China already has its own space station in orbit, but the country’s National Natural Science Foundation wants scientists to seriously consider what it takes to build an « ultra-large spacecraft with miles ».
The South China Morning Post reports that the application is one of ten research projects by the foundation’s math and physics department. Half of the proposals are funded at $ 2.3 million apiece.
That is obviously not enough yuan to actually build a small piece of a new space city and put it into orbit; such an endeavor would likely require several orders of magnitude more funding. The International Space Station, which only houses a handful of people, cost over $ 100 billion to build and operate in its first decade. Instead, the Chinese Foundation’s project would bring researchers together to study some of the technical challenges facing such a company. For example, a key concern would be to reduce the weight of the aircraft’s components, as such a large facility would require multiple launches of different sections that would later have to be assembled in orbit.
China is currently building its own Tiangong space station, which will be about a fifth the size of the ISS.
Larger space stations and cities have long been an integral part of science fiction. Some of the Earth-Moon life concepts and ideas that inhabit pop culture, and more serious discussions on the subject, can be traced back to Gerald O’Neill’s 1976 book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space.
O’Neill suggests three solar-powered designs that spin to create simulated gravity that could be placed at LaGrange points.
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, was largely inspired by O’Neill’s book and resorted to it when he came up with his own vision of moving a significant portion of mankind’s heavy industry from Earth to space.
Bezos envisions space stations and factories extracting resources from the moon and asteroids with the aim of reducing the environmental impact of such activities on the earth.
As China moves towards a space program closer to the vision of O’Neill and Bezos, we just hope it keeps an eye on all the space junk it could be causing.
China’s increased activity in space has caused some dismay in recent years when spent rockets and even a former small space station fell uncontrollably to Earth.
I have science, technology, environment and politics for media like CNET, PC World, BYTE, Wired, AOL and NPR covered. I’ve written e-books on Android and Alaska.
I’ve covered science, technology, environment, and politics for media outlets like CNET, PC World, BYTE, Wired, AOL, and NPR. I’ve written e-books on Android and Alaska.
I started reporting on Silicon Valley for the now defunct Business 2.0 Magazine in 2000, but when the dot-com bubble burst I was on a public radio station in the Alaskan Bush for three years.
When I got back to the bottom 48, I was a freelance writer on politics, energy, and the environment for National Public Radio Programs, and spent some time as an online editor for AOL and Comcast.
For the past ten years I’ve focused back on the world of technology.
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