Why China's Shenzhou is Better Than Russia's Soyuz

If those ex-Soviet engineers are anything like me, they spent the whole time telling their Chinese counterparts: "And I wish I had done this differently, and this, and this ...."

I was in primary school in Shenzhen, Guangdong when Shenzhou 5 launched, and on that day the school made all the students gather in the multimedia room (which is like a big big room with projectors and a stage and seats enough for the whole school) and cancelled all the classes for the period when the event is broadcast live on TV. That sure was a good day of no classes, but it also kinda sparked my interest in spaceflight, which I kept to this day.

Must be amazing to have the space to safely land a new spacecraft, Here in the U.K. the largest area we have uninhabited and empty is the trophy room at Bournemouth Football club

"Better not to piss in diaper, baby doesn't like it, neither does an adult" has to be one of the best lines ever spoken about human space exploration

Several years ago I was in Shanghai for business and being the geek I am visited the science center. They had a massive display about the Chinese space program. I was embarrassed in how little I knew about what their program had accomplished, it was quite impressive.

There is way too little talk and information about chinese space program in the english speaking internet. Very happy to see you take this up and I hope you cover their other projects as well.

I recently read a lovely illustrated history of the Soviet manned space program and I'm struck by how much Shenzhou resembles the original proposals for Soyuz that were subsequently scaled back, particularly the orbit module.

This happened 200 years ago with steam locos. The US, new to industrialization, imported Scottish and English locos to get their first RRs operating. US machinists had to fabricate spare parts...then back engineered cloned, but the clones eventually were improved. Then they became specialized to the frontier terrain that did not exist in Britain or France....becoming a much more capable loco line for the purpose...and Beitish machine shops started integrating some American innovations to incorporate into their colonial Empire railways. Eventually at the end of steam Britain had some beautifully elegant, fast but quaint engines to pull trains through the rolling English countryside. The US had Big Boy and Challengers to drag mile long teains over the Allegheny and Rockys.

The clever thing about the three-part solution is that the landing capsule can maintain its position relatively easily thanks to the simultaneous separation, because the recoil from the two separated parts is roughly equalized. I seem to remember that American engineers were also very enthusiastic about this solution. (It's like when the American re-engineering of the Soviet test space plane BOR-05 revealed that the Soviets had recognized and used principles that were still unknown to the Americans. As Scott last year showed, the resulting model developed at Langley became the mockup for Dreamchaser).

Those orbit modules are pretty cool. You could build a little bit of a space station by just docking them up and leaving them up there after each mission.

10:20 That wound was caused by his mic hitting his lips on ship landing. The most dangerous period in SZ5 is actually during its ascend, the ship was resonantly vibrating with rocket at 30-40K height, and Yang described his experience as "my organs being shaken into piece and when that was finally gone I feel revived". He and other Taikongnauts are really heroes for us.

I remember watching the broadcast of Shenzhou 5 as a kid on the bus home from school. I stayed glued to that tiny TV, missed my stop, and had to walk half an hour back. That day kindled my passion for space. Today, an experiment I designed just went on a "zero-G" parabolic flight. If I keep up the good work, perhaps one day my work will be on a real spaceflight. Also fyi: Shenzhou in Chinese means Divine Vessel. Mengzhou means Dream Vessel, and the space station, Tiangong, is Havenly Palace, or more directly translated as palace in the sky. Lots of mythological references, just like Japanese and Indian space programs, which I enjoy.

I was in elementary school in 2003 and I am sure we all watched Shenzhou-5 mission live on School's television that year. The false alarm happened during EVA in Shenzhou-7 was also live on TV.

1:38 Project or rather “Program 863” stands for the year 1986 - March. It’s actually a big program not just for manned space missions but also covers a long list of important state funded projects in areas including space, biotech, IT, material science, etc.

I like that you are able to compliment another country's progress without judgement. Great job. I loved this video.

I'm guilty of being one of those who thought Shenzhou was simply a slightly enlarged Soyuz, but there are so many obvious differences now that you've pointed them out. Watching the last landing coverage on the English language Chinese channel, I was intrigued by the Gamma ray altimeter. I'm sure that's a Soyuz feature too, but I'd love to know why gamma-rays are "better" than laser altimetry, especially with all the precautions required to keep recovery crews out of harm's way until the gamma source is appropriately obscured.

May be because Shenzhou is at least 40 years newer than Soyuz ))))

Always great content and contextual coverage - thank you!

Also interesting to note that the taikonauts that flew on Shenzhou 6 and 7 became one of the first commanders of the Tiangong Space Station over 14 years later

Interesting video thanks for sharing Scott