China's Space Program Thread II

huemens

Junior Member
Registered Member
Is 7 engine better suited for reusability than 9 engines ?
What matters is how much the engine(s) that are used for the landing burn can throttle-down so that the empty booster doesn't get re-launched. So that's going to be easy if you have more of less-powerful engines than few of more-powerful engines. If you have fewer more-powerful engines then the re-ignition timing needs to be more accurate so that by the time it reaches the landing pad the velocity becomes zero. Even the F9 engines cannot throttle down enough to hover even with one engine, so they manage it with timing.
 

kentchang

Junior Member
Registered Member
You're all forgetting an very important factor here. Reuse. We're all not sure how important reuse is to the LM-10 team, if they intend to try to land the CZ-10A in their very first flight or if they are intending to wait a few years until the rocket is mature before even attempting a landing. But if they do prioritize reuse from the very first few test flights of the LM-10A and LM-10 and if they do manage to land the rocket on the first or 2nd attempt, that's will speed the timeline a lot. That will give them a few extra rockets to play around with and will allow them to launch a lot more often, allowing them to more quickly iron out any issues and human rate the rocket.

If I was in their shoes, I would be heavily pushing for trying to land the CZ-10A from the 1st or 2nd launch and push for aggressive reuse of the recycled 1st stage ASAP. Do what SpaceX does and go for the hardware rich testing approach. If any private companies have managed to land a rocket by 2026, the LM-10 team would be smart to outright just pay said private companies for their telemetry and landing data and their expertise, so as to land the LM-10A and LM-10 as soon as possible. With such a tight timeline and with as many launches as possible needed to human rate the rocket and test out the lunar landers, the sooner that they can land the first stage and reuse it, the better.

Reusability is a nice-to-have but that will complicate the initial missions. The success of these early missions are far too critical. Simplicity and focus are keys to success in any project. Reuse can be tested separately at a more leisurely pace. These are man-rated rockets and SpaceX doesn't exactly have a good track record so far with the Starship. It is a very good thing you are NOT in charge.
 

antwerpery

Junior Member
Registered Member
Reusability is a nice-to-have but that will complicate the initial missions. The success of these early missions are far too critical. Simplicity and focus are keys to success in any project. Reuse can be tested separately at a more leisurely pace. These are man-rated rockets and SpaceX doesn't exactly have a good track record so far with the Starship. It is a very good thing you are NOT in charge.
If the rocket is gonna to be destroyed anyway, there’s no real reason to not try to reuse it. If the LM-10 is going for the wire reuse method, it won’t even need landing legs. There’s almost zero additional technical risk involved in the main function of the rocket, the 1st stage is still gonna go though all the usual stages, maxQ, staging, re-entry. The only difference is that instead of simply throwing the rocket away after it has released the 2nd stage, you control the re-entry via grid fins and do a final engine burn for the landing.

Do you not understand this simple concept? Everything about the landing is done after the 1st stage is done staging and is already falling back to earth, aka after the 1st stage has done it’s only job and is useless and already falling into the ocean. The only real issues is having the grid fins and landing legs on the 1st stage. But the CZ-10 might not need landing legs and China has already been putting grid fins on rockets for years now. The upside of getting another rocket for free is well worth the tiny risk it poses.

If you have any examples of reuse causing the F9 to fail to getting into orbit, even in the early days when they were still failing the landing, go ahead and post it.
 

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
You're all forgetting an very important factor here. Reuse. We're all not sure how important reuse is to the LM-10 team, if they intend to try to land the CZ-10A in their very first flight or if they are intending to wait a few years until the rocket is mature before even attempting a landing. But if they do prioritize reuse from the very first few test flights of the LM-10A and LM-10 and if they do manage to land the rocket on the first or 2nd attempt, that's will speed the timeline a lot. That will give them a few extra rockets to play around with and will allow them to launch a lot more often, allowing them to more quickly iron out any issues and human rate the rocket.

If I was in their shoes, I would be heavily pushing for trying to land the CZ-10A from the 1st or 2nd launch and push for aggressive reuse of the recycled 1st stage ASAP. Do what SpaceX does and go for the hardware rich testing approach. If any private companies have managed to land a rocket by 2026, the LM-10 team would be smart to outright just pay said private companies for their telemetry and landing data and their expertise, so as to land the LM-10A and LM-10 as soon as possible. With such a tight timeline and with as many launches as possible needed to human rate the rocket and test out the lunar landers, the sooner that they can land the first stage and reuse it, the better.
Why do you even think resuability is on the agenda in the early stage of any rocket development?

More importantly, once CZ-10A has put Mengzhou in orbit it is considerred successful as far as CZ-10 and Mengzhou concern. Failing to recover has nothing to do with the subject which was tests for moon landing mission. I don't get how you made the connection between the mission to the moon and CZ-10A being reusable.

You seem to have a fetish on the means (reusability) than on doing a job.
 
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antwerpery

Junior Member
Registered Member
Why do you even think resuability is on the agenda in the early stage of any rocket development?

More importantly, once CZ-10A has put Mengzhou in orbit it is considerred successful as far as CZ-10 and Mengzhou concern. Failing to recover has nothing to do with the subject which was tests for moon landing mission. I don't get how you made the connection between the mission to the moon and CZ-10A being reusable.

You seem to have a fetish on the means (reusability) than on doing a job.
Are you serious right now? Why does nobody on this forum get just how much of a game changer reusability is? Is everyone else dumb? Why don't people get basic engineering principles?

Firstly, the more you do something, the better you get at it. 2ndly, the best way to human rate a rocket is to launch it a bunch of times and work the kinks out and make sure it doesn't explode. The timeline for the CZ-10 to launch humans by 2030 is tight, being able to reuse the first stages means that you can launch your rocket a lot more often and thus have a bigger buffer in case of a mishap and a much greater confidence in your rocket. A rocket that has launched 20 times with a single mishap is a lot better than a rocket that has launched a single time without mishap. And if you do find issues, this will give you a chance to fix it and launch again.

After all, without reuse, every CZ-10 launch is 21 YF-100 engines being thrown away by the 1st stage every launch. You think rocket engines grow on trees? That's more YF-100s being destroyed with a single LM-10 launch than the total amount of YF-100 ever used by all of the LM-8 rockets ever launched. Every landing is 21 engines saved and that can be reused for little costs, compared to building 21 engines from scratch. You think this wouldn't greatly speed up the launch rate of the LM-10? If you're gonna reuse a rocket ASAP, it might as well be the super expensive heavy lift rocket that uses an insane amount of engines, that's already designed from the ground up to be reusable and whom the 2030 lunar landings depend on it meeting a very tight launch schedule and probably 4-5 launches over 3 years.

Even the basic CZ-10A is still 7 engines being destroyed without reuse. We already see how difficult it is for China to mass produce the YF-100, there's a reason why the newer generations of LM rockets that use the YF-100 are still the miniority of launches, despite many attempts at boosting production for years. There's a real risk that the 2030 date slips, just because there will be delays over the production of so many engines and rockets. 4 CZ-10 launches means 84 YF-100s getting destroyed without any reuse. Fun fact, the total number of CZ-7 ever launched, 18 of them since 2016, all those 18 combined launches over 9 years gives you a total of 108 YF-100s. But you think it's gonna be simple for China to produce the 84 YF-100s between 2027 and 2030 needed for the crewed lunar landings? They have been struggling to mass produce the CZ-8 for years now despite the base variant only needing two YF-100s. That's the one downside about reusable rockets, you need more engines per rocket.

There's always a chance that a launch fails too, be it the rocket, or even the Mengzhou or some other weird issue. Having as many rockets in backup as possible is important when you're working on such a tight schedule. If the 2nd stage or the payload fucks up for whatever reason, that's 21 YF-100s wasted for nothing. You think China can magic up so many rocket engines in such a tight 2027-2030 timeframe if even a single launch fails for whatever reason? But if you have a backup of landed rockets from earlier launches, that's a great buffer for little cost.

And there's lots of other factors at work here. This is more than just the CZ-10 and lunar landing here. Think big picture pls.

1) The CZ-10A is China's first reusable Long March rocket. If the private sector fucks up badly, it has the potential to be China's first reusable rocket ever. Once they do make it land and reuse it, the lessons that engineers will learn greatly affect every other Chinese reusable rocket in development, both in the state and private sector. This is not just about the CZ-10, the earlier Chinese engineers learn more about reusable rockets, the better all the other reusable rockets will get. This will effect rockets in early stages of development more, since they can make greater design changes based on the lessons learned from landing and reusing the LM-10.

2) Refurbishment is a great learning opportunity. Do you know why the F9 is so very very reliable? It's because it's the only rocket where you can recover the first stage and find out how being launched into orbit affected the rocket. Do you not understand how difficult it is to engineer something that destroys itself after you use it? You can't dissect a used rocket and find out how being launched to 2.5km/s, the heat, aerodynamic pressure and the vibrations of the engines affect the delicate systems of pipes and valves in a rocket, because said rocket is impacting the earth at terminal velocity after use. You can test fire engines on a test stand, but it's not the same as a real launch.

Well, with reuse, you can take a 1st stage back completely intact and just cut it open and examine in great detail at potential issues that might result in a future mission failure. I can guarantee you that the 1st landed rocket of any type, are gonna be ripped apart and every little detail is gonna examined with a fine toothed comb. Maybe one of the seals/valves is weak and there's a 20% chance of it rupturing and destroying the rocket with every launch, but engineers can't catch the flaw until they get unlucky with a launch and the rockets actually explodes and exposes the problem. But since you can actually get the rocket back in one piece, you can spot the problem before it actually happens. See my first point for how this will affect future reusable rocket development too. There's probably lots of small and major changes that you can make to the internals of a rocket that will optimize it for reuse that China won't know about until you actually land a rocket and cut it open to find out. Better to find out early, so that you can find apply the changes to other resauble rockets sooner, when they are early in their design phase.
 
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amchan

New Member
Registered Member
Are you serious right now? Why does nobody on this forum get just how much of a game changer reusability is? Is everyone else dumb? Why don't people get basic engineering principles?

Firstly, the more you do something, the better you get at it. 2ndly, the best way to human rate a rocket is to launch it a bunch of times and work the kinks out and make sure it doesn't explode. The timeline for the CZ-10 to launch humans by 2030 is tight, being able to reuse the first stages means that you can launch your rocket a lot more often and thus have a bigger buffer in case of a mishap and a much greater confidence in your rocket. A rocket that has launched 20 times with a single mishap is a lot better than a rocket that has launched a single time without mishap. And if you do find issues, this will give you a chance to fix it and launch again.

After all, without reuse, every CZ-10 launch is 21 YF-100 engines being thrown away by the 1st stage every launch. You think rocket engines grow on trees? That's more YF-100s being destroyed with a single LM-10 launch than the total amount of YF-100 ever used by all of the LM-8 rockets ever launched. Every landing is 21 engines saved and that can be reused for little costs, compared to building 21 engines from scratch. You think this wouldn't greatly speed up the launch rate of the LM-10? If you're gonna reuse a rocket ASAP, it might as well be the super expensive heavy lift rocket that uses an insane amount of engines, that's already designed from the ground up to be reusable and whom the 2030 lunar landings depend on it meeting a very tight launch schedule and probably 4-5 launches over 3 years.

Even the basic CZ-10A is still 7 engines being destroyed without reuse. We already see how difficult it is for China to mass produce the YF-100, there's a reason why the newer generations of LM rockets that use the YF-100 are still the miniority of launches, despite many attempts at boosting production for years. There's a real risk that the 2030 date slips, just because there will be delays over the production of so many engines and rockets. 4 CZ-10 launches means 84 YF-100s getting destroyed without any reuse. Fun fact, the total number of CZ-7 ever launched, 18 of them since 2016, all those 18 combined launches over 9 years gives you a total of 108 YF-100s. But you think it's gonna be simple for China to produce the 84 YF-100s between 2027 and 2030 needed for the crewed lunar landings? They have been struggling to mass produce the CZ-8 for years now despite the base variant only needing two YF-100s. That's the one downside about reusable rockets, you need more engines per rocket.

There's always a chance that a launch fails too, be it the rocket, or even the Mengzhou or some other weird issue. Having as many rockets in backup as possible is important when you're working on such a tight schedule. If the 2nd stage or the payload fucks up for whatever reason, that's 21 YF-100s wasted for nothing. You think China can magic up so many rocket engines in such a tight 2027-2030 timeframe if even a single launch fails for whatever reason? But if you have a backup of landed rockets from earlier launches, that's a great buffer for little cost.

And there's lots of other factors at work here. This is more than just the CZ-10 and lunar landing here. Think big picture pls.

1) The CZ-10A is China's first reusable Long March rocket. If the private sector fucks up badly, it has the potential to be China's first reusable rocket ever. Once they do make it land and reuse it, the lessons that engineers will learn greatly affect every other Chinese reusable rocket in development, both in the state and private sector. This is not just about the CZ-10, the earlier Chinese engineers learn more about reusable rockets, the better all the other reusable rockets will get. This will effect rockets in early stages of development more, since they can make greater design changes based on the lessons learned from landing and reusing the LM-10.

2) Refurbishment is a great learning opportunity. Do you know why the F9 is so very very reliable? It's because it's the only rocket where you can recover the first stage and find out how being launched into orbit affected the rocket. Do you not understand how difficult it is to engineer something that destroys itself after you use it? You can't dissect a used rocket and find out how being launched to 2.5km/s, the heat, aerodynamic pressure and the vibrations of the engines affect the delicate systems of pipes and valves in a rocket, because said rocket is impacting the earth at terminal velocity after use. You can test fire engines on a test stand, but it's not the same as a real launch.

Well, with reuse, you can take a 1st stage back completely intact and just cut it open and examine in great detail at potential issues that might result in a future mission failure. I can guarantee you that the 1st landed rocket of any type, are gonna be ripped apart and every little detail is gonna examined with a fine toothed comb. Maybe one of the seals/valves is weak and there's a 20% chance of it rupturing and destroying the rocket with every launch, but engineers can't catch the flaw until they get unlucky with a launch and the rockets actually explodes and exposes the problem. But since you can actually get the rocket back in one piece, you can spot the problem before it actually happens. See my first point for how this will affect future reusable rocket development too. There's probably lots of small and major changes that you can make to the internals of a rocket that will optimize it for reuse that China won't know about until you actually land a rocket and cut it open to find out. Better to find out early, so that you can find apply the changes to other resauble rockets sooner, when they are early in their design phase.
People get can get how valuable reuse is without acting like an idiot. Why are you even complaining? There is a clear division of labor in the development of new space technologies, and not everything needs to be perfect from your information-limited perspective. It makes no sense for LM-10, which is meant specifically to be based on proven technologies, to potentially face delay and increase risk for reuse which is peripheral at best for its primary missions. Do you even know how long preparing landing sites for a 3 core launcher would take? Its first 5 or so missions are fairly easy to anticipate as well, and would probably use trajectories and have energy demands that make reuse impossible or too difficult to attempt.
 

AndrewJ

Junior Member
Registered Member
Are you serious right now? Why does nobody on this forum get just how much of a game changer reusability is? Is everyone else dumb? Why don't people get basic engineering principles?

Firstly, the more you do something, the better you get at it. 2ndly, the best way to human rate a rocket is to launch it a bunch of times and work the kinks out and make sure it doesn't explode. The timeline for the CZ-10 to launch humans by 2030 is tight, being able to reuse the first stages means that you can launch your rocket a lot more often and thus have a bigger buffer in case of a mishap and a much greater confidence in your rocket. A rocket that has launched 20 times with a single mishap is a lot better than a rocket that has launched a single time without mishap. And if you do find issues, this will give you a chance to fix it and launch again.

After all, without reuse, every CZ-10 launch is 21 YF-100 engines being thrown away by the 1st stage every launch. You think rocket engines grow on trees? That's more YF-100s being destroyed with a single LM-10 launch than the total amount of YF-100 ever used by all of the LM-8 rockets ever launched. Every landing is 21 engines saved and that can be reused for little costs, compared to building 21 engines from scratch. You think this wouldn't greatly speed up the launch rate of the LM-10? If you're gonna reuse a rocket ASAP, it might as well be the super expensive heavy lift rocket that uses an insane amount of engines, that's already designed from the ground up to be reusable and whom the 2030 lunar landings depend on it meeting a very tight launch schedule and probably 4-5 launches over 3 years.

Even the basic CZ-10A is still 7 engines being destroyed without reuse. We already see how difficult it is for China to mass produce the YF-100, there's a reason why the newer generations of LM rockets that use the YF-100 are still the miniority of launches, despite many attempts at boosting production for years. There's a real risk that the 2030 date slips, just because there will be delays over the production of so many engines and rockets. 4 CZ-10 launches means 84 YF-100s getting destroyed without any reuse. Fun fact, the total number of CZ-7 ever launched, 18 of them since 2016, all those 18 combined launches over 9 years gives you a total of 108 YF-100s. But you think it's gonna be simple for China to produce the 84 YF-100s between 2027 and 2030 needed for the crewed lunar landings? They have been struggling to mass produce the CZ-8 for years now despite the base variant only needing two YF-100s. That's the one downside about reusable rockets, you need more engines per rocket.

There's always a chance that a launch fails too, be it the rocket, or even the Mengzhou or some other weird issue. Having as many rockets in backup as possible is important when you're working on such a tight schedule. If the 2nd stage or the payload fucks up for whatever reason, that's 21 YF-100s wasted for nothing. You think China can magic up so many rocket engines in such a tight 2027-2030 timeframe if even a single launch fails for whatever reason? But if you have a backup of landed rockets from earlier launches, that's a great buffer for little cost.

And there's lots of other factors at work here. This is more than just the CZ-10 and lunar landing here. Think big picture pls.

1) The CZ-10A is China's first reusable Long March rocket. If the private sector fucks up badly, it has the potential to be China's first reusable rocket ever. Once they do make it land and reuse it, the lessons that engineers will learn greatly affect every other Chinese reusable rocket in development, both in the state and private sector. This is not just about the CZ-10, the earlier Chinese engineers learn more about reusable rockets, the better all the other reusable rockets will get. This will effect rockets in early stages of development more, since they can make greater design changes based on the lessons learned from landing and reusing the LM-10.

2) Refurbishment is a great learning opportunity. Do you know why the F9 is so very very reliable? It's because it's the only rocket where you can recover the first stage and find out how being launched into orbit affected the rocket. Do you not understand how difficult it is to engineer something that destroys itself after you use it? You can't dissect a used rocket and find out how being launched to 2.5km/s, the heat, aerodynamic pressure and the vibrations of the engines affect the delicate systems of pipes and valves in a rocket, because said rocket is impacting the earth at terminal velocity after use. You can test fire engines on a test stand, but it's not the same as a real launch.

Well, with reuse, you can take a 1st stage back completely intact and just cut it open and examine in great detail at potential issues that might result in a future mission failure. I can guarantee you that the 1st landed rocket of any type, are gonna be ripped apart and every little detail is gonna examined with a fine toothed comb. Maybe one of the seals/valves is weak and there's a 20% chance of it rupturing and destroying the rocket with every launch, but engineers can't catch the flaw until they get unlucky with a launch and the rockets actually explodes and exposes the problem. But since you can actually get the rocket back in one piece, you can spot the problem before it actually happens. See my first point for how this will affect future reusable rocket development too. There's probably lots of small and major changes that you can make to the internals of a rocket that will optimize it for reuse that China won't know about until you actually land a rocket and cut it open to find out. Better to find out early, so that you can find apply the changes to other resauble rockets sooner, when they are early in their design phase.

CZ-10 Y1, Y2, Y3 can't be reusable, as they're going to the moon! If they're reusable, then the payload capacity is heavliy restricted, unable to realize full simulation around moon or landing on it.

If inserting reuseable test, they should add additional prototypes before Y1, which is CZ-10A. Doing multiple reuse tests for CZ-10A is more like waste of time, caz you need to do boosters' reuse tests too, otherwise it's not enough for full reuse of CZ-10. Meanwhile, benefits are little, only exist when one of 10A, 10Y1, 10Y2, 10Y3 fails.

According to China's launch/build pattern, they always build two same rockets at a time, launch one of them & use another for backup, to offer redundancy for mission schedule.

Considering lunar manned mission's intense schedule, shouldn't waste additional time to persure reusability, which could only be useful when mission fails. Such failed cases could still be dealed with their build-two-at-a-time backup scheme.

Meanwhile, China has said, CZ-10A (w/o boosters) will be reusable, which is a perfect choice to LEO missions in 2030s.
 
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kentchang

Junior Member
Registered Member
Are you serious right now? Why does nobody on this forum get just how much of a game changer reusability is? Is everyone else dumb? Why don't people get basic engineering principles?

Firstly, the more you do something, the better you get at it. 2ndly, the best way to human rate a rocket is to launch it a bunch of times and work the kinks out and make sure it doesn't explode. The timeline for the CZ-10 to launch humans by 2030 is tight, being able to reuse the first stages means that you can launch your rocket a lot more often and thus have a bigger buffer in case of a mishap and a much greater confidence in your rocket. A rocket that has launched 20 times with a single mishap is a lot better than a rocket that has launched a single time without mishap. And if you do find issues, this will give you a chance to fix it and launch again.

After all, without reuse, every CZ-10 launch is 21 YF-100 engines being thrown away by the 1st stage every launch. You think rocket engines grow on trees? That's more YF-100s being destroyed with a single LM-10 launch than the total amount of YF-100 ever used by all of the LM-8 rockets ever launched. Every landing is 21 engines saved and that can be reused for little costs, compared to building 21 engines from scratch. You think this wouldn't greatly speed up the launch rate of the LM-10? If you're gonna reuse a rocket ASAP, it might as well be the super expensive heavy lift rocket that uses an insane amount of engines, that's already designed from the ground up to be reusable and whom the 2030 lunar landings depend on it meeting a very tight launch schedule and probably 4-5 launches over 3 years.

Even the basic CZ-10A is still 7 engines being destroyed without reuse. We already see how difficult it is for China to mass produce the YF-100, there's a reason why the newer generations of LM rockets that use the YF-100 are still the miniority of launches, despite many attempts at boosting production for years. There's a real risk that the 2030 date slips, just because there will be delays over the production of so many engines and rockets. 4 CZ-10 launches means 84 YF-100s getting destroyed without any reuse. Fun fact, the total number of CZ-7 ever launched, 18 of them since 2016, all those 18 combined launches over 9 years gives you a total of 108 YF-100s. But you think it's gonna be simple for China to produce the 84 YF-100s between 2027 and 2030 needed for the crewed lunar landings? They have been struggling to mass produce the CZ-8 for years now despite the base variant only needing two YF-100s. That's the one downside about reusable rockets, you need more engines per rocket.

There's always a chance that a launch fails too, be it the rocket, or even the Mengzhou or some other weird issue. Having as many rockets in backup as possible is important when you're working on such a tight schedule. If the 2nd stage or the payload fucks up for whatever reason, that's 21 YF-100s wasted for nothing. You think China can magic up so many rocket engines in such a tight 2027-2030 timeframe if even a single launch fails for whatever reason? But if you have a backup of landed rockets from earlier launches, that's a great buffer for little cost.

And there's lots of other factors at work here. This is more than just the CZ-10 and lunar landing here. Think big picture pls.

1) The CZ-10A is China's first reusable Long March rocket. If the private sector fucks up badly, it has the potential to be China's first reusable rocket ever. Once they do make it land and reuse it, the lessons that engineers will learn greatly affect every other Chinese reusable rocket in development, both in the state and private sector. This is not just about the CZ-10, the earlier Chinese engineers learn more about reusable rockets, the better all the other reusable rockets will get. This will effect rockets in early stages of development more, since they can make greater design changes based on the lessons learned from landing and reusing the LM-10.

2) Refurbishment is a great learning opportunity. Do you know why the F9 is so very very reliable? It's because it's the only rocket where you can recover the first stage and find out how being launched into orbit affected the rocket. Do you not understand how difficult it is to engineer something that destroys itself after you use it? You can't dissect a used rocket and find out how being launched to 2.5km/s, the heat, aerodynamic pressure and the vibrations of the engines affect the delicate systems of pipes and valves in a rocket, because said rocket is impacting the earth at terminal velocity after use. You can test fire engines on a test stand, but it's not the same as a real launch.

Well, with reuse, you can take a 1st stage back completely intact and just cut it open and examine in great detail at potential issues that might result in a future mission failure. I can guarantee you that the 1st landed rocket of any type, are gonna be ripped apart and every little detail is gonna examined with a fine toothed comb. Maybe one of the seals/valves is weak and there's a 20% chance of it rupturing and destroying the rocket with every launch, but engineers can't catch the flaw until they get unlucky with a launch and the rockets actually explodes and exposes the problem. But since you can actually get the rocket back in one piece, you can spot the problem before it actually happens. See my first point for how this will affect future reusable rocket development too. There's probably lots of small and major changes that you can make to the internals of a rocket that will optimize it for reuse that China won't know about until you actually land a rocket and cut it open to find out. Better to find out early, so that you can find apply the changes to other resauble rockets sooner, when they are early in their design phase.

Your obsessions and rantings are infantile. Such a bean counter mentality. People on this forum not only understand basic engineering principles, they also have common sense and understand the historical significance of the first few CZ-10 missions. They also know the danger of mission creep, Keep It Simple and Stupid, and between recovering a CZ-10 first stage vs better/more reliable capsule and rover, they pick the latter. Perhaps you should go back to play with your F9 Lego set and report back how many screws, rivets, and O-rings are wasted in a non-reusable CZ-10. Don't you see the bigger picture at all?!
 

antwerpery

Junior Member
Registered Member
Your obsessions and rantings are infantile. Such a bean counter mentality. People on this forum not only understand basic engineering principles, they also have common sense and understand the historical significance of the first few CZ-10 missions. They also know the danger of mission creep, Keep It Simple and Stupid, and between recovering a CZ-10 first stage vs better/more reliable capsule and rover, they pick the latter. Perhaps you should go back to play with your F9 Lego set and report back how many screws, rivets, and O-rings are wasted in a non-reusable CZ-10. Don't you see the bigger picture at all?!
People get can get how valuable reuse is without acting like an idiot. Why are you even complaining? There is a clear division of labor in the development of new space technologies, and not everything needs to be perfect from your information-limited perspective. It makes no sense for LM-10, which is meant specifically to be based on proven technologies, to potentially face delay and increase risk for reuse which is peripheral at best for its primary missions. Do you even know how long preparing landing sites for a 3 core launcher would take? Its first 5 or so missions are fairly easy to anticipate as well, and would probably use trajectories and have energy demands that make reuse impossible or too difficult to attempt.
After the rocket stages and the 1st stage releases the 2nd stage, it doesn’t matter what happens to the 1st stage. It has done its job. What happens afterwards has no bearing on the success on the mission. After the rocket has staged, you can shoot the 1st stage with a missile, shoot it with a laser, make it self destruct, have it spin around, have it relight it's engines to land and it will have no effect on the 2nd stage. Do you not understand this? As soon as the 2nd stage is on it's way to orbit, the 1st stage is junk. In that case, why not try to actually land it? What technical risk does it pose for a 1st stage that has already done it's main job, that's falling back to to earth to be destroyed anyway, to attempt to relight it's engines for a landing?

With your logic, you shouldn't ever take ANY risks ever. In that case, why even bother with launching the 1st, 2nd and 3rd stage together as a complete rocket? That creates lots of failure points. The least risk would be to launch the 1st stage by itself, with no payload of course. Followed by launching the 1st and 2nd stage together, again with no payload. Followed by launching the 1st, 2nd and 3rd stage as the full rocket, with no payload. Then finally can you launch the complete mission, rocket and payload both. Keep it simple stupid. The most optimal risk free way to launch any rocket. Would only add another 2-4 years to the lunar landings.

Oh even greater idea. Might as well go back in time and kick the LM-10 team in the ass for even going for the Falcon heavy triple core reusable approach. Might as well have gone with the 1970s era expendable original CZ-9 design and save reusable rockets for the 2050s. Keep it simple stupid, don't take any risks at all. No wonder Chinese rocket designers are always ahead of the curve and are at the cutting edge of rocket science, and not totally wasted the last 30 years on a super conservative mindset that saw them constantly refuse to modernize their hypergolic rocket fleet for decades that has resulted in China falling badly behind in rocket engineering.
Do you even know how long preparing landing sites for a 3 core launcher would take? Its first 5 or so missions are fairly easy to anticipate as well,
CZ-10 Y1, Y2, Y3 can't be reusable, as they're going to the moon! If they're reusable, then the payload capacity is heavliy restricted, unable to realize full simulation around moon or landing on it.
Doing multiple reuse tests for CZ-10A is more like waste of time, caz you need to do boosters' reuse tests too, otherwise it's not enough for full reuse of CZ-10.
Hence why I have said from my first post that started this is that trying to land the CZ-10A first would be the best outcome, not the CZ-10 first... Do people even read my posts? The CZ-10A is flying first after all, by a year. And if trying to land 3 boosters at once is too hard... just land a single booster. Saving 7 engines is better than none. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good enough.
Meanwhile, benefits are little, only exist when one of 10A, 10Y1, 10Y2, 10Y3 fails.
Considering lunar manned mission's intense schedule, shouldn't waste additional time to persure reusability, which could only be useful when mission fails. Such failed cases could still be dealed with their build-two-at-a-time backup scheme.
As I have already stated, just having the chance to have a detailed look at a rocket that has already been though an orbital burn is a great boost to reliability of future rockets. Launching more times, even with no payload, is a good boost to human rating your rocket too.
CZ-10 Y1, Y2, Y3 can't be reusable, as they're going to the moon! If they're reusable, then the payload capacity is heavliy restricted, unable to realize full simulation around moon or landing on it.
We're not even sure how many CZ-10A are launching, or the sequence of CZ-10 launches. It might be possible if unlikely that the first CZ-10 launch carries the Mengzhou to LEO first, rather than to a lunar orbit if the mission designers want to play it safe. Also the weight of a fully stocked up Mengzhou is 26 tons, too heavy for a reuse. But that's fully stocked, as in with the full crew on board, with enough food and water to last them the trip to the Moon and back. A Mengzhou without crew is gonna be a lot lighter, might be possible for a landing, even with a lunar orbit. Also, the Faclon heavy has a trick where if it's taking a heavy payload where it's not possible to land all 3 cores, it can choose to just land it's two boosters. Which we might see with an uncrewed Mengzhou, heavy enough that they can only land the boosters. But that's still 14 engines saved.
It makes no sense for LM-10, which is meant specifically to be based on proven technologies
Don't try to gaslight me. The LM-10 is not at all based on proven technologies, not unless China has landed a rocket, or already has a super heavy lift rocket in service that I don't know about. They might as well not have taken the FH reusable approach and just continued the development of the original CZ-9 design if you want "proven technologies" so badly.
 
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amchan

New Member
Registered Member
After the rocket stages and the 1st stage releases the 2nd stage, it doesn’t matter what happens to the 1st stage. It has done its job. What happens afterwards has no bearing on the success on the mission. After the rocket has staged, you can shoot the 1st stage with a missile, shoot it with a laser, make it self destruct, have it spin around, have it relight it's engines to land and it will have no effect on the 2nd stage. Do you not understand this? As soon as the 2nd stage is on it's way to orbit, 1st stage is junk. In that case, why not try to actually land it? What technical risk does it pose for a 1st stage that has already done it's main job, that's falling back to to earth to be destroyed anyway, to attempt to relight it's engines for a landing?

With your logic, you shouldn't ever take ANY risks ever. In that case, why even bother with launching the 1st, 2nd and 3rd stage together as a complete rocket? That creates lots of failure points. The least risk would be to launch the 1st stage by itself, with no payload of course. Followed by launching the 1st and 2nd stage together, again with no payload. Followed by launching the 1st, 2nd and 3rd stage as the full rocket, with no payload. Then finally can you launch the complete mission, rocket and payload both. Keep it simple stupid. The most optimal risk free way to launch any rocket. Would only add another 2-4 years to the lunar landings.

Oh even greater idea. Might as well go back in time and kick the LM-10 team in the ass for even going for the Falcon heavy triple core reusable approach. Might as well have gone with the 1970s era expendable original CZ-9 design and save reusable rockets for the 2050s. Keep it simple stupid, don't take any risks at all. No wonder Chinese rocket designers are always ahead of the curve and are at the cutting edge of rocket science, and not totally wasted the last 30 years on a super conservative mindset that saw them constantly refuse to modernize their hypergolic rocket fleet for decades that has resulted in China falling badly behind in rocket engineering.



Hence why I have said from my first post that started this is that trying to land the CZ-10A first would be the best outcome, not the CZ-10 first... Do people even read my posts? The CZ-10A is flying first after all, by a year. And if trying to land 3 boosters at once is too hard... just land a single booster. Saving 7 engines is better than none. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good enough.


As I have already stated, just having the chance to have a detailed look at a rocket that has already been though an orbital burn is a great boost to reliability of future rockets. Launching more times, even with no payload, is a good boost to human rating your rocket.

We're not even sure how many CZ-10A are launching, or the sequence of CZ-10 launches. It might be possible if unlikely that the first CZ-10 launch carries the Mengzhou to LEO first, rather than to a lunar orbit if the mission designers want to play it safe. Also the weight of a fully stocked up Mengzhou is 26 tons, too heavy for a reuse. But that's fully stocked, as in with the full crew on board, with enough food and water to last them the trip to the Moon and back. A Mengzhou without crew is gonna be a lot lighter, might be possible for a landing, even with a lunar orbit. Also, the Faclon heavy has a trick where if it's taking a heavy payload where it's not possible to land all 3 cores, it can choose to just land it's two boosters. Which we might see with an uncrewed Mengzhou, heavy enough that they can only land the boosters. But that's still 14 engines saved.

Don't try to gaslight me. The LM-10 is not at all based on proven technologies, not unless China has already mastered reuse, or already has a super heavy lift rocket in service that I don't know about. They might as well not have taken the FH reusable approach and just continued the development of the original CZ-9 design if you want "proven technologies" so badly.
You literally have no idea how reuse works. You are utterly unqualified to discuss this topic if you believe that keeping enough fuel to relight is not going to cripple the ability of the LM10 to launch lunar or heavy earth orbit payloads, which are its primary missions. Any other task is possible with already existing launchers. Also, the LM12 is specifically meant to test the LM10s engines so don't try to pretend its not a risk-averse, conservative design. Its engines are up-rates of the most common cryogenic engines in service in China. It literally does not get more proven than that.
 
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