Chinese Space Programme

[MartG]

As there doesn't appear to already be a thread in here covering this subject, I thought I'd start one

Following on from their presentation a couple of months ago which showed designs which look exactly like SpaceX's Falcon...



...another article has surfaced which seems to have borrowed from another western design



I wonder if they bought one of these to copy



Full article is here https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/11/china-will-l...

[Eric Mc]

I would rather like someone to have a go at the original Sanger spaceplane concept -

[Beati Dogu]

They put up a Long March 3B rocket last Sunday, with a couple of navigation satellites onboard.

Their rockets aren't that great (as also demonstrated by their buddies the North Koreans). They've lost 4 of them in the last year,so they've gone back to only publicising them if they work correctly.

They livestreamed a launch of their flagship Long March 5 rocket back in the summer. It set off OK, but didn't make it into orbit. They shut up the commentator & pulled the feed early as a result. No doubt some of the technicians were put up against a wall for that one.

[jmorgan]

Not got around to it yet but an article in sky at night suggesting first human on mars. Sort of think so myself as well.

[Eric Mc]

jmorgan said:

Not got around to it yet but an article in sky at night suggesting first human on mars. Sort of think so myself as well.

They could but they still haven't launched a rocket that can match Saturn V or a Space Shuttle.

They have a bit of a way to go.

[Beati Dogu]

The Long March 5 is the biggest they have and it's about the same as the American Delta IV Heavy.

They've launched 2 of them so far, but only the first one last November was successful.

[Eric Mc]

They are going in the right direction but I reckon we won't see a true heavy lifter from them for a decade.

[Einion Yrth]

Eric Mc said:

They are going in the right direction but I reckon we won't see a true heavy lifter from them for a decade.

Why so pessimistic? We're likely to see a heavy lift vehicle from SpaceX within the next 6 months, which will likely be reusable. Less than ten years ago Musk and co. couldn't get a bag of sugar into orbit. Times change.

[Eric Mc]

Others are getting there. I just don't see the Chinese there yet. They are struggling to get their first non hypergolic liquid fuelled rocket to work. They need to get that sorted and running smoothly before they go to the next level. That will take a year or two. Once that is functioning reliably, THEN they can start scaling up to the 6 to 8 million pound thrust class. Ten years might be a bit pessimistic but I certainly don't see it in less than five.

Don't forget that the US and the USSR had functioning rocket motors using liquid oxygen over sixty years ago. The Americans had a functioning liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen rocket over fifty years ago. You need to have those technologies working if you want to be able to get 100 tons into low earth orbit. That's the goal for heavy lift rockets.

Actually, having a look at their plans, it seems the Long March 9 is their planned super heavy lifter with a payload of 140 metric tons into LEO. They expect that to make its first launch in 2025 - so eight years down the line - not too far off my original decade prediction.

[CoolHands]

So when they can start doing it reliably are they going to fill up the skys with loads of cheapo satellite crap? How long until space junk becomes an insurmountable problem?

[colin_p]

CoolHands said:

So when they can start doing it reliably are they going to fill up the skys with loads of cheapo satellite crap? How long until space junk becomes an insurmountable problem?

Someone needs to invent a Space Trasit. Just leave any unwanted stuff outside the airlock door and it will be gone by the next day.

[Eric Mc]

CoolHands said:

So when they can start doing it reliably are they going to fill up the skys with loads of cheapo satellite crap? How long until space junk becomes an insurmountable problem?

There's no sign that the Chinese will make things significantly worse than what others are already doing. The current leader in launches into low earth orbit is the US followed closely by Russia then China, the European Space Agency and Japan - more or less in that order.

Heavy Lift Rockets are designed to launch exactly what it says, heavy objects. The big heavy objects (such as space stations or modules for Mars and Moon missions) will never be the problem. It's launches of lots of small to medium sized satellites into middle altitude orbits.

Low earth objects tend to have a short orbital life and all will eventually fall back into the earth's atmosphere and burn up - often after only a few weeks or months in orbit.