China's Space Program News Thread

[AndrewS]

@Engineer

I recall the operative word I used was the number of engine launches, not rocket launches. Other launchers use a mish mash of engine types - which is why you have misunderstood.

Plus I expect an apology on the comment about my manhood, because that is below the belt for a professional forum

 

[plawolf]

Looking at lessons learnt from the space shuttle programme, with space travel, reusable does not necessarily lead to much if any cost savings.

Space rockets have too many critical parts, and suffer too much stresses during launch and re-entry to be economically turned around without massive safety liberties being taken.

To reduce risks to an acceptable level would require you to pretty much take the thing apart, thoroughly test all the key components, repair and replace anything that fails, and the put it all back together again. That can easily cost just as much, if not more than building a lighter disposable rocket with the same payload for less cost and in a shorter time.

Obviously technology has advanced significantly since the days the space shuttle was designed and built, but I am still dubious of just how much savings could be achieved building multi use rockets compared to disposable ones with even current cutting edge technology.

 

[AndrewS]

@plawolf

Those are legitimate points you have raised, but the reason why the Space Shuttle and previous rockets were so expensive - was because they weren't designed to tolerate some level of component failure - and therefore had to be absolutely perfect in every way.

That philosophy has been completely abandoned with the Falcon rockets eg. they are designed with the margins to tolerate multiple engine failures/restarts and to tolerate computing failures by having 3 commercial grade computers in a voting system.

So the idea is that the cost of preparing a used rocket for launch again is minimised like in the airline industry. Remember that a Falcon 9 rocket costs around $60Million, but the fuel cost is only $0.2Million.

Also note that the current Falcon 9 rockets already has lower launch costs than the LM-5/6/7 series of disposable rockets.

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

The Shuttle aimed for a unrealistic number of Reuses. I mean They aimed for a level of reuse equal to that found in a Boeing 707 with a flight a week. Each shuttle being rated for hundreds of flights and a very simplified servicing and turnaround, In reality Everything gained more and more complexity. The failing of the heat protection, the redesign of the SRB the destruction of the ET every launch kept driving the costs up.
By Contrast the reusability being aimed for for SpaceX and other concepts like Vulcan and Dreamchaser and others is much more scaled down.
first Although Musk as Spoken of unrealistic 1000 reuses It's more likely that the number of reuses will be a Dozen or so, this is realistic as the SRB proved one of the more reusable parts of the launch.
by keeping the intended number of recycling down the stresses placed on the launcher drop. Additionally for more extreme missions Falcon is disposable. Infact the last recovery was a surprise. they set it up but mostly just to see how close it could come.
Next is the scale of the capsules. The Dragon capsule, and Dreamchaser are far far smaller then the shuttle. The huge scale of the shuttle demanded large repair costs especially to the thermal tiles.
Remember the Hull of the Shuttle was Aluminum it requited the thermal protection system which was thousands of tiles that had to be replaced every time. And those Tiles were the ultimate failure of the shuttle. before the Columbia Tragedy there were other incidents of Debris damaging the Tiles Infact It was bassically Shear luck that kept it from happening sooner.
STS 27

On recovery the shuttle was found to have nearly been destroyed the only thing that saved STS 27 Atlantis was a singular Steel plate sandwiched between two aluminum plates. the heating had melted though the first Aluminum plate and the second Steel Plate but the heating had stopped before the final plate was melted.

by being smaller the heat shield are much smaller with a smaller number of potential for problems and need for repair. also note that in launch these capsules and space planes are placed on top so facing away from potential debris on launch.
Additionally Space X and Blue Origin are not done yet both are still refining there designs using lessons learned from there past recoveries to change the design. Remember in the past 5 years Falcon 9 has been redesigned a number of times and will continue to do so It's not a fixed mass production yet.

 

[Equation]

@Equation

The 500,000 cars er year is mostly for the Model X which is priced at $35K. That is comfortably below the $40K figure you mention for a hybrid - and note that those hybrids are way behind in terms of the interior information/technology systems as well.

With resuable rockets comes low cost space launches. I wouldn't be surprised if launch costs drop from the current $65million to only $10million in 5-10 years time.

That will spur a boom in space launches, which means room for a bunch more private space companies in the world.

Think of the current Airbus/Boeing duopoly, which COMAC is trying to challenge as there is certainly enough market demand for a third contender.

500,000 car per year IF the Model X proves to be popular around the world, in which I doubt. We already knew what happened in China when Tesla didn't reach it's sales target and Elon Musk knowing he needs that China market to succeed in order to keep his overrated Tesla afloat, got angry and started blaming on his own Chinese sales office instead of the market or how Chinese aren't interesting in his over price car.

Space launches in the US can only go up, not down. The costs to keep a good team of engineers, specialist, scientists, and the core manufacturer managers would drive the cost of those Space X launches up because as a "private" company they have to protect their profit margarine, otherwise it's back to the usual good ole corporate slashing cost (meaning lay offs or out sourcing to China).

Think of it as Airbus and Boeing are doing to cut company costs, therefore are losing good people and bringing in "cheaper" newer people to do the "same" amount of work as the more veteran one. And that's just the personnel department, we haven't even gotten into the material costs and continuing R&D cost.

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

I find the idea of the US outsourcing it's space program to the PRC about as likely as a flame thrower guitar in a petroleum drought. Cool idea but only if your into dystopian fiction. US law has and remains prohibitive against export of national defence technologies to the PRC, additionally the cost of manufacturing in the PRC has continued to rise along with cost of importation rapidly approaching a break even in some US states.
Cost of launches have placed traditional builders like ULA (Boeing and Lockheed Martin) under stress especially given mandates from congress and the sudden competition by a builder who under bids them for launches. The model that ULA has been operating from is the key issue for them, it's out moted vs newer younger builders. They have been operating under the concept of single source bidding where only their products have competed. They need to accept a competitive market now that means changing how things are done much like how Airbus changing the European Space agencies launcher from a distributed model of parts to a singular model in order to make a profit off the launches and actually compete. The truth is the US, Russians and Europeans have been operating under a government subsidies system to reduce the stress on rocket launches for decades. This is why inefficient modes of space launches have been the primary mode for decades. Now with increased budget crunches and the want to expand launches with ideas like global internet services based on satellites, it's becoming more nessisary to cut the cord.

 

[Engineer]

@Engineer

I recall the operative word I used was the number of engine launches, not rocket launches. Other launchers use a mish mash of engine types - which is why you have misunderstood.

I call that funny accounting. Basically, you are trying to artificially inflate the number of launches by a weird metric. Nobody counts number of launches by engines. One rocket equals to one one launch. Even if we were to go by your metric, Merlin still isn't the most launched engine.

Also, a rocket needing so many engines per launch tells you the engine isn't powerful enough. It is always better to have less number of engines. This is one reason why America was able to get to the moon and Soviet couldn't.

Plus I expect an apology on the comment about my manhood, because that is below the belt for a professional forum

I stand by my assessment. You should give me an apology instead.

 

[AndrewS]

@Equation

500,000 Tesla cars is not unreasonable when you consider that the US has vehicle sales of 17million per year, and they have a headstart in that market. That market is enough to keep them growing. However, I doubt they will have much of an impact on the larger Chinese auto market when facing the local Chinese competitors.

===

And I don't know where you get the idea that space launch costs can only go up in the US.

Arianne have recently brought out a new launcher which has substantially reduced launch costs, and they face the same labour/materials problem in Europe.

And SpaceX have already demonstrated that launch costs can go down in the USA, mainly with better design and manufacture. Remember that the supply of skilled labour is NOT fixed and more staff can be trained.

And remember that SpaceX have the lowest costs in the industry, so they can already have the highest profit margins of any rocket company. So they have no need to worry about their margins and it would make more sense for them grab as much market share and use that scale to lower costs/increase margins and then bankrupt their competitors.

Airbus and Boeing aren't good comparisons here, as both are mature companies with mature products which are technologically similar.

 

[AndrewS]

@TerraN_EmpirE

Yes, I agree that there is no chance that the US will support the Chinese space industry.

And yes, we are moving from a situation with a low number of predominantly government launches to one where the commercial world dominates. So anyone operating on the old model is going to be heavily disrupted.

 

[AndrewS]

@Engineer

The point is that mass production, standardisation, reliability and low-cost go hand in hand.

Therefore the number of engines produced and launched is a crucial metric because it is the engines which frequently cause launch failures.

So the number of engines produced/launched is NOT a funny metric as you call it, but a fundamental misreading of rocket reliability and economics.

And you also state that having a fewer number of engines is better than having larger numbers of smaller engines. Yet this is contrary to the philosophy of designing a rocket so that it can still succeed despite an engine failure. But the proof is that this design philosophy has resulted in lower launch costs than everyone else.

In the realm of rocket engines, reliability is more important than raw performance, particularly for a reusable rocket. And note that the SpaceX Merlin engines apparently already have a better reliability record than any other engine in existence.

So I do expect an professional apology from you for being wrong on the technicalities and also personally for using crude and uncouth remarks.