China's Space Program News Thread

[Blitzo]

I have a book from 1972 that says that in the future there would be cities in the bottom of the ocean, doing this and that. It never happened.

Its not a matter of "if", its a matter of "its not".

Perhabs they are technologically viable, alright, but they will never be worth it. You dont need to develop a superheavy rocket to see this. Others have already done it. There is a reason that no one is heading this way, and i dont think that china will, either.

I think the current demonstrations by SpaceX with their current reusable vehicles and the active demonstrable investment and development into super heavy vehicles are a little more convincing than a passage from a book.

Will ever be financially viable? I don't know, but I think there's enough demonstrated to take it seriously and the consequences if it is financially viable means governments at least should hopefully be taking it seriously.

 

[Orthan]

I think the current demonstrations by SpaceX with their current reusable vehicles and the active demonstrable investment and development into super heavy vehicles are a little more convincing than a passage from a book.

We will see about that. I would really like to see spaceflight going beyond what it is today, mostly small orbital satellites and some scientific probes, but i very much doubt it, unfortunately.

 

[LST]

I have an anecdote about this. I was reading a forum years ago, when China first launched its manned missions. It was after Shenzhou 9 performed China's first manned docking. One American commentator, very familiar with technology, joked "Welcome to 1966." Lots of people laughed with him.

I didn't say anything, but in the back of my mind, I was thinking "America's manned space program ended around 1980, technology-wise." What do the Chinese have to do to catch up? At least in the public eye? Space station, lunar mission, a shuttle or mini-shuttle. They're on their way to doing all of these things.

China is not in a wasteful race. It will make all the achievements it needs to, on its own time. It is reasonable to try and catch up to the global benchmarks, set by countries who sat on their laurels for decades.

Anyway, the other posts demonstrated the complexity of the answer to your question. But behind it all, neither Russia or the U.S. have been pushing the limits in manned space, so catching up with / surpassing everyone is entirely possible for China. As they say, "slow and steady wins the race." [though it's not a race].

Thanks Surpluswarrior. I appreciate your response and could relate to it.

 

[gelgoog]

I think asteroid mining only makes sense if you intend to use those materials in orbit to begin with.
There is just too much delta-v differential to make an Earth-asteroid route viable.
Maybe with reuse (not just 10x reuse, more like 100x reuse) the economics will change but right now it is cheaper to mine things here.

 

[yt19967]

It's said that Chang'E-5 is going to be launched at 3:55 am in Nov.24th.Beijing time.

 

[Orthan]

This is a 2018 defenceworld article about russia and china developing liquid engines.

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Does anyone knows anything about what are those engines that they are talking about, and for what rockets they would be used for? or is this just another sino-russian techno-political project, going nowhere?

 

[escobar]

This is a 2018 defenceworld article about russia and china developing liquid engines.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Does anyone knows anything about what are those engines that they are talking about, and for what rockets they would be used for? or is this just another sino-russian techno-political project, going nowhere?

There is deep skepticism about cooperating with China inside the Russian space industry...

 

[taxiya]

The appearance of this rocket suggests that CZ-9 is/will get canceled. I doubt that china will develop two super-heavy rockets at the same time. That just doesnt make sense.

Some payloads, like a space shuttle class vehicle, or the soviet polyus battlestation, can only be launched with a cz-9 class rocket. But how many times do you need to do that? Unless china wants to build cities on orbit, i dont see any reason for launching it in meaningfull numbers to make it worth developing it, IMO.

In Chinese classification these two are different classes. CZ-9 is heavy lift in Chinese terminology, 921 is super large lift. There is no super-heavy class in China. Regardless the wording, you can see that they are doing different jobs in China's plan, LEO 70 tonne of 921 vs. 140 tonne of CZ-9 are really different things.

If CZ-9 is to be canceled, you would not have seen the works on YF-130 and YF-90 continue as planned. China is building the test facility for YF-130 as we speak.

Yes you are probably right that the number of launches of CZ-9 would be small, but you just can't launch something of 140t into earth orbit without breaking them into pieces which is impossible in certain critical mission. If breaking into smaller pieces work as magic, even 921 would be meaningless, same argument applies to any (American) super-heavy rocket.

 

[taxiya]

This is a 2018 defenceworld article about russia and china developing liquid engines.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Does anyone knows anything about what are those engines that they are talking about, and for what rockets they would be used for? or is this just another sino-russian techno-political project, going nowhere?

The specific agreement is about propellant, not any engine in development (in China at least).

There was rumor about Russian proposal of selling RD-170 or its derivatives for Chinese heavy lifters such as CZ-9. In its early proposals CZ-9 did call for a single engined booster configuration with the engine rated at more than 650t. But in later and present (final) configuration, it becomes 2x480t=960t per booster. No single engine in Russia can do that job, nor is China going to return to drawing board of CZ-9 to utilize any off-shelf Russian engines.

So I don't expect any cooperation between China and Russia in the field more than sharing of knowledge/experience and research consultation, that is to say no development cooperation of new specific engine in the foreseeable future (the 10 years). Russian consultation on the YF-130 and YF-90 is possible considering the Soviets experience gained from RD-170 and RD-0120.

 

[taxiya]

@Orthan
I also want to continue the subject of "necessity of CZ-9 class" as I missed to say in post #5820

CZ-9's future application includes "land on and return from Mars". The interesting thing about Mars and Moon landing and returning is the difference of the masses of the two bodies.

At first sight, the Mars departing (from earth) mass is 60% of Moon departing, seemingly not so big. LTI 50t vs. MTI 35t. With that 50t, you can land 20t on the moon, 40% of your LTI mass. The 30t (60%) is fuel to be used for deceleration to enter moon orbit. But because the near earth mass of Mars, you need much more fuel to decelerate to orbit Mars, let's say 90%, you got nothing much to land on the surface of Mars. The return journey will need either make fuel from Mars (still a Sci-Fi today), or drastically increase your MTI mass from 35t to 100t (just saying) to land equivalent mass as on the moon. Even with a LM-9 you would need two launches, anything smaller will need 4 or more launches. Now we know that the window of launch to Mars is within a few days of 20 years, these few days have to be perfect. Then you need to add a day to build your Mars departing complex in LEO. So you see how impractical of multiple launches for such mission. Only rocket as big as CZ-9 or bigger can do the job.

The only reason that kills CZ-9 alike is that one do not want to put Astronaut on Mars and back. However China sees it as a reachable goal after a moon landing and surface station. The preparation has to start now.