It took like 10 years for Falcon 9 to ramp up to 1 launch every 2 weeks.
China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
It took like 10 years for Falcon 9 to ramp up to 1 launch every 2 weeks.
it's a waste of time to post this crap that he says. Honestly, it frankly hurts my intelligence level to have to deal with every lie that he says in the media.
anything more on will be deleted.
Which vessel was this launch carried out from — Dongfang Hangtiangang, or, as they say, from the DeFu barge?
PiSigma
"the engineer"
Rust is oxidization of Fe with Oxygen and water. It's literally in the formula. But it takes time, several million times more than the few minutes for something to fall from space.
Then it's probably a combination of direct oxidation under high temperatures and/or structural strength of steel at high temperatures
If you spend just a minute in studying you should know that starship 2nd stage relies on ceremic heat tiles, the stainless steel skin inside does NOT do the job that you think.
The first stage does not experience temeperature high, even aluminium 1st stage works for return, proven by your God's falcon 9.
We want to keep this thread professional, especially keep away from the "spaceX fanboyism", please do some homework before recycling Musk's BS.
explosive growth in aerospace infrastructure from Launching pads to Satellite production to multiple new rockets.. 2026-2027
China's first manufacturing base for offshore recovery and reuse rockets has broken ground in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province. The base will span the full industrial chain of development, production, assembly, testing, recovery, and reuse, with an annual production capacity of 25 rockets.
China's first manufacturing base for offshore recovery and reuse rockets has broken ground in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province. The base will span the full industrial chain of development, production, assembly, testing, recovery, and reuse, with an annual production capacity of 25 rockets.
It's better than nothing assuming it actually works, though there is still a massive gap with SpaceX and will likely take years until they could increase recovery payload to similar levels (CZ-12B is heavier than F9 FT B5). As far as I've heard the main limit with these rockets are the engines, YF-102s apparently aren't very good.
There are other variables apart from rocket design and subsystems equipped, that are often not factored in which affect throw weight, such as the location a rocket is launched from (latitude), and for recoverable rockets it also depends on the availability and position/mobility of recovery sites or recovery platforms. That makes comparing rockets in an apples to apples way somewhat tougher than looking at their spec sheets on paper.
That said I also wouldn't be surprised if iteration of successive rocket hulls will lead to performance gains with time -- the Block 5 is "Five" for a reason.
In context of space launch competition, the specific relative performance of individual rockets in a similar class are not hugely consequential; a difference of a few tons between one medium lifter to another is relatively inconsequential if one wants to talk where a "massive gap" actually is. Instead, in the short term the priority is probably how many reusable medium and heavy lifters are in the pipeline and their contribution of totality of mass to orbit.
It will not be the task of CZ-12B or CZ-10A/B or ZQ-3 individually to try to meet the PRC's launch needs, but rather the collection of efforts.
I suspect there is rapid transfer of engine know how across both private and state programs. Falcon 9 is 3.66 m in diameter and about 70 m tall, whereas this vehicle is roughly 4.37 m wide and 72 m tall. From dimensions alone, and given the stated propellant choice, it is hard to see how a “classical” YF-102R level engine could loft it. If the liftoff mass is above ~700 tonnes, the vehicle likely needs more than ~1,000 tonnes of liftoff thrust to keep T/W comfortably above 1.3. That implies a per-engine sea level thrust on the order of ~110 tonnes for a nine-engine first stage, which points toward a newer engine class rather than an older, lower-thrust design. One possibility is that they are using a non-derated variant of an engine comparable to Space Pioneer’s TH-12 class, or a similar engine family benefitting from shared design and manufacturing practices. Deep Blue Aerospace’s “Thunder” RS family is also reported in the ~130-tonne sea-level thrust range, which would be consistent with the thrust budget.
Even if thrust is sufficient, the payload fraction still appears worse than Falcon 9. That could be explained by structural and propulsion mass penalties, for example a lack of a common bulkhead, heavier engine hardware, and more conservative structural margins or alloys that increase dry mass. If the stage dry mass is high, extra thrust does not translate cleanly into payload.
I still think there is a plausible path to ~20 tonnes to LEO in an reusable mode, mainly by pushing mass fraction and trajectory rather than raw thrust. A larger diameter does help aerodynamically during recovery, since higher frontal area can increase aero-drag and reduce peak heating and propellant needed for deceleration in landing. Just the hooks from CZ 10B and the common bulkhead in both stages would reduce the structural mass significantly from this version.