China's Space Program News Thread

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enroger

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AndrewS said:
I'm most interested in seeing how competitive they can be against the reusable SpaceX rockets

That is the benchmark to beat in terms of launch costs
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Depends on so many factor it is hard to say. Both TengYun and Falcon9 reuse their first stage, HTHL may have advantages in turn around time over VTVL.

Second stage separation speed is more important, Falcon9 is around M6-M7, Depends on what air-breathing engine TengYun uses it may be lower (precooler ~ M5) or higher (RBCC/TBCC ~ up to M10). Obviously higher separation speed -> lower second stage mass for same payload.

Also I won't take Skylon figure seriously, its pie in the sky for the moment....
 
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taxiya

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Temstar said:
I'm pretty sure SABRE engine does not do oxygen liquidation. The same people who's working on SABRE had a previous design called the LACE engine which did in fact do oxygen liquidation and failed for that exact reason. Main improvement from LACE to SABRE is that it no longer attempts to liquidify oxygen and uses an extra helium heat exchanger loop rather than run liquid hydrogen directly through the precooler.

What I don't understand is if the precooler is the hardest part of SABRE and they had it figured out in 2018 what's the hold up with the rest of the engine. At the slowpoke rate that they're going Yunlong might beat them to the finishing line.
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Could it be that the transition to rocket mode of SABRE is even more challenging than precooler?
 
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taxiya

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AndrewS said:
Skylon is supposed to send 15-17 tonnes to LEO

That compares with 17 tonnes for a Falcon 9 rocket in reusable mode
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Falcon 9's figure is real life figure. Skylon's 15-17 tonnes is on paper. From a Chinese research paper, the possible LEO payload/take-off-mass ratio of SSTO is far lower than a traditional rocket assuming all techniques stated by Skylon are implemented, so there was no underestimation. Unless Skylon employs some black technologies unknown to everybody else I won't bother to pay attention to that 15-17 tonnes. The figure will shrink a lot in the end, just like Elon Musk shrinked the LEO figure of starship from 200t to 100t.
 
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Overbom

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Seeing this high number of launches, does anyone have any data on how many tons of payload is lifted by China vs US per year
 
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