Why is a private company building a crew capsule for? I dont think CNSA is in need for this since they already have a reliable one and CASC has already built and recently tested a much larger/mpre modern new generation crewed capsule which wîll enter service in a few years. So i wonder who this is for.
China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
Pretty sure this is a capsule for suborbital space tourism. The large windows (similar to those on the New Shephard capsule) are dead giveaways. If the development process result in successful designs, it would be interesting to see the pricing structures of these new tourism businesses relative to that from Blue Origin.
DBA has already launched a promotion, selling two suborbital flight tickets for 3 million yuan each. Beijing Traverser Manned Space Technology announced the same price, with its first flight planned for 2028. CAS Space, I believe, also mentioned 2-3 million yuan per seat.
On January 19, at 15:48, my country successfully launched 19 low-Earth orbit satellites for satellite internet into their predetermined orbits using a Long March-12 carrier rocket from the Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site. The launch mission was a complete success.
As Noether said, it is just suborbital afaik. I quite dislike the wording @CNSpaceflight used on Twitter, hence why I changed it to just say capsule. It makes it sound orbital for sure. Also good to see the success of the 19th group of the Guowang satellites.
Slight correction on this as well, it was 9 satellites launched, the 19th group of them though.
I will provide pictures tomorrow, three interesting things to note here. First, this was the second launch of commercially made Guowang satellites, Galaxy Space was behind this group. Second, certain weight saving measures have been implemented, with new structuring between the satellites, new wiring (I think patterns or lighter wiring maybe) and other measures. Third and final, leaving the assembly building and flying has been reduced to just four days, so the process is quite fast now.
Next launch should be a Pakistan payload on the Jielong-3 at sea, unless the CZ-7A is not delayed and we still see it launch. There is a five day or so launch window from what I can see for both, so we may just have to see which launches first. My bets would be on the Jielong-3.
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