China's Space Program Thread II

[nativechicken]

One thing to note is that a good chunk of China's launches are of small to medium scale rockets that can carry tiny payloads, if you look at total mass to orbit, China falls even further behind.

Anyway, the important thing here is to focus on reusability. Which right now, looks like the chinese private space sector looks to be closer to developing, faster than the state launch service providers, so I hope that they don't get shafted in favor of long march rockets. Which I mean by that is that it seems that CALT's answer to megaconstellations and SpaceX is just mass production of proven expendable rockets.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

It's basically their plan for launching their own megaconstellation without resuable rockets, just scale costs down via economy of scale and an already mature technology and rocket . 50 additional long march 8 rockets a year is impressive, will certainly put a lot of payload into orbit and is intended to replace the aging hypergolic long march rockets but at the same time, it could take the wind out of the private sector's sails. It might seem like a good idea today when there's not a single chinese resuable rocket flying, but that could change very fast in 2-4 years.

If 1-2, or even 3 private companies get their Falcon 9 tier workhorse launching dozens of times a year in 2-4 years, then at best this mega long march 8 factory becomes basically obsolete and useless and that's probably billions of dollars wasted. Considering that the long march 8 isn't designed to be reusable at all, even a more expensive expandable medium lift launcher that a company like Ispace flying a dozen times is more worth it in the long run since that's vauable data and money going to into potentially making said rocket resuable in the future.

At worse, the long march 8 strangles the private sector in it's crib by taking most of the launch contracts in the next 2-4 years, espically if they are given speical treatment seeing as they're a government rocket. This is worrying because we're still in the early stages of the chinese private space sector, none of the private companies have reused a rocket yet, some haven't even launched a liquid fueled rocket yet, most of their resuable rockets are going to be pretty small and expandable at first, their production costs at going to be pretty high due to still sorting out their supply chain and techologny and doing R&D, as compared to an already mature rocket techologny like the long march series. If they are going purely at this via free market competition and launch costs, the long march rockets win in the short term, if they're bias towards the long march rockets because they're both government organisations, than it's even more titled towards the long march 8.

And considering the amount of money needed in this field and the cost of developing new technology and scaling up their production facilties, this private companies have to win a lot of contracts to sustain and upgrade themselves, they can't be thrown the scraps that CALT and CASC can't be bothered to eat. They don't have Elon's large pool of money, fame and Starlink business to support themselves, and they can't venture much outside of the domestic launch market like SpaceX can. The majority of the launch contracts should go to the most promising companies espically in such a critical time, until they develop enough to stand by themselves. I hope that China recogonzies this and gives the appropriate amount of support to the private sector.

The 30% throttle ratio engine of YF100 is already in testing.
This can meet the single engine offset landing requirements of CZ8R.
Two days ago, the overall separation of the booster bundle core stage was verified on CZ7.
The current rocket factories in China are not the specialized model factories they used to be.
The current design of assembly tooling frames is universal.
It was mentioned in literature a year or two ago.

 

[tacoburger]

The 30% throttle ratio engine of YF100 is already in testing.
This can meet the single engine offset landing requirements of CZ8R.
Two days ago, the overall separation of the booster bundle core stage was verified on CZ7.
The current rocket factories in China are not the specialized model factories they used to be.
The current design of assembly tooling frames is universal.
It was mentioned in literature a year or two ago.

Just because it could be done doesn't mean that it will be done. A resuable long march 8 will need a re-design of the engine reconfiguration, improved engine gimbals and grid fins. You might as well just design and build a completely new rocket if you're gonna make that many changes. It's not impossible to make the CZ8 reusable, but it's much easier if you just design a rocket from the ground up to be reusable. Or just take that money and just give it towards the dozen groups already trying to build a reusable rocket from scratch in China.

I call bullshit on how "universal" a factory is, not many factories in the world can work like that, especially not something as complicated as a rocket engine. And even if it can be easily reconfigured to build other rockets of the long march series, so what? Once reusable rockets get flying and just get more and more developed, any expandable rocket is basically also obsolete, who cares if it can also build 50 CZ6 or CZ7 a year.

And again, probably better in the long run if you start clean and design a true next generation engine from the start, like say the raptor engine, than try to modify an existing 10 year engine to do something that it was never designed to do.

 

[gelgoog]

The Long March 10 will be a viable competitor to the SpaceX Falcon rocket series.
I don't get your fixation with the Chinese private sector. While their progress is impressive thus far their rockets underperform vs Long March series.

 

[tacoburger]

The Long March 10 will be a viable competitor to the SpaceX Falcon rocket series.

The LM10 will have it's first flight in 2027, and we have no idea how long it will take before it's reusable. Also, it's first couple of years in service will be solely reserved for China's lunar missions.

I don't get your fixation with the Chinese private sector. While their progress is impressive thus far their rockets underperform vs Long March series.

"I don't get your fixation with Spacex, while their progress is impressive thus far their rockets underperform vs ULA and NASA"- some guy in 2012.

The long march rockets progress have been slow, veryyyyyy slow. Just look at how long they're taking to switch from hypergolic fuel to cryogenic liquid fueled rockets. Despite flying cryogenic liquid fueled rockets for more than a decade now, there's still dozens of the older hypergolic long march 2/3/4 launches every year. That doesn't scream to me an agency that's capable of rapid change and innovation.

By contrast, Space pioneer launched it's first rocket this year capable of putting a measly 2 tons to LEO and they're already planning to launch a rocket capable of putting 17 tons to LEO next year. That's already the 2nd most powerful rocket in China, 2nd to only the long march 5.

Anyway, the issue is that for megaconstellations, it's currently a race for the best orbits. There's various orbits that are more valuable than the other and it's currently first come and first serve. Imagine waiting for the LM10 before any serious work on the megaconstellations, then you find that LEO is filled with hundreds of thousands of American satellites that you need to wrestle for space with, same for GEO or any other popular orbit.

Same for customers, if China ever hopes to compete with Starlink for customers in the global south, the sooner the better, not in 10 years when everyone already has a Starlink connection and is "locked in" into their ecosystem. The explosive growth of the private space sector is one of the best ways to quickly ramp up launch rates, and best part, they're basically all investing heavily in reusable rockets and unless I'm horribly wrong, they will all get there before the LM10 launches.

 

[huemens]

The LM10 will have it's first flight in 2027, and we have no idea how long it will take before it's reusable. Also, it's first couple of years in service will be solely reserved for China's lunar missions.

"I don't get your fixation with Spacex, while their progress is impressive thus far their rockets underperform vs ULA and NASA"- some guy in 2012.

The long march rockets progress have been slow, veryyyyyy slow. Just look at how long they're taking to switch from hypergolic fuel to cryogenic liquid fueled rockets. Despite flying cryogenic liquid fueled rockets for more than a decade now, there's still dozens of the older hypergolic long march 2/3/4 launches every year. That doesn't scream to me an agency that's capable of rapid change and innovation.

By contrast, Space pioneer launched it's first rocket this year capable of putting a measly 2 tons to LEO and they're already planning to launch a rocket capable of putting 17 tons to LEO next year. That's already the 2nd most powerful rocket in China, 2nd to only the long march 5.

Anyway, the issue is that for megaconstellations, it's currently a race for the best orbits. There's various orbits that are more valuable than the other and it's currently first come and first serve. Imagine waiting for the LM10 before any serious work on the megaconstellations, then you find that LEO is filled with hundreds of thousands of American satellites that you need to wrestle for space with, same for GEO or any other popular orbit.

Same for customers, if China ever hopes to compete with Starlink for customers in the global south, the sooner the better, not in 10 years when everyone already has a Starlink connection and is "locked in" into their ecosystem. The explosive growth of the private space sector is one of the best ways to quickly ramp up launch rates, and best part, they're basically all investing heavily in reusable rockets and unless I'm horribly wrong, they will all get there before the LM10 launches.

In the previous post about LM 8 ramping up to 50 launch per year you were complaining because Long March is doing too much which would hinder private progress. Now you are complaining Long March for not doing enough and not progressing enough compared to private companies. Which is it that you want?

And about hypergolic they don't need to stop using it just because they have other rockets. If the older rockets are more economical and viable for a certain payload class and use case, they would continue to use it.

 

[nativechicken]

Just because it could be done doesn't mean that it will be done. A resuable long march 8 will need a re-design of the engine reconfiguration, improved engine gimbals and grid fins. You might as well just design and build a completely new rocket if you're gonna make that many changes. It's not impossible to make the CZ8 reusable, but it's much easier if you just design a rocket from the ground up to be reusable. Or just take that money and just give it towards the dozen groups already trying to build a reusable rocket from scratch in China.

I call bullshit on how "universal" a factory is, not many factories in the world can work like that, especially not something as complicated as a rocket engine. And even if it can be easily reconfigured to build other rockets of the long march series, so what? Once reusable rockets get flying and just get more and more developed, any expandable rocket is basically also obsolete, who cares if it can also build 50 CZ6 or CZ7 a year.

And again, probably better in the long run if you start clean and design a true next generation engine from the start, like say the raptor engine, than try to modify an existing 10 year engine to do something that it was never designed to do.

The new generation production line of China Aerospace has long been compliant with Industry 4.0 standards, featuring flexible, pulsating, and intelligent production lines

Plan design that can manufacture multiple types of rockets in parallel.

Not to mention medium-sized rockets, so are heavy rockets. A few years ago, the Capital Machinery Factory was researching.

 

[nativechicken]

Just because it could be done doesn't mean that it will be done. A resuable long march 8 will need a re-design of the engine reconfiguration, improved engine gimbals and grid fins. You might as well just design and build a completely new rocket if you're gonna make that many changes. It's not impossible to make the CZ8 reusable, but it's much easier if you just design a rocket from the ground up to be reusable. Or just take that money and just give it towards the dozen groups already trying to build a reusable rocket from scratch in China.

I call bullshit on how "universal" a factory is, not many factories in the world can work like that, especially not something as complicated as a rocket engine. And even if it can be easily reconfigured to build other rockets of the long march series, so what? Once reusable rockets get flying and just get more and more developed, any expandable rocket is basically also obsolete, who cares if it can also build 50 CZ6 or CZ7 a year.

And again, probably better in the long run if you start clean and design a true next generation engine from the start, like say the raptor engine, than try to modify an existing 10 year engine to do something that it was never designed to do.

The CZ8R is a dual engine landing and bundled dual boost landing on the current 3.35 meter arrow body.
It is not a multi shot plan for Falcon 9, and there is no need to change the arrow body or what you are talking about.
All the reuse technologies of CZ8R have been basically verified, just waiting for the engine.
The CZ8R engine is produced by another research institute and has many modifications, all of which use flexible pulsation manufacturing.
In addition, China is actually leading in the field of advanced factories (next-generation factories).
As for the engine, CASC's eight year nine engine will be completed in 2028. You don't have to worry anymore.

 

[tacoburger]

In the previous post about LM 8 ramping up to 50 launch per year you were complaining because Long March is doing too much which would hinder private progress. Now you are complaining Long March for not doing enough and not progressing enough compared to private companies. Which is it that you want?

Better timing for one. Pushing for increased production of the cryogenic fuelled long march 6/7/8 rockets to replace the aging hypergolic rockets would have great 10 years ago. Not today where it's clear that reusable rockets are clearly the future. After all, the factory is starting operations in 2024 and that's billions spent on a rocket that's going to be obsolete soon. And again, the next few years are touch and go for many of the private companies, many are launching their first rockets, developing their technology and overall not well established yet. Not a good time for a massive competitor to come and strangle them before they can spread their wings.

Now if CALT was instead building a factory that was capable of making 50 Long march 10s a year and had plans on launching the first LM10 by 2025, or if the LM8 has a decent chance of being converted into a reusable rocket, then I would be cheering them on. In other words, if they had a superior product rather than a rocket is pretty much a dead end from the start.

And about hypergolic they don't need to stop using it just because they have other rockets. If the older rockets are more economical and viable for a certain payload class and use case, they would continue to use it.

This can be applied to literally every technology ever made. Every technology is expensive and not economical at first. It's only via massive investment and economy of scale that new technology is made viable. Supply chains and production lines don't pop out thin air. I can imagine some cavemen arguing about "why go through all that effort of learning how to make fire? It's easier to just eat meat raw" or "why fiddle around with steam power, we have slaves for manual labor" People and organisations have to make the choice to make the initial investment to get the ball rolling.

You really think Spacex wasn't ridiculed for trying to land rockets, for investing billions into a pipe dream straight out of sci-fi? ULA in 2016 directly stated that they still stuck to expandable rockets because it was cheaper. Yeah no shit, reusable rockets don't pop out of thin air, you need to throw billions in R&D and years of development before you get them and enough economy of scale in term of launches for them to recoup the R&D costs, they don't start out cheaper until you make them that way.

Can you imagine taking billions to develop a reusable rocket and only getting 1 launch contract a year because the government is awarding most of the contracts to decades old mature technology. Yeah no shit it's going to be more expensive at first because it needs to repay it's initial R&D and development cost and the whole point of reusable rockets is that it needs a certain economy of scale before the reuse aspect kicks in.

Hypergolic fuels require strict safety standard, they take away from money and manpower from cryogenic fuelled rockets, they complicate logistics via launch complex needing to support multiple different kinds of fuels and hypergolic fuels are nasty to handle due to how toxic they are. You could just take all the millions spent on them every year and thousands of engineers working on them and just use them to scale up production of the existing cryogenic long march rockets and made them cheaper for better economies of scale and less cost due to improved logistics. Not to mention that cryogenic rockets have vastly better performance too.

Also while I call the long march 6/7/8 a dead end due to them not being reusable, they're still much better than hypergolic engines. After all, technology improves the more experience you have with it and the more people you have working on it. If China had dozens of extra cryogenic launches a year for the last 10 years, I imagine that engine technology and other things like the cryogenic fuelling would be more advanced and there would be a larger pool of talent familiar with the technology.

 

[tacoburger]

The CZ8R is a dual engine landing and bundled dual boost landing on the current 3.35 meter arrow body.

And how is a dual engine landing supposed to work? We're seeing that a rocket landing needs an even number of engines in the outer core and a single central engine for enough engine control to land. It's not impossible for a dual engine setup to land, but it's going to be insanely hard, for a country that hasn't landed a single rocket yet. The LM8 isn't going to be reusable without some major redesigns, mark my words. And at that point, why not just design reusable rocket from scratch?

It is not a multi shot plan for Falcon 9, and there is no need to change the arrow body or what you are talking about.

Again, we see the same engine plan for basically all reusable rockets being planned using a larger number of engines for fine thrust and gimbal control, as well as reliability in case an engine malfunctions when being reignited.


Something like this. For the LM8 to be easily reusable, it will need an engine reconfiguration.

As for the engine, CASC's eight year nine engine will be completed in 2028. You don't have to worry anymore.

The LM10 first flight in 2028 doesn't mean that it's going to be immediately reusable in 2028 and it's going to be heavily involved in China's lunar program in the first few years of it's life. That's way too late for such an important technology.

The new generation production line of China Aerospace has long been compliant with Industry 4.0 standards, featuring flexible, pulsating, and intelligent production lines

Plan design that can manufacture multiple types of rockets in parallel.

The CZ8R engine is produced by another research institute and has many modifications, all of which use flexible pulsation manufacturing.
In addition, China is actually leading in the field of advanced factories (next-generation factories).

This doesn't actually say anything about the factory being able to manufacture vastly different rocket engines.

 

[nativechicken]

The LM10 will have it's first flight in 2027, and we have no idea how long it will take before it's reusable. Also, it's first couple of years in service will be solely reserved for China's lunar missions.

"I don't get your fixation with Spacex, while their progress is impressive thus far their rockets underperform vs ULA and NASA"- some guy in 2012.

The long march rockets progress have been slow, veryyyyyy slow. Just look at how long they're taking to switch from hypergolic fuel to cryogenic liquid fueled rockets. Despite flying cryogenic liquid fueled rockets for more than a decade now, there's still dozens of the older hypergolic long march 2/3/4 launches every year. That doesn't scream to me an agency that's capable of rapid change and innovation.

By contrast, Space pioneer launched it's first rocket this year capable of putting a measly 2 tons to LEO and they're already planning to launch a rocket capable of putting 17 tons to LEO next year. That's already the 2nd most powerful rocket in China, 2nd to only the long march 5.

Anyway, the issue is that for megaconstellations, it's currently a race for the best orbits. There's various orbits that are more valuable than the other and it's currently first come and first serve. Imagine waiting for the LM10 before any serious work on the megaconstellations, then you find that LEO is filled with hundreds of thousands of American satellites that you need to wrestle for space with, same for GEO or any other popular orbit.

Same for customers, if China ever hopes to compete with Starlink for customers in the global south, the sooner the better, not in 10 years when everyone already has a Starlink connection and is "locked in" into their ecosystem. The explosive growth of the private space sector is one of the best ways to quickly ramp up launch rates, and best part, they're basically all investing heavily in reusable rockets and unless I'm horribly wrong, they will all get there before the LM10 launches.

The CZ10 is definitely slower than China's private aerospace on reusable VTVL rockets.
Because the national team has tasks for the national team.
The Falcon 9 level reusable rocket is actually not difficult for China Aerospace (CASC), and China Aerospace did not focus on reusable rockets. The reason is actually that it does not have a suitable arrow body and engine.
The YF100 has too much thrust and a 3-meter rocket mass, so the technical route chosen by China Aerospace's national team (CASC) is the 100 ton hydrocarbon based deep variable thrust rocket engine technology (i.e. the YF100 with a throttle ratio of 10:1). The technical difficulty of this engine exceeds that of the entire Falcon 9 rocket.
CASC has modified the methane version of YF77 and the YF209 kerosene engine from YF2x. All are open for use by Chinese private aerospace companies. To be clear, develop products that can compete with mid to large reusable rockets at the Falcon 9 level. It is the work of the second and third line technical teams of China Aerospace (i.e. various private rocket enterprises). Not the work of the national team.
The reason for CASC's inaction on VTVL reusable rockets is that the YF100 has too much thrust and the 3-meter rocket body is too light. If he spends his energy on the YF100 and 3-meter rocket body. That's just foolishness.
The YF100+five meter arrow body CZ10/10A is actually a higher level product than the Falcon 9 and Heavy Falcon.
The heavy falcon has no high orbit capability at all, and its payload in deep space is similar to that of the CZ5 (a few hundred kilograms difference), because the base height of the 3-meter diameter Falcon 9 is too high. There is no space for a third stage rocket. The third stage of a rocket that cannot be powered by hydrogen and oxygen.
So even SpaceX does not plan to develop Falcon 9/Heavy Falcon. Countless enthusiasts on NSF hope to replace SLS with Heavy Falcon and launch Orion to the Portal Space Station. Just thinking about it. The third stage rocket without hydrogen oxygen power, the heavy falcon, is actually not much stronger than the CZ5.
The volume of the payload space for heavy falcons is used to hold normal loads (non high-density loads), which is a cargo warehouse with a payload of 8-10 tons. The cargo warehouse of CZ10 has a larger diameter and height than FH. Without the third stage of the rocket, CZ10 (not CZ10A) can transport ultra long and heavy loads to LEO orbit.
So, CASC is developing a stronger and more practical 5-meter rocket body than FH. For rockets with a 3-meter rocket body, the actual future has been given up to the private market. CZ8 is just a means of maintaining cash flow for CASC launch services