for their study. Also, almost all asteroids this large have remained intact since the asteroid belt formed more than 4 billion years ago, a time record spanning all but the very beginning of solar system history.

First, how do we know that all asteroids larger than 50 km have been found? That’s a very definitely-worded claim. If it said “most” I would have no issue, but I’m skeptical. Second, I’m skeptical of the “almost all” claim as well, because there’s no way to say that the smaller asteroids we observe today weren’t once bigger asteroids that broke apart. Certainly the known 50 km asteroids have remained intact — we know that because they’re, well, intact — but to extrapolate that “almost all asteroids this large have remained intact since the asteroid belt formed” seems a big stretch. Am I missing something?

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Space Launch Again Proves to be Hard

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A Taurus rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base this morning, but it failed to put NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory into orbit. Launch personnel indicated that the payload fairing did not separate properly.

Here’s the Spaceflight Now “Mission Status Center.”

Launch vehicles are incredibly complicated machines, with thousands if not millions of things that could go wrong in construction, preparation, and launch. I consider it a minor miracle every time one of them does what it’s supposed to do.

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What Space Means to You, That You Might Not Know

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Twenty years ago today — February 14, 1989 — a Global Positioning System (GPS) Block-IIR satellite launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. That might not seem like a big deal, since there have been so many GPS satellites launched and so many are operational — but it gives us a chance to point out how vital GPS is to your life, in ways you might not even know.


(GPS IIRM artist’s conception, linked from the Lockheed Martin web site)

Sure, you know about GPS receivers that, combined with mapping software, can tell you where you are and guide you to your destination. Maybe you have a GPS receiver in your car, or even in your cell phone. But did you realize the GPS signal provides more than just position information? That even if you don’t use GPS navigation in your daily life, you probably depend on the system anyway?

One of the most important aspects of the GPS signal is precise timing. Remember the Chicago song “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” The National Institute of Standards and Technology does know what time it is, and measures that time very precisely. But it wouldn’t do any good for one office to know the precise time, so the timing signal has to be sent out everywhere to keep everything in synch. That’s one of the GPS system’s roles, to distribute that precise timing signal that allows our networked world to keep communicating. If I remember correctly, the 2nd Space Operations Squadron actually maintains the backup timing standard for the whole country, just so they can keep the GPS system clock accurate.

Imagine you’re at your favorite restaurant and have just enjoyed a fantastic meal — it is Valentine’s Day, after all — and you pay with your credit card. The little computer in the credit card machine has to communicate with the computers in the bank or credit card company in order to process your transaction. The problem is, computer signals are time-tagged and if the computers don’t agree on what time it is, they can’t understand each other. But because they have a timing standard, those computers can communicate reliably and your transaction can go through. (As long as you have money in the bank, of course.)

Think of the common things people do every day using networked computers: making credit card transactions, placing phone calls over computerized switches, looking at blogs and websites on the Net. All of those things depend on timing signals between the computers, and what keeps those signals consistent around the world is the GPS satellite constellation.

GPS: it’s not just for navigation.

So if you didn’t know, that’s what space means to you in your everyday life.

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