China Plans Ambitious Project To Build 1 KM Long Spacecraft, Experts Are Skeptic

The ISS will get a rival if China builds a spacecraft. (photo: NASA)

JAKARTA - China is considering plans to build a spacecraft that is nearly one kilometer long. The aircraft will be assembled in orbit and used for the future involving "space exploration and long-term orbital crew missions".

The funding agency of the country's Ministry of Science and Technology has proposed a five-year project to build an "ultra-large spacecraft". They have also asked scientists to research lightweight design methods to minimize spacecraft weight to reduce construction and launch costs as well as new techniques to safely assemble massive structures in space.

According to a report by the South China Morning Post, the proposal has been allocated a budget of 15 million yuan (IDR 33 billion). By comparison, the International Space Station, which is about one-tenth the size of the planned spacecraft, according to NASA costs about $100 billion to build, launch, and assemble.

Mason Peck, former chief technologist at NASA told Scientific American that while the project may seem like science fiction, it's worth it. He said the main challenge of building such a large structure was a matter of scale.

He also noted cost concerns and said building, and launching a structure 10 times larger than the International space station "would cost even the most generous national space budget".

On the other hand, Michael Lembeck, professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign told Livesciene that even if building such a gigantic structure was technically possible, in a practical sense, it might not be feasible due to the exorbitant cost of installation.

Prof. Lembeck compares the idea of building such a structure to trying to build the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek. He says it's a fun exercise to think about, but not feasible or realistic to actually achieve because of the limitations of our current technology.