China to mass produce Shenzhou spaceship
26/9/2008 17:53
China will begin the mass production of its Shenzhou (Divine Vessel)
spacecraft starting from Shenzhou 8, the chief designer of the spacecraft system
of China's manned space program told Xinhua today.
Zhang Bainan said the
mass-produced model will serve as a shuttle between China's space station and
the ground, and may also transport astronauts and cargo for other
countries.
The ground test is already being done on the prototype of the
Shenzhou 8, He said, adding that a raft of ground tests and the seven successful
outer space missions from Shenzhou 1 to Shenzhou 7 have laid "solid technical
foundation" for the confirmation of final design.
After Shenzhou 6 blasted
off Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng into outer space in 2005, the two astronaut,
together with China's first taikonaut Yang Liwei, proposed many changes to the
design of spacecraft. The upgraded Shenzhou 7 that is now running smoothly on
its projected orbit, for instance, contained more than 220 improvements, big or
small, based on Shenzhou 6.
"We have been very open-minded in absorbing the
input from all fields concerned for better design and function. This explains
why our spacecraft technology has developed rapidly," Zhang said.
The
finalized model would look roughly the same as the current one in use, but its
interior decoration would be much comfier, he noted.
He revealed that the
finalized model, highly home-made, should be safer, more reliable and able to
support three astronauts to fly for seven days and complete the task of space
station docking. "The mass production would also allow intensive launch in a
short period of time," he said.
Apart from finalizing the model of China's
manned spaceship, another mission of the Shenzhou-8 was to seek for a
breakthrough in the orbiter docking technology, a must step for the ultimate
goal of building a permanent space laboratory and a space engineering system
that allow astronauts to conduct scientific experiments of larger scale.
The
transportation vehicles currently in use between space stations and the ground
are mainly space shuttles of the United States and Russia's Soyuz
spacecraft.
Chinese technicians would make a history if they could finalize
the design of its manned spacecraft after launching only eight space vehicles,
he said.
Before China commenced its space program, scientists and engineers
had fierce debates in early 1980s on what kind of space vehicle to choose for
China's space program. Spacecraft won out as a "consensus" for its lower costs
in R&D, maintenance and operation costs as well as its higher feasibility
based upon China's then technical capability.
Xinhua
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