China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
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I know most commenters here already know the general development philosophy for the CZ-10 family, but it bears repeating for those who are new to the subject. CZ-10 is intended to be a crewed lunar rocket using mostly pre-existing CZ-5 technologies; as such, it is not designed with an eye towards optimum wet/dry mass ratio for LEO missions, both for crew safety reasons and for the fact that the "Dry Mass" of the rocket, when talking about LEO parking orbits, is also the "Wet Mass" for the upper stage's Trans-Lunar Injection burn (you want to maximize the available Delta-V for TLI, lunar orbit insertion, manuveurs, and TEI by maximizing the log function of the wet/dry mass ratio of the upper stage; if you instead optimize for LEO missions, then you're undercutting the flexibility for the lunar portion of the mission). This is for the base CZ-10; CZ-10A uses basically the same set-up but takes away two of the common cores for crewed missions to LEO (in effect prioritizing crew safety over mass delivery to orbit) while CZ-10B i(LEO cargo) appears to serve the important function of decreasing the development risks for the 10A crewed vehicle. That leaves the future CZ-10C as a more LEO-optimized version of the family for cargo delivery.
Latest from Spacelens on Bilibili, CZ10C apparently has a reusable payload of no less than 22t and interestingly in their render, has landing legs. My cope is that data is their estimate and actual payload will be higher, same thing with the landing legs but they do seem to have shown good track record in insider info.
22t isn't all that bad but ain't really good either especially for a rocket of this size. Hopefully they'll optimise it further to achieve more payload making it comparable to American LVs in mass efficiency.
22t isn't all that bad but ain't really good either especially for a rocket of this size. Hopefully they'll optimise it further to achieve more payload making it comparable to American LVs in mass efficiency.
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Here's a screenshot from his video:
9 metholox engines on first stage, 22 ton to LEO in reusable mode and 27 tons to LEO in expandable mode, beating Long March 5B and becoming the most capable rocket in China. He reckons we'll see it fly next year.
A very... crude representation of CZ-10C from a graphic at the China Aerospace Museum back in April also had landing legs, but it's not very representative.
Fomr Tomboy "22t isn't all that bad but ain't really good either especially for a rocket of this size. Hopefully they'll optimise it further to achieve more payload making it comparable to American LVs in mass efficiency."
Well, they can tweak it to further increase the mass efficiency (common bulkheads, engine mass and ISP, optimum aerodynamic length etc.?) but at the end of the day it's still going to be a 5-metre diameter vechicle with many CZ-10 family tech; perhaps optimum mass efficiencies will be reserved for the future 7-metre class vehicle. And the true mass delivery truck to LEO (possibly also lunar) will be the various versions of CZ-9 in 5-7 years. They'll eventually have a range of vehicles to cover the complete mass-delivery and economic-efficiency spectrum: "right vechicle for the right price" rather than the one-size-fits-all hype for Starship (I don't think serious SpaceX insiders really believe that a LEO mass truck is the best option for interplanetary travel via refueling of cryogenic propellants; build dedicated cis-lunar and interplanetary transports for the love of [insert deity name here]).
Well, they can tweak it to further increase the mass efficiency (common bulkheads, engine mass and ISP, optimum aerodynamic length etc.?) but at the end of the day it's still going to be a 5-metre diameter vechicle with many CZ-10 family tech; perhaps optimum mass efficiencies will be reserved for the future 7-metre class vehicle. And the true mass delivery truck to LEO (possibly also lunar) will be the various versions of CZ-9 in 5-7 years. They'll eventually have a range of vehicles to cover the complete mass-delivery and economic-efficiency spectrum: "right vechicle for the right price" rather than the one-size-fits-all hype for Starship (I don't think serious SpaceX insiders really believe that a LEO mass truck is the best option for interplanetary travel via refueling of cryogenic propellants; build dedicated cis-lunar and interplanetary transports for the love of [insert deity name here]).
we missed this news.
iSpace has completed the sea trial of the recovery barge with the Hyperbola-3 mock-up stage onboard.
iSpace has completed the sea trial of the recovery barge with the Hyperbola-3 mock-up stage onboard.
22t reusable is about what you'd expect for a 5m rocket of that size, it is basically the same as the similarly sized Terran R.
A difference of a couple of tons for medium and heavy lifters is really nothing in context of development speed/pace and the scale that reusables can enable, and if there are benefits for technological conservativism (risk reduction) that directly links to a marginally lower throw weight that is probably desirable as well, at least until such a state that they feel additional refinements are mature enough to be implemented.
This is really just PLA watching all over again, all the hallmarks are the same, so there shouldn't be much surprise.
Was it missed? It was from over a week ago, certainly anyone following PRC space twitter was aware of it.
LM-10C will use a landing leg design, at least for the first variant
for the following reasons:
1. It will be used to test landing leg designs for the LM-9B under greater weight.
2. LM-10C is too tall for the current recovery ship; if net recovery is used, further development and construction of an improved ship would be necessary.
for the following reasons:
1. It will be used to test landing leg designs for the LM-9B under greater weight.
2. LM-10C is too tall for the current recovery ship; if net recovery is used, further development and construction of an improved ship would be necessary.