: Technical and political obstacles block collaboration following suspected space debris strike on craft
“Musk has swooped in to action to assist by calling the trio ‘pedophiles,’ gave a few Nazi heil salutes, and then dove back face first into a human-sized pile of Ketamine. Thanks Elon!”
SpaceX fans quickly began calling for a rescue mission.
I don’t see anyone of relevance here calling for this. If China asked, then sure. But China is very unlikely to do so, since they have more spacecraft available that are already designed to do this. If there were some sort of design problem with Chinese spacecraft that made them unsafe to use, if they were “grounded”, then maybe China would do that. But as far as I understand, it’s believed that the problem is from debris. So they don’t really have any reason not to just use their own spacecraft. And I’d guess that even aside from dealing with any spacecraft linkage challenges, they’d probably rather not have SpaceX do a rescue mission unnecessarily for prestige reasons.
its worse than just that, read the last 2 paragraphs…
The incident, which comes less than a year after SpaceX’s “rescue” of the Boeing crew, underscores two increasingly critical issues: spaceflight systems need to be standardized to enable cross-nation rescues, and space debris is becoming impossible to ignore.
The irony wouldn’t be lost on Reg readers if the debris that - possibly - struck Shenzhou-20 originated from a Chinese anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) test years ago.
Oopsie daisy!
SpaceX fans quickly began calling for a rescue mission.
I don’t see evidence in the article of anyone calling on them (SpaceX and Musk) for a rescue: not even the anonymous fans. There is only the unsubstantiated claim. And I don’t see even a claim that anyone other than the alleged anonymous fans are calling on them.
Wow what a nothing burger of an article
Then there is docking. Despite claims China copied the docking system used by SpaceX and the ISS - published international standards are readily available - China’s orbital implementation likely won’t mate with Crew Dragon hardware.
So a spacewalk then? SpaceX demonstrated EVA capability in 2024 when Jared Isaacman exited through Crew Dragon’s nose. However the Chinese crew’s launch suits aren’t spacewalk-rated, and while Tiangong has Feitian EVA suits, they’re incompatible with SpaceX systems — and might not even fit through Crew Dragon’s hatch.
So a spacewalk then? SpaceX demonstrated EVA capability in 2024 when Jared Isaacman exited through Crew Dragon’s nose. However the Chinese crew’s launch suits aren’t spacewalk-rated, and while Tiangong has Feitian EVA suits, they’re incompatible with SpaceX systems — and might not even fit through Crew Dragon’s hatch.
Not that the SpaceX Dragon rescue will ever happen for other political reasons, but I don’t see space suits as a particular problem. Dragon is a 4 seater, and their are 3 Chinese Taikonauts. A Dragon, with one crew member, and 3 empty Dragon EVA suits could be flown up, the spare suits put in the airlock, and then the suits donned by the Taikonauts. We’ve had a piece of this already when Butch and Suni flew up to the ISS on Starliner, and then had to have Dragon suits (not EVA) flown up separately. Butch and Suni put the Dragon suits on and came back to Earth safely.
