Musk will happily trigger Kessler syndrome to prevent competition.
China will be blamed, of course.
We won’t get Kessler syndrome from a bunch of low flying satellites as they can’t stay in orbit for very long and we know where they’re all at.
That would be funny given that US is the most reliant on space based tech militarily.
Great, pretty soon every regional power will launch thousands of satellites to pretend to build their own satellite internet.
Fun fact: The aluminium from satellite parts burning up in the atmosphere kills the ozone layer.@yogthos And then the upper stage blew up, creating a debris field of more than 700 objects that now threatens satellites in the same orbit:
reuters.com/technology/space/c…China has a really bad track record with their stages. They have launch sites where they drop the first stages on land - sometimes hitting or almost hitting villages (which is really bad as many of these stages use toxic propellants). Their upper stages re-enter the atmosphere in an uncontrolled way (most other rocket launchers do this in a controlled way and let them re-enter at “Point Nemo”).
It looks like they haven’t launched any yet? It’ll be interesting to see if they can since they don’t have a cheap launch vehicle.
A bunch of Chinese companies are already working on launch vehicles comparable to Falcon 9. It’s not gonna be long before parity is reached.
Yeah, I’d guess about 10 years, since that’s about how long it took SpaceX to get cheap falcon 9.
First of all, it always takes longer to do something the first time because you don’t know what the best way to do it is. That means having to do a lot of experimentation, and having false starts. Once a particular approach is proven, it takes much less time for competitors to follow it. This has been a constant with every type of technology out there.
Second, it’s not like Chinese companies are just starting today. There are already plenty of companies that have functioning prototypes of reusable rockets that are actively being tested today. Here are a couple of examples for you:
- https://spacenews.com/chinas-landspace-conducts-first-vtvl-test-for-reusable-stainless-steel-rocket/
- https://www.space.com/chinese-company-vertical-rocket-landing-tests-video
You’d think people would learn from the way Chinese companies were able to dominate in areas like solar panels, EVs, battery tech, and are now catching up in chip manufacturing. In every one of these cases, exact same arguments were made, and China shocked westerners by how rapidly it was able to develop these technologies.
Yeah those tests are why I put them at the falcon 1 test flight stage generously. It was 10 years from the last flight of falcon 1 to the first flight of falcon 9 block 5, which is where reusability really started to kick in.
Sure there is a follower advantage, but I don’t know if they can make full use of it since they won’t be able to head hunt talent as much as a US company. Itar might also make it more difficult to use the same suppliers and methodology for a more direct copy.
I’m sure they’ll come up with something pretty cheap eventually, but I think it’ll still take a while for economic rapid reuse.
It will take a few years to develop, but as I’ve already pointed out, China has a good track record of producing advanced technology much faster than anybody expected. Meanwhile, if there is strategic value in having these types of low orbit constellations then the government will eat the cost until reusable rockets become available.
strategic value
What’s the strategy?
Same as what US is using them for in Ukraine for example.
Yeah I suspect that’s what will happen. They’ll launch these satellites on their non-reusable long matches until they eventually have a cheaper reusable capability. I guess we’ll see how long that will be.
You’d think people would learn from the way Chinese companies were able to dominate
People underestimate the power of forced labor, slave labor, prison labor, etc. It can really help an empire waste resources and destroy the planet much faster.
- https://www.businessinsider.com/forced-uyghur-labor-china-solar-panel-supply-chain-research-report-2022-11
- https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/20/business/economy/forced-labor-china-supply-chain.html
- https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-suppliers-linked-forced-labor-china-watchdog-group-says-rcna16452
I love how this idiocy has been debunked so many times now, and yet here you are regurgitating it once again. I guess you just need to believe in the atrocity propaganda because you can’t accept the fact that your shithole country can’t compete with China. All these stories ultimately trace back Zenz who is an utter nutcase. And right wing fundamentalists are your source for news about China, then what else is there to say about you as an individual.
CHRD states that it interviewed dozens of ethnic Uyghurs in the course of its study, but their enormous estimate was ultimately based on interviews with exactly eight Uyghur individuals. Based on this absurdly small sample of research subjects in an area whose total population is 20 million, CHRD “extrapolated estimates” that “at least 10% of villagers […] are being detained in re-education detention camps, and 20% are being forced to attend day/evening re-education camps in the villages or townships, totaling 30% in both types of camps.” Furthermore, it doesn’t even make sense from logistics perspective.
Practically all the stories we see about China trace back to Adrian Zenz is a far right fundamentalist nutcase and not a reliable source for any sort of information. The fact that he’s the primary source for practically every article in western media demonstrates precisely what I’m talking about when I say that coverage is divorced from reality.
Zenz is a born-again Christian who lectures at the European School of Culture and Theology. This anodyne-sounding campus is actually the German base of Columbia International University, a US-based evangelical Christian seminary which considers the “Bible to be the ultimate foundation and the final truth in every aspect of our lives,” and whose mission is to “educate people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ.”
Zenz’s work on China is inspired by this biblical worldview, as he recently explained in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “I feel very clearly led by God to do this,” he said. “I can put it that way. I’m not afraid to say that. With Xinjiang, things really changed. It became like a mission, or a ministry.”.
Along with his “mission” against China, heavenly guidance has apparently prompted Zenz to denounce homosexuality, gender equality, and the banning of physical punishment against children as threats to Christianity.
Zenz outlined these views in a book he co-authored in 2012, titled Worthy to Escape: Why All Believers Will Not Be Raptured Before the Tribulation. In the tome, Zenz discussed the return of Jesus Christ, the coming wrath of God, and the rise of the Antichrist.
The fact that this nutcase is being paraded as a credible researcher on the subject is absolutely surreal, and it’s clear that the methodology of his “research” doesn’t pass any kind of muster when examined closely.
Meanwhile, US of A is where actual documented slave labor is happening https://apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-investigation-c6f0eb4747963283316e494eadf08c4e
