No. There is simply no good reason for the CZ-2 and CZ-3 to be cheaper vs the CZ-7. If those rockets are cheaper it will be because of lack of mass production of the CZ-7. They just for whatever reason won't increase the CZ-7 production rate and convert pads to use it.
China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
There's no reason why they can't ramp up their production and rate launch rate to be similar to the old hypergolic rockets. Just look at all this new private companies with much less funding and staff that are preparing to ramp up their lift rate to more then a dozen times a year, having factories that can produce hundreds of new engines and also doing working on brand new reusable rockets. Landspace's plan is to double their launches every year for the next 3 years. Cryogenic rockets give much better performance anyway. The better logistics you can get from consolidating everything to a standard technology and not having to deal with two wildly different engines and fuel types, one of which is very toxic and requires much more stringent safely measures should make up for it in the long run anyway.
It's not like I'm asking them to entirely move to cryogenic the year that the long march 7 came out in 2016, but it's almost 2024 and the long march 2/3/4 is still taking up more than half of China's launches. That's billions of yuan, thousands of people and massive factories all dedicated to a 50 year technology that's basically at a dead end.
There's also the long march 6 and 8.
There's other factors at play here. For one, consolidating all your logistics to support cryogenics will make all the other rockets cheaper. After all, that's two groups of factories, two different sets of tooling and engines, two groups of engineers working on two wildly different engine types that cannot benefit much from development on each other. For launch sites, that's two groups of different fuel that they have to store and support, one of which is very toxic. For training and talent it's not good too. That's lots of talented people working on a dead end technology, if someone was working on the long march 7 and figured out a way to chill the propellant more efficiently, that's knowledge that can be applied to every cryogenic rocket going forward, even to the Long march 9. If someone made an alloy that won't melt under liquid oxygen at 300 bar, that benefits all future cryogenic rockets, because they're all working with liquid oxygen. Meanwhile any improvements to N2O4 / UDMH fuels or engines will be solely limited to the long march 2/3/4 and ICBMs.
Just look at the private space sector, they get most of their staff from the government space sector. Imagine a very talented engineer wants to jump ship to a private company, issue is that he has worked on hypergolic fuels and engines for most of his career and his skillset isn't the most useful, thus his talents are wasted on an obsolete technology.
Cryogenic rocket give much better performance anyway. Sure the long march 3 is cheap, but it's useless if you want to launch a single payload of >5 tons into LEO.
You could use for the "Cheaper" argument for literally anything. Why use guns, just pick up rocks from the ground and throw them at the enemy. Infinite ammo. Why develop cars when legs are free? Why develop farming when you can pick up free fruits and vegetables in the forest? I don't think a single new techologny in history started off cheaper or better, the prototypes always costed more and were worse and only became cheaper and better once more developed.
Landspace is planning for a fully reusable Starship like rocket by 2030
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I mean, the "reason" why they can't can probably be best summed up as "moar money needed".
Being willing to front the costs for it, even if it will yield substantial cost savings down the line, for an industry that to be honest is relatively nascent until the last decade and until the last few years was mostly for pursuing limited scale satellite launches and some glorified science experiments, is quite different to "let's think about how we can annually launch the fully loaded tonnage of a supercarrier and all the opportunities that can open up".
I am aware. Whether they can attain it is another matter, and let's be honest CZ-9 remains the most high profile super heavy for now.
It is still an accident waiting to happen. They keep launching hypergolic rockets in inland sites close to the general population.
Wenchang space center was built, and you have Long March 5 and 7 rockets. But for whatever reason the inland sites weren't properly upgraded to use the new launchers.
Even if they plan to move space launch to Long March 10 in the long run, or whatever, they should have at least built one or two inland sites for Long March 7 and ramped up the launch cadence at Wenchang with Long March 7. Long March 7 was first launched in 2016 even. They had seven years to do this already.
Wenchang space center was built, and you have Long March 5 and 7 rockets. But for whatever reason the inland sites weren't properly upgraded to use the new launchers.
Even if they plan to move space launch to Long March 10 in the long run, or whatever, they should have at least built one or two inland sites for Long March 7 and ramped up the launch cadence at Wenchang with Long March 7. Long March 7 was first launched in 2016 even. They had seven years to do this already.
If the Tianlong-3 could be launched on time at June 2024 (even delay for few months). It will be a milestone for the private sector which marked that they have catched up with the national team at least on the LEO capabilty. Also the production for the TL-3 is massive, 3 for the first batch, 10+ for the second batch in 1~1.5 years. Which surpass the CZ-5,7,8's rate greatly.
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First they need to develop a reusable rocket, secont they need stable payloads to be launched.
It's time to develop the Chinese version of starlink. A commercial satellites communication network will offer the rocket ventures a stable launch market and help them quickly iterate on new technologies.
escobar
Brigadier
True. Currently the demand is way higher than the supply. Commercial sats usually need to wait 1.5 years to be launched. So much bottleneck that an official from CGSTL commented that the company could expand their business into launch services, aiming to solve China’s “launch bottleneck”.
I think PLA is already testing LEO comsat for the space backbone of its Multi-Domain Precision Warfare like US SDA Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture/JADC2. Since August 2021, CN gov launched 12 LEO test comsat. Most of them are in altitude and degree inclination different from the what we have seen for GuoWang-2/A59 ITU filings.
According to NOTAM information, there will be a reusable spaceplane launch from JSLC on Dec 14.
A3948/23 NOTAMN
Q) ZLHW/QRDCA/IV/BO/W/000/999/3845N10742E030
A) ZLHW B) 2312141401 C) 2312141710
E) A TEMPORARY DANGER AREA ESTABLISHED BOUNDED
BY:N3829E10749-N3824E10810-N3840E10818-N3850E10759-N3905E10713-N384
3E10703,BACK TO START.
VERTICAL LIMITS:SFC-UNL.
F) SFC G) UNL
A3950/23 NOTAMN
Q) ZLHW/QRDCA/IV/BO/W/000/999/3751N10944E017
A) ZLHW B) 2312141401 C) 2312141714
E) A TEMPORARY DANGER AREA ESTABLISHED BOUNDED
BY:N3737E10956-N3753E11004-N3804E10932-N3748E10924,BACK TO START.
VERTICAL LIMITS:SFC-UNL.
F) SFC G) UNL
A3948/23 NOTAMN
Q) ZLHW/QRDCA/IV/BO/W/000/999/3845N10742E030
A) ZLHW B) 2312141401 C) 2312141710
E) A TEMPORARY DANGER AREA ESTABLISHED BOUNDED
BY:N3829E10749-N3824E10810-N3840E10818-N3850E10759-N3905E10713-N384
3E10703,BACK TO START.
VERTICAL LIMITS:SFC-UNL.
F) SFC G) UNL
A3950/23 NOTAMN
Q) ZLHW/QRDCA/IV/BO/W/000/999/3751N10944E017
A) ZLHW B) 2312141401 C) 2312141714
E) A TEMPORARY DANGER AREA ESTABLISHED BOUNDED
BY:N3737E10956-N3753E11004-N3804E10932-N3748E10924,BACK TO START.
VERTICAL LIMITS:SFC-UNL.
F) SFC G) UNL
escobar
Brigadier
With the launch of YG-39 Group 5, SSF complete the deployment of the second gen of SIGINT constellation at 35-degree inclination. Fist gen is YG-30 (30 sats lunched in 4 years, from Sep-2017 to Sep-2021). In each triplet, The sats settled into formation, spaced at 120º intervals around the orbit (giving the constellation a revisit time of 30 minutes for most locations falling within its visibility range.) with an altitude of 600km . Sats are built by Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of CAS.
2nd Gen is YG-35/36/39 (45 sats launched in 2 years, from Nov-2021 to Dec-2023, built by CAST-DFH and SAST) with an altitude of ~500km and 35° inclination. Each group will pass over the same points above Earth at different times, providing more frequent coverage over areas of interest. In Each triplet two satellites line up along the orbit at a distance of 15–20° from each other, and the third, using a low-thrust engine, tries to stay close to the tail spacecraft of the main pair. The system has five orbital planes, spaced by 72° in the longitude of the ascending node, each with three groups of satellites, spaced by 120°.
So the two constellations are likely for collection and monitoring radio and radar signal (early warning radars, air defense and missile defense radars, missile telemetry, COMINT, etc..) The presence of additional optical or SAR surveillance equipment on the satellites cannot be ruled out. The choice of 35-degree inclination orbits is interesting. It provides coverage of the world’s major population centers as well as the most frequented shipping lanes including areas of interest like the South China Sea, North Korea, the entire continental U.S. and the Chinese mainland. Yaogan-30/35/36/39 provides china with a powerful tactical and strategic tool in the form of near-continuous insight into activities across the world’s oceans and geopolitical hot spots.