Chinese Space Programme moving ahead steadily.

[MKSheppard]

Anyone remember the last words in Apollo 13 where Hanks as Lovell narrates:

I sometimes catch myself looking up at the Moon, remembering the changes of fortune in our long voyage, thinking of the thousands of people who worked to bring the three of us home. I look up at the Moon and wonder, when will we be going back, and who will that be?

The answer of course is increasingly looking like: "The Chinese".

Link

BEIJING — China said Wednesday that it planned to complete a manned space station around 2020, as the Asian nation pushes ahead with its ambitious space exploration programme.

China's Manned Space Engineering Project announced in a statement that it expected to launch a space laboratory before 2016 to study key technology involved in a space station, such as living conditions for astronauts.

The country would then develop and launch a core cabin and a second laboratory module around 2020, which would be assembled in orbit into a space station, it added.

The station would study technologies involved in long-term manned space flights, the statement said.

China had already announced plans to launch two unmanned modules next year, which are expected to undergo the nation's first space docking -- an essential step towards building the space station.

These steps are all part of the nation's ambitious space exploration programme, which experts say it wants to put on a par with those of the United States and Russia.

China sees the programme as a symbol of its global stature, growing technical expertise, and the Communist Party's success in turning around the fortunes of the formerly poverty-stricken nation.

The nation became only the third in the world to put a man in space independently -- after the United States and Russia -- when Yang Liwei piloted the one-man Shenzhou-5 space mission in 2003.

And in September 2008, the Shenzhou-7, piloted by three astronauts, carried out China's first space walk.

China has also made strides in lunar exploration, aiming to become the second country to put a man on the moon.

It launched its second lunar probe on October 1, hopes to bring a moon rock sample back to Earth in 2017, and has planned a manned mission to the moon for around 2020, according to state media.

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[Crossroads Inc.]

The single largest problem to going back to the moon is rebuilding a lunch vehicle with the power of the Saturn V as far as I know we don't have the full specs on how to build those engines anymore.

[phongn]

The single largest problem to going back to the moon is rebuilding a lunch vehicle with the power of the Saturn V as far as I know we don't have the full specs on how to build those engines anymore.

You rang?

[TimothyC]

The single largest problem to going back to the moon is rebuilding a lunch vehicle with the power of the Saturn V as far as I know we don't have the full specs on how to build those engines anymore.

You rang?

Not just that, we have the blueprints for both the F-1 and J-2 engines used on the Saturn V in storage.

[MKSheppard]

You mean the program that Obama cancelled?

Remember to Obama; the moon is "Been there, Done that"

But don't worry! The spirit of Werhner von Braun lives on in MSFC -- they've recently stopped looking at 70 tonne to orbit vehicles and are now looking at 100 tonne designs....pretty soon we'll end up with either Saturn V Block II or Ares V Block II -- albeit with a ten year delay tacked on due to Obama cancelling Constellation and forcing us to square one again.

We should know by January 2011; the NASA Auth bill required a report on HLV solutions within 60 days of bill passage.

[MKSheppard]

Not just that, we have the blueprints for both the F-1 and J-2 engines used on the Saturn V in storage.

Rocketdyne mothballed the F-1 with an eye towards restoring production with a very intensive "F-1 Production Knowledge Retention Program" that went so far as to record on tape the reminscensces of engineers over particularly tricky problems. In 1992 they seriously investigated restart of production for a failed NASA "space vision" -- the Space Exploration Initiative -- that never went anywere.

The J-2 lives on in an extensively modified form as the J-2X -- to meet current NASA safety specs and a restart in space after quite a while (Months) cold -- the original J-2 only had to start about 2-4 hours in space cold.