In the new year, the "ambitious" India has set itself the goal of becoming a "space power" to "benchmark China" in this field. According to the Global Network, New Delhi announced that India will build the country's first space station in 2030 and will implement the "Gaganyan" manned spaceflight program this year. It is reported that in the concept of the chief design officer of the Indian space station, the space station weighs 20 tons and will be "settled" in an orbit 400 kilometers from the earth, which is almost a "replica" of the Chinese space station.
In addition, the Indian media gleefully said that from nuclear tests to lunar exploration missions to anti-satellite experiments, India has been following in China's footsteps, and since China's space station is about to be successfully completed, then according to the "laws of history", India will soon "catch up". China, India? I really don't know how this illusion came about.
It should be known that since China proposed the "three-step" strategy for manned spaceflight projects in 1992, from the launch of unmanned spacecraft to the astronauts' spacewalk out of the capsule, and then to the launch of the "Tianhe" core module into orbit, China has steadily gone for thirty years to lay a solid foundation for the construction of a permanent space station. India, which has not yet conquered manned space technology, where is the confidence to easily catch up with China? I haven't even learned to walk, and I want to run?
It is undeniable that since the beginning of the new century, India's economy has indeed achieved rapid development, and India, which is "benchmarking" China everywhere, does have a place in the international community. However, India's space industry is not yet on par with space powers like China. Many people may not know that if you want to build a space station in space, the technology that needs to be overcome is called "purgatory-level" difficulty, and the development progress of Indian spaceflight is still in its early stages.
The construction of the space station must have a heavy launch vehicle with strong thrust, and the load capacity launched by India's domestic carrier rocket is less than one-half of that of China's rockets, and it is impossible to launch the heavy space station modules into the sky in turn, let alone accurately dock the modules in orbit. In addition, in recent years, India's domestic rocket has repeatedly failed during the test firing process, and the Indian side has not yet completed the repair and upgrade of it.
In addition, the space station will be affected by the surrounding environment during space operation, which also means that the orbital position, material properties and state of the spacecraft are changing at any time, which in turn directly affects various experiments and operations. Therefore, during the flight of the space station, it is necessary to continuously adjust the orbital height, and the gravitational force of different positions will cause the orbital height of the space station to deviate by one thousandth of a thousandth. But in practice, even a one-thousandth error is not allowed.
This is because in the orbit of hundreds of kilometers from the ground, and the relative speed of several kilometers per second, as long as there is an error of one thousandth of the orbit of different space station modules, it means that the height difference between the two modules is at least a few hundred meters, so how can it be accurately docked? And this ability to accurately telemetry, precisely guide and precisely adjust the altitude of the orbit is not available in India so far.
In short, the early construction and later operation of the space station are worthy of the name of "difficult as the sky", which cannot be completed by moving the mouth. India's path to space has been fraught with surprises for decades, and the grand "moon landing" program has not been successful once. Hopefully, the Modi government will understand that "red eyes" and "bragging" are useless, and down-to-earth work is the real skill...