a 10-20k constellation of ISR/SAR mini-satellites is better than internet satellites.
I pictured SAR satellite as something like it can see through walls or a hack in the game. It can definitely follow B21 without losing sight of it.
China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
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a 10-20k constellation of ISR/SAR mini-satellites is better than internet satellites.
I pictured SAR satellite as something like it can see through walls or a hack in the game. It can definitely follow B21 without losing sight of it.
Yesterday, LandSpace as part of its R&D for the Zhuque-3 rocket.
A special launchpad for the hopping test has been built next to Zhuque-2's regular launchpad and was described by a filed by the company.
The pace of public progress Landspace is making is impressive, as well as Space Pioneer, iSpace and a few other private spaceflight companies.
The relative speed of the likes of CASC, CALT by comparison is certainly more traditional, and I do wonder whether they are looking at a way to reorient their priorities given they seem to recognize how the likes of SpaceX have achieved successes. It's not like the state companies lack expertise or resourcing if the government is committed to it.
Rather I feel like the lack of focus and having too many parallel project being cooked, and an insufficient appetite for risk (or unwillingness to accept a "test and blow up" mentality) is hindering them somewhat.
It should be apparent within the last year or two that of the major projects being worked on, the CZ-10 family and CZ-9 family are the most important and future proof and relevant capabilities, and I've felt for a while that concentrating resources on only those two platforms (maybe one other based on industry/strategic priority) should really be the order of the day.
I agree that they are working wayyy too many rockets. Sure it make sense for there to be almost a dozen long march rockets for every situation and payload capacity needed, but focusing solely on 1 or 2 workhorse rockets and improving them to the peak of what current technology allows seems to have it's advantages. too Doesn't help that they still refuse to let go of the 30 year old hypergolic long march rockets that still make up like 50% of all Chinese launches. That's a lot of manpower, logistics and man hours spent on a rocket and fuel that's obsolete 30 years ago.
The state owned spinoff companies like CAS space also have the same issue, do we really need a dozen versions of the same small lift solid fueled rocket?
I will give them some credit, at least they shifted really fast by pivoting to reusable rockets since 2016 instead of sticking their heads into the sand. If you look at other space agencies like ESA, JAXA, ISRO, Roscosmos they basically still considering reusable rockets and are still in the very early R&D phase while CASC is already testing hardware. Meanwhile NASA has completely given up and will probably stick to the SLS until SpaceX finally kills it. Europe, Japan, India and Russia also doesn't really have a competitive private space sector at all.
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I don't think there's anything wrong with retaining older rockets until new ones are fully up and running and able to replace them in scope once feasible.
But I do think that concentrating efforts onto a few more specific programs of note and then being willing to accept failures on them while they are being developed/tested, while simultaneously continuing use of existing rocket types, should be a path forward.
I assume there must be some sort of rationale behind the current implementation, and/or if there is no good rationale for it we are likely to see rationalization of efforts in due course.
The hypergolic fleet is still making up >50% of the chinese launches even though China has had access to modern cryogenic fuelled rockets for more than a decade now, and it's they're still going to launch by the dozens for the next few years.
There is rationale. But not good ones. "Save costs, proven technology, new technology introduces risk and we can't have risk, we worked with this technology for the last 20 years and the head of the agency can't handle change" This is a common trend in basically all of humanity, how many times has nations and companies stagnated because of this mindset? Just look at the SLS, 30 year old repurposed shuttle hardware to "save costs, give people jobs and reduce risk" and look at how it turned out.
I will give CALT some credit, at least they shifted really fast by pivoting to reusable rockets since 2016 instead of sticking their heads into the sand. If you look at other space agencies like ESA, JAXA, ISRO, Roscosmos they basically still considering reusable rockets and are still in the very early R&D phase while CASC is already testing hardware. Meanwhile NASA has completely given up and will probably stick to the SLS until SpaceX finally kills it. Europe, Japan, India and Russia also doesn't really have a competitive private space sector at all.
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I mean, I think you provided your answer for the dilemma you posed.
Alternatively, the monkey paw curls solution to your question is that they can certainly cease all hypergolic launches and go cryogenic only, but of course with the resulting consequence that their annual launch capacity is gong to nosedive.
There is no reason why that would happen. The Long March 7 was precisely designed to use the same tooling and production facilities as in the Long March 2 and 3. It uses same diameter modules and everything so transportation would also be the same. There is simply no good reason that I can see why they haven't replaced both Long March 2 and 3 with Long March 7 derivatives.
The "private" sectors are doing more risky project, some of their tech path may be the future, some may be a dead end, only time can tell. It may be promising or may be a disaster if national key project relies on them totally.
The state entity such as CASC are taksed to do jobs that have a strict time line. These jobs do not allow risks that SpaceX like entitties are taking. Look at the moon landing program of US, SpaceX's landing option was even questioned by the most strongest SpaceX supporters at the time when NASA chose SpaceX. Not long after, we see NASA pushes back its landing date due to the uncertainty of starship. The bottom line is SpaceX's method is risky, it does not provide any certainty for a projecct with a set date in the near future. It isn't SpaceX's fault, that is how these kind of business work. It gives more free space for innovation, but it carries the risk of not meeting the national target. It is like parent replying on a smart child to be a biliionare.
On the other hand, I don't see why should "private" space entity being at some kind of odd with CASC etc. They are complimenting to one another. Financially if you check the investment background, the "private" isn't really private like in the US. Take LandScape for example, one of its funding and still major invester is a found owned by Shaanxi government. Their technology origin are certainly from CASC's R&D work, their personels are recruited from CASC. I dare to say that all LOX/Methane engine of "private" sectors are from the 70t prototype made by 6th acadamy in 1990s.
So what happened is that, CASC is tasked to do the job for strict time plan which has to be conservative. Nothing like NASA/SpaceX delay is allowed. On the other hand, Chinese government is aware of the advantage of trying various technical path and working method for the long term, so it leads and encurages private investment to create many mixed mode commercial entities as a complementing element in the space industry.
Also it worths to note that since the state invested both money and tech into these "private" entities, the state essentially created "CASC" alternative. This is another reason that I don't see the point of concern. We have seen how CASC evolved from the AeroSpace ministry to a company, then split into CASC and CASIC. We have also seen hown railway ministry becomes two companies then merge into one. So long as one has the controlling ownership and controls IP asset I don't see why it is an issue and for whom.
The conclusion is that due to the different roles they are assigned to, their visible different approaches will remain for a long time.
The state entity such as CASC are taksed to do jobs that have a strict time line. These jobs do not allow risks that SpaceX like entitties are taking. Look at the moon landing program of US, SpaceX's landing option was even questioned by the most strongest SpaceX supporters at the time when NASA chose SpaceX. Not long after, we see NASA pushes back its landing date due to the uncertainty of starship. The bottom line is SpaceX's method is risky, it does not provide any certainty for a projecct with a set date in the near future. It isn't SpaceX's fault, that is how these kind of business work. It gives more free space for innovation, but it carries the risk of not meeting the national target. It is like parent replying on a smart child to be a biliionare.
On the other hand, I don't see why should "private" space entity being at some kind of odd with CASC etc. They are complimenting to one another. Financially if you check the investment background, the "private" isn't really private like in the US. Take LandScape for example, one of its funding and still major invester is a found owned by Shaanxi government. Their technology origin are certainly from CASC's R&D work, their personels are recruited from CASC. I dare to say that all LOX/Methane engine of "private" sectors are from the 70t prototype made by 6th acadamy in 1990s.
So what happened is that, CASC is tasked to do the job for strict time plan which has to be conservative. Nothing like NASA/SpaceX delay is allowed. On the other hand, Chinese government is aware of the advantage of trying various technical path and working method for the long term, so it leads and encurages private investment to create many mixed mode commercial entities as a complementing element in the space industry.
Also it worths to note that since the state invested both money and tech into these "private" entities, the state essentially created "CASC" alternative. This is another reason that I don't see the point of concern. We have seen how CASC evolved from the AeroSpace ministry to a company, then split into CASC and CASIC. We have also seen hown railway ministry becomes two companies then merge into one. So long as one has the controlling ownership and controls IP asset I don't see why it is an issue and for whom.
The conclusion is that due to the different roles they are assigned to, their visible different approaches will remain for a long time.
What if the launch cost of CZ-2 and 3 are dirt cheap? Wasn't there a figure posted in this thread saying that CZ-2 launch cost was slightly higher than Falcon-9 in reusable mode? That would mean that old CZs are much cheaper than the new CZs.
Remember CZ-7 was designed to be crew rated, so it by design has a lot of extra masses. It is by nature nothing to compete with old CZs in cost without large amount of change which doesn't really worth it.
The problem with SpaceX and Starship for the lunar mission is because of Starship/second stage.
That questionable decision doesn't make technology underlying Raptor and the first stage (super heavy) incoherent or problematic. If SpaceX had pursued Starship as a more conventional super heavy launcher, I suspect we shouldn't be seeing the same delays for a moon landing or otherwise.
I find all of the doubt directed towards Starship as massive red herring -- Starship second stage is irrelevant and inconsequential. It is the Super Heavy first stage which is important, as it offers a potentially reusable super heavy first stage with implications for substantial low earth orbit launches and beyond.
Even if Starship/second stage is an utter failure, if the Super Heavy first stage succeeds, it will be a rather simple task to design more conventional second or even third stages to enable LEO, GEO, and LTO and beyond payloads.
While I agree that "private" space companies in China ultimately work alongside state enterprises and may well enable sharing of technology and data, the problem is that none of them have a platform as ambitious as CZ-10 family or CZ-9 in the immediate pipeline.
(That said, I suppose Zhuque-3 and Tianlong 3 are CZ-10A peers)
That is indeed a reasonable explanation for why they haven't moved as fast as they otherwise could have till now, but pursuit of more modern launch vehicles and to drive costs down once an appropriate launch vehicle design is attained, should be an important goal.
Standardizing to CZ-10 family and CZ-9 into the future really should be the obvious path, and the fact that these rockets are being pursued to begin with is an indication that the state entities are starting to smell the cheese, and they have even laid out long term goals to enable large annual launches to orbit.
But actually enabling that will require state enterprises to have the political ability to accept more launch failures to collect data faster and iterate faster.
There is a real prospect that by the late 2020s the US could have the capability to regularly put up 100+ tons of payload into LEO a week between Super Heavy/Starship and Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches (and going into the early 2030s a magnitude more than that if they standardize to Super Heavy/Starship derived launches), in the same way that Falcon 9 launches are now routine.
The strategic impact of that cannot be understated.
Space access cannot be viewed as primarily a scientific endeavor now -- strategic/military and commercial utilizations should be the primary aspects of concern.
I am aware of all of these aspects, however I am saying that the current reality is that it is the state entities who have the most ambitious launch vehicles (CZ-10, CZ-9) that have longevity potential into the near future, and are the most viable paths to heavy and super heavy launchers between the state and private enterprises, so fast tracking them should be pursued.