China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
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Gosh, that dark-blue planet with white wisps in the distance is so beautiful, especially thus compared with the barren and grey moon rock, and She's the only one amongst billions and billions of stars......feel like I'm 9000 years old, and missing Her already, and I'll forever love Her underneath the moon...
I think the real question you are asking is whether it makes sense to put up relatively small satellite constellations for the purposes of a "first come first served" strategy. The fact that China is not way ahead in the number of satellites of where it is currently, is also because the satellites they launch are not large constellations of relatively small individual starlink satellites, and it makes more sense to actually use their launch capacity for more useful payloads. When the US says it is concerned about the growth of Chinese ISR satellites, it is those sort of payloads which they're referring to.
If they had a lot more launch capacity that outstripped their useful payload development/industry, then in theory putting up large constellations of small satellites would make more sense (and that is partly why most F9 launches are Starlink to begin with), but even then one would have to ask whether that excess launch capacity may be better directed for other purposes or being delayed until they actually have better payloads to put up.
I'm also not sure who here is talking down on Chinese commercial space efforts, most people seem neutral to supportive of their efforts. If anything the array of different companies offering up first launches of rockets intended for reusability in the next year or two is quite dynamic.
This kind of chart is misleading.
Basically, you only launch that many satellites if demand is there. Demand simply wasn't there for launch 2000 satellites into LEO until past 2 years. That's why you have Guowang and G60 both at start of deployment now and why you have multiple gigafactories for satellite production coming online. America's # only increased because Starlink came online.
This is the current planned satellite production from various factories. You will notice that most of them just started production in 2022 to 2023 and others haven't even started production yet. But most of these are in the very early stages of ramp.
For example, G60 project is expected to reach capacity of 600 by 2025. We are probably 2 years from when satellite production really ramps up
With how data linked modern militaries are, having global high speed internet access is a pretty big deal. Furthermore, at least this can be commercialized and sold as a service to other countries, so it's also a race for customers between Starlink and China's own mega-constellations, especially in the BRI countries that China is courting.
It's not like China has any extra launch capacity to spare. The waiting time for commercial payloads is years long, even without the new Guowang and the G60. Even if China devotes every LM launch to launching as many commercial payloads as they can, the number of objects launched will not rise by much, like I said, a lot of launches are small lift rockets and even the workhorses of CZ-2/CZ-3 aren't that impressive when compared to the F9. And we all see exactly how many launches it takes to launch thousands of Starlinks into space, weekly launches of 50 satellites each for years.
Nobody is outright saying "cancel the private spaceflight program" but I think a lot of people are generally dismissive of private spaceflight efforts and saying that the state agencies should take priority and the majority of launches. For example, when discussing the limited number of launchpad availability and who should get the most spots. Or often repeated argument of the LM-8 vs private rockets for launching the mega-constellations. Or the role the private companies should play in launching national science missions, military payloads, human spaceflight etc etc, with some people thinking that the private companies should be solely limited to commercial payloads and even then they have to share the market with the more mature state owned rockets.
China's commercial launch market has been starved of launch capacity of years, even before Starlink/Guowang/G60 became a thing. Waiting time for commercial payloads is years long. The demand of satellites is there, the launches are not. It's not unique to China of course, in every country rocket launches are the bottleneck and the waiting times are long, although SpaceX is changing that.
And it's still not a good sign that even though China's total number of launches far outstrips that of Russia, their total combined mass and number of objects launched is still somewhat comparable. I have already explained why, because most of the LM are for military payloads, they don't offer rideshares, so there's often wasted unused capacity in a lot of launches.
Maybe I don’t quite understand... But this is the statement that China does not have enough missiles to launch. What, there are already hundreds of ready-made satellites, the Guowang structure has already been approved, ground base stations are ready, etc.? If the "Chinese Falcon-9" appears tomorrow, will it take off twice a week with a full load?
Mx. Taco burger,
What is an acceptable amount of time for a Chinese company to develop a commercial rocket system similar to the Falcon 9?
Especially when you consider they are reacting and the development prior was to develop RP/LOx (etc.) rockets. You can are this was a poor bet, sure.
You can get angered at the lack of development but unless you can pinpoint the lack of a resource, or policy/legal support it doesn't help anything.
The way I see it now is that there are multiple Chinese companies that are in the process of developing reusable rockets, it is a matter of time before that happens. What can they do to be faster? These are private companies with little access to capital and this will not take on much risk, unlike SpaceX.
Ultimately you can complain about this slow progress, but what is there to be done. Discussing this matter on and off multiple times again doesn't add any context or push the discussion forwards.
What is an acceptable amount of time for a Chinese company to develop a commercial rocket system similar to the Falcon 9?
Especially when you consider they are reacting and the development prior was to develop RP/LOx (etc.) rockets. You can are this was a poor bet, sure.
You can get angered at the lack of development but unless you can pinpoint the lack of a resource, or policy/legal support it doesn't help anything.
The way I see it now is that there are multiple Chinese companies that are in the process of developing reusable rockets, it is a matter of time before that happens. What can they do to be faster? These are private companies with little access to capital and this will not take on much risk, unlike SpaceX.
Ultimately you can complain about this slow progress, but what is there to be done. Discussing this matter on and off multiple times again doesn't add any context or push the discussion forwards.
1) The decision to not push for cryogenic rockets systems earlier in China's space history and sticking to hypergolic rockets for so long 100% harmed entire sector. Fun fact, the earliest private rocket companies (Landspace, Ispace) were founded around the same time as when the first chinese cryogenic rocket reached orbit. So some of the early private rocket companies would have had a tiny amount of experiences with cryogenic rockets and fuels, and had to develop everything from scratch basically. Compare that with the American private space sector, that could directly recruit engineers with decades worth of experience with cryogenic rockets from the very start.
2. The decision to have the LM-8 complete with the commercial space sector for commercial market isn't good, to the point where the LM-8 has a entire launchpad reserved for it. Even if you have an infinite amount of rockets, there's going to be a bottleneck in launch infrastructure. Currently the pad 2 of the Wenchang commercial launchpad can handle around 16 launches a year. That's 2 launches for every private reusable rocket design currently in development. And for reusable rockets, the more launches the better, it's gonna take a few launches before they can actually land the rocket after all. And even more launches for them to refine their recovry and refurbishment process, something that took SpaceX years and dozens of landings. And that's with the CZ-8 not currently being mass produced nearly enough to even to fully use an entire launchpad fully- assuming that Pad 1 can also launch 16 rockets a year. This is when LM rockets have a large enough military exclusive missions that only the LM rockets are allowed to launch.
3. Despite other proposals to support commercial space, like commerical cargo missions to the Tiangong space station, something that basically got SpaceX though it's early years, for now the cargo missions are going towards SOEs instead of private companies. This also displays a general trend towards bias towards SOEs, when the state already has a much larger funding and support while the private companies have pick up the scraps. Source:
4. So it's entirely possible that China could have an private reusable F9 tier rocket today and not support it fully. No human spaceflight missions, no military missions, no cargo resupply for Tiangong, no lunar missions, just a Guowang/G60 workhorse- which I guess it's fine until the national agencies get their own reusable rockets. And what happens then?
Right now the main advantage that private rocket companies have is that their resauble rocket program look to be faster then the state agencies, and that CZ-10 will be busy with lunar program. But eventually CALT and SAST will have their F9 clones and what guess what happens to private companies then? CALT is already trying to muscle in on the commerical launch market, has enough sway to basically reserve an entire commerical launchpad for a single rocket, and insane enough to think that they can launch an entire megaconstellation with 50 LM-8 launches a year. What do you think will happen once they do get a cheap resauble F9 workhorse rocket along with the state support that they enjoy? Yeah no shit private spaceflight can't afford to actually take much risks.
Looking at the various posts about commercial space launchers and industries, they have always been received positively here. People are generally supportive of the commercial space industry efforts, however they are also being appropriately cautious in recognizing that the major commercial players need to prove themselves as well.
Even for the LM-8 versus private rocket discussion, no one was suggesting that one was necessarily being preferred over the other when neither category (state or commercial) has even proven themselves yet in being able to do truly high rate launches of either usable or reusable rockets. And even when that does occur, it remains an open question as to what the best national strategy is. Right now they are essentially putting resources into multiple state developed rockets as well as multiple commercial rockets many of which have overlapping and similar capabilities. One may call that inefficient use of resources, but someone else may call it being cautious and having backups for backups in case one or multiple of those avenues don't pan out.
In fact, in this thread no one is saying "cancel the commercial spaceflight program" -- however you are certainly saying "cancel state backed launcher programs". The rest of us are generally saying "let them do both and see what comes out of it".
I understand that you are disappointed that there is no current equivalent to SpaceX in scale right now or in the immediate future (1-2 years), but I'm seeing this consistent pattern of posting where you are displacing your own frustrated expectations about what you want the Chinese space industry to be, into misreading the room.
If anything your previous statements suggesting that many of the new commercial space companies are scams or asking where they are getting their human resources from is among the most dismissive towards the commercial space companies I've seen here.