China to study construction of kilometer-long spacecraft

The Chinese government is inviting scientists to help build a huge one kilometer (0.6 mile) long spacecraft it wants to build in orbit. The savage concept is to build a giant orbiting ship the size of 10 city blocks from components sent by rockets one piece at a time.

The concept is described in a project document from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (in the attachment titled “Guide to Major Projects of the Ministry of Mathematical Sciences”), which describes how the organization seeks proposals to build a ” ultra-large spacecraft with a size of one kilometer ”, claiming that this objective represents“ a major strategic aerospace equipment for the future use of space resources, the exploration of the mysteries of the universe and long-term life in orbit “.

The size and mass of such a spacecraft would obviously be enormous, making it impossible to build and launch it in one piece. Instead, the idea would be to design and build modules that could each be launched individually and then assembled into orbit. Therefore, the project is looking for two key factors: first, a lightweight design to keep the required number of launches as low as possible, and second, a smart design that can be easily assembled in space.

It will be a five-year project to develop the concept, according to the South China Morning Post, and five projects will be selected for development at 15 million yuan (US $ 2.3 million) each. This amount of funding is likely only the first step in researching the concept, as it is nowhere near enough to build and launch even a tiny spacecraft. This should only be preliminary research, to see if such a concept is even feasible.

China has made a big leap in space exploration in recent years. In addition to its Tianwen-1 mission to Mars, which includes a rover that China successfully landed on Mars for the first time and which recently saw its mission extended, there is also its Chang’e 4 mission from the other side of the moon that brought home a sample of lunar rock for the first time in over 40 years. And perhaps most importantly, there is the new Chinese space station which put its first module into orbit earlier this year, and which has already seen its first cargo mission and two spacewalks.

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