China's Space Program News Thread

[Heliox]

Not to mention that China's actions are borne out of necessity. After all if you are excluded from the international space program, what are your options?

The international community should well understand who instigated this race and who threatened and/or is threatening who.

 

[weig2000]

These developments suggest fundamental long term plans for Chinese manned space program is being heavily revised. If China really does intent to land a man on Mars in 2033, that is a declaration of outright, no holds barred, space race with America.

This seems very analogous to Kennedy’s proclamation that american manned space program should be oriented towards landing a man on the moon within the 1960s. At the time he made this declaration, America was well behind the USSR in manned space capability. American was clearly not going to beat the Soviets to the next few major mile stones of manned space exploration. So Kennedy picked a very ambitious goal that is quite far away, so America has time to mobilizing greater technical and industrial resource to catch up.

Right now, China seems to be in the same position. If the US focus on returning to the moon, China would be well behind and has no chance of beating America. So Mars became the logical goal. It is also ambitious, and quite far away, so China has time to mobilize to catch up.

Mars 2033 is extremely unlikely, highly unrealistic, and totally unnecessary. Instead of focusing the nation's scientific and industrial resources on such a rather meaningless time-bound goal, it'll be a huge national distraction. I don't even think it can excite and rally much of the national support behind such a goal.

This would be projecting American thinking into Chinese. Come to think about it, a lot of the US's current extreme competition and angst against China is a reflection of its own insecurity and frustration with itself. China is merely an external object to channel that emotion and feeling.

 

[longmarch]

Mars 2033 is extremely unlikely, highly unrealistic, and totally unnecessary. Instead of focusing the nation's scientific and industrial resources on such a rather meaningless time-bound goal, it'll be a huge national distraction. I don't even think it can excite and rally much of the national support behind such a goal.

Totally agree! Moon or Mars, semiconductor on earth is more important.

 

[4Runner]

Mars 2033 is extremely unlikely, highly unrealistic, and totally unnecessary. Instead of focusing the nation's scientific and industrial resources on such a rather meaningless time-bound goal, it'll be a huge national distraction. I don't even think it can excite and rally much of the national support behind such a goal.

This would be projecting American thinking into Chinese. Come to think about it, a lot of the US's current extreme competition and angst against China is a reflection of its own insecurity and frustration with itself. China is merely an external object to channel that emotion and feeling.

Your assessment is too emotional and personal. If you look at China's history of space development, it is very rational and pragmatic. The accomplishments in the past 12 months are the results of decades of planning and execution. If you are ever involved in a large engineering project, you should know that planning is a necessity, while milestones may change due to unforeseen events. If the heavy lifters are about on schedule and CNSA funding is not disrupted, it is feasible that a manned trip to Mars starts around 2033. For a project of this magnitude, don't you think it would still be a monumental progress if it actually happens around 2037? What important is that this is getting onto the agenda and schedule. Space exploration is an on-going endeavor. One of the issues US faces is that there was no practical successor to Saturn V. And that created a huge gap. US is just starting to plug that gap in the last few years. I am actually very surprised that China could have caught up with US in space so fast so soon. Planning and execution matters as mush as past glories.

 

[weig2000]

Your assessment is too emotional and personal. If you look at China's history of space development, it is very rational and pragmatic. The accomplishments in the past 12 months are the results of decades of planning and execution. If you are ever involved in a large engineering project, you should know that planning is a necessity, while milestones may change due to unforeseen events. If the heavy lifters are about on schedule and CNSA funding is not disrupted, it is feasible that a manned trip to Mars starts around 2033. For a project of this magnitude, don't you think it would still be a monumental progress if it actually happens around 2037? What important is that this is getting onto the agenda and schedule. Space exploration is an on-going endeavor. One of the issues US faces is that there was no practical successor to Saturn V. And that created a huge gap. US is just starting to plug that gap in the last few years. I am actually very surprised that China could have caught up with US in space so fast so soon. Planning and execution matters as mush as past glories.

Emotional and personal? What are you even talking about?!

Accuse me of anything else, I'm totally fine.

 

[by78]

A shot of the moon taken by Shenzhou-10 back in 2013.

 

[Nutrient]

Just curious, has China taken a formal stance on off-world resources?

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are bound by the

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(Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies).

The treaty's first principle (in Article I) is "The exploration and use of outer space ... shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries ... and shall be the province of all mankind".

If Russia and China mine Phobos for the purpose of supplying the International Lunar Research Station, they can argue that their activities on the Martian moon are for the benefit "of all mankind".

 

[gelgoog]

It is not a big deal if they increased the CZ-9 diameter slightly. I doubt most of the tooling had been made yet anyway. They probably figured out the slight increase in diameter still fit whatever facilities and transportation they had built thus far. What is a big deal is switching to a new engine. From what I understand the YF-120 was basically complete. This will delay the whole project by up to 5 years I think. It typically takes 5 years to develop a new engine, but given China has a lot of experience with YF-100 and YF-120 I expect them to be able to do it in a year less. So maybe 4 years. It will also cost a lot. It typically costs around $5 billion USD in the West to develop an engine similar to this. The timescales they provided make sense since you have to add the time to develop the rocket itself and build the launch site on top of that.

China is not in a hurry to get to the Moon. The Chinese are not interested in firsts or whatever. This is just part of overall development plan. Comparing with Saturn V development time is meaningless since that was basically made on a war time emergency kind of situation plus the engine and rocket are much, much simpler. You cannot compare a gas generator engine with a staged combustion one. Also a lot of people talk about F-1 engine in Saturn V but even more amazing, to me, development back then was J-2 LOX/Hydrogen engine or RL-10. RL-10 is still in use today.

You know my opinion. I think any rocket larger than 921 aka CZ-5DY is a waste of resources. It will have limited uses. China would be better off investing in space nuclear or solar electric propulsion or something like that and make a more viable long term development plan than just making huge chemical rockets like CZ-9 which might fly once a year or worse like once every couple of years. Huge infrastructure spend on fabrication facilities, launch pads, transportation vehicles, and personnel for limited use resource. It never made any sense and is why Saturn V and Energia are dead while much older Soyuz and Proton still around.

I liked the proposal I saw a couple weeks back using a couple YF-120 engines to replace like seven YF-100 engines on a future replacement for 921 core module. That would use existing engine design on a mass applicable rocket and drive down cost of YF-120 engine by ramping up serial production. This YF-135 engine would have been a great idea if they had not spent money and time on YF-120 already. This shows China is willing to dump massive resources into the space program. Especially when you consider they also have new capsule and all sorts of other investments like the space station. I just wonder if these resources might not be better used elsewhere like the civilian aviation or semiconductor efforts which are a lot more meaningful and would boost the whole economy I think. These kinds of huge rockets which fly once a year are a financial and technological dead end in my opinion.

 

[voyager1]

Maybe this is expected as I am a fan of SpaceX, but i would love to see China (after mastering reusability) doing their own Starship-style architecture.

It would open whole new industries for space such as internet (ala Starlink), space manufacturing, military, habitats, rapid cargo deployment (miltary & civilian), telescopes etc.

 

[krautmeister]

Mars 2033 is extremely unlikely, highly unrealistic, and totally unnecessary. Instead of focusing the nation's scientific and industrial resources on such a rather meaningless time-bound goal, it'll be a huge national distraction. I don't even think it can excite and rally much of the national support behind such a goal.

This would be projecting American thinking into Chinese. Come to think about it, a lot of the US's current extreme competition and angst against China is a reflection of its own insecurity and frustration with itself. China is merely an external object to channel that emotion and feeling.

Your assessment is too emotional and personal. If you look at China's history of space development, it is very rational and pragmatic. The accomplishments in the past 12 months are the results of decades of planning and execution. If you are ever involved in a large engineering project, you should know that planning is a necessity, while milestones may change due to unforeseen events. If the heavy lifters are about on schedule and CNSA funding is not disrupted, it is feasible that a manned trip to Mars starts around 2033. For a project of this magnitude, don't you think it would still be a monumental progress if it actually happens around 2037? What important is that this is getting onto the agenda and schedule. Space exploration is an on-going endeavor. One of the issues US faces is that there was no practical successor to Saturn V. And that created a huge gap. US is just starting to plug that gap in the last few years. I am actually very surprised that China could have caught up with US in space so fast so soon. Planning and execution matters as mush as past glories.

How was his assessment "emotional and personal"? Seems rational and logical whether you agree or not. What I would say is that the American reaction to China's progress not only in space exploration but all other notable fields is "emotional and personal". This is something the entire world needs to pay close attention to because even seemingly harmless things like pure space research, can and will be used as an excuse to further ramp up military tensions.