China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
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by78
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Interesting patch. It depicts 廣目天王, one of the Four Heavenly Kings seen in Buddhist Temples.
"King of the west and one who sees all".
Interesting patch. It depicts 廣目天王, one of the Four Heavenly Kings seen in Buddhist Temples.
"King of the west and one who sees all".
China is the industrial center of the world and has the 2nd most orbital launches in the world by a large margin. The fact that they even have to catch up to a small European private company that undergone bankruptcy and was forced to rideshare with Russian and Indian rockets, frankly is already dropping the ball hard and a sign of extreme incompetence. It wasn't like Starlink popped out of nowhere, as far back as 2012 SpaceX and Musk was loudly proclaiming about satellite mega-constellations and how they would be changing the world. Oneweb in fact was formed in direct respone to Starlink in 2012, their founder took him seriously enough. And in 2014 when SpaceX actually managed to land and reuse a rocket, would have been a sign to everybody that Starlink should be taken seriously.
But somehow, for both Spacesail and Guowang, it has taken them until 2024 for the first sats to actually make it into orbit. Despite the immense resources that the two state backed projects would have enjoyed. Satellite internet isn't extactly a new technology, the only real difference that Starlink has is the scale of the project compared to the old Iridium network or even China's own Chinasat network. Something that China excells in, mass production, especially for electronics. The only real way to explain the delay is that China didn't really see mega-constellations as a priority until Starlink got really big, same as with how China dragged their feet on the development of modern rocketry until SpaceX revolutionized the entire industry and gave China a kick in the butt.
As for Starlink taking over LEO, it's pretty much already happened. 7000+ satellites, with almost daily launches by the F9. Compared to the 72 Spacesail sats and launches every 2 months. The gap is huge and growing, and SpaceX is doing victory laps. China can easily ramp up and supass Oneweb within a year or two, but I find it impossible for China to apporeach anywhere near the scale of Starlink within the next decade, especially with Starship becoming operational soon. If China wanted to stop Starlink, they should have heeded SpaceX a decade ago and started launching Spacesail and Guowang sats by the dozens in 2019, not in 2024. The Chinese launch ramp up is also not happening, we keep hearing news of the massive LM-8 launch ramp up for the mega-constellation launches, 50 planned launches a year, since 2021, and it's nowhere in sight. Reusable rockets efforts are also subpar, VTVL tests keep failing and the private sectors keep suffering setback after setback even for the most basic of tasks, we have no idea when the private sector can deliever a F9 workhorse rocket. Could be this year, but judging by the delays and failures, don't be surprised if it slips into 2026 or even 2027.
Like you said, this is a golden opportunity for China to get customers for Spacesail and Spacesail is nowhere near ready for operations, not even regional scale, let alone global. In the 2 years that it will take for Spacesail to get the 500-1000 sats needed for reliable global coverage, things could have changed a lot, especially at SpaceX if Elon learns to keep his mouth shut or if he gets ousted or even outright assassinated, if the Dems win the midterms and manage to muzzle Trump, so that global customers just go back to the 10k+ Starlink network without worry about an unstable America. Lots of countries might decide to hedge their bets and just wait and see, or just stick with Starlink despite it's issues, because it's the only real game in town right now, as compared to if China can directly offer them comparable service today.
You really think that the vaule of the Starlink network in the Ukraine war didn't change the funding priority of a project that is suddenly skyrocketed in importance? What's next? The sudden surge in development of drone warfare and anti-drone weapons globally is also entirely unrelated to Ukraine?
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china has its own schedule. Again, I gave you the two items that dictate its schedule.
The industrial supply chain has to be built up and made ready before you get to that point.
There are actually other constellations from Chinese companies like GeeSpace that's larger than GW and SpaceSail, but they are not meant to be 10k+ constellations. Everything has its own schedule. China rarely falls behind its schedule once it gets going.
Dude, stop. You are doing it again.
With limited frequency bands and orbital slots, I don't see any reason to delay other than "we're not ready yet". First come first served after all. What is this 4D chess masterplan to let SpaceX fill out the most valuable orbital lanes with thousands of sats and take the best frequency bands? It's pretty simple, China got caught with her pants down and didn't invest adequately in her rockets and satellite manufacturing until SpaceX raced past them, despite ample warning from SpaceX itself a decade before.
Like I said, they had since 2014 to prepare, back when the world should have taken SpaceX seriously. Oneweb has 600 sats in orbit right now, because they recognized that mega-constellations were going to be a big deal early on and invested early to mass produce those sats, despite their lack of rockets, this is a company founded in 2012 and is tiny compared to Chinese SOEs. What happened to China speed? China has the industry, money, talent and rockets. That's the complete supply chain right there.
There's some really obvious areas that China really started on late, like Wenchang Commercial launch site, which only started construction in 2022, and as a result, is only really starting to become operational recently in late 2024/early 2025. Which might explain some of the delay in Qianfan launches, they are still working out the kinks in what's supposed to be the main Qianfan launch site. Which does beg the question of why start construction of the commerical launch site in 2022, instead of 2020 or 2021, or even much much earlier, considering the dozen Chinese private rocket companies that need a launch site or the whole dropping booster stages onto villages problem that inland sites have. Instead, the commerical launch site hasn't launched a single spacesail payload yet, when the commerical launch site was supposed to be the main launch site for commerical payloads like Qianfan. In fact, the Wenchang Commercial launch site has only launched a single rocket so far, the maiden flight of the LM-12.
Not the greatest planning, when your commercial launch site is not ready in time for the ramp up in commerical launches.
Other than losing out on the opportunity costs and the first mover advantage. We're not talking about a tiny gap here. This is like the gap between the Chinese shipbuilding sector and the American shipbuilding sector, but reversed in America's favor. This is not something you can reverse without decades of effort, and unlike an almost infinite amount of ships and shipyards that you can build, there's a very finite amount of satellites and trash that you can put into LEO before shit starts bumping into each other and causing a very big mess and there's growing competition about the frequency bands that the mega-constellations use. Things are going to be very crowded up there very soon. It's not just Starlink to worry about of course. Spacesail and Guowang is ramping up right when project Kuiper is ramping up too, and of course there's the European to worry about since they're in a fuss about Starlink too and might just pour all those news funds that they have raised for their national defense into Oneweb, which still hold a large advantage over Spacesail right now. Of course Starlink will have the advantage in any legal or actual conflict about satellite positioning and collision avoidance, they were there first and practically own LEO with how many Starlinks there are.
Yeah, China rarely falls behind its schedule once it gets going, but the point is that their schedule is already 5 years too late and that it's going to be a massive uphill battle that could have been avoided if they had been like Oneweb, recognized important developments in the sector before it slapped them in the face and prioritized rocket development and their mega-constellations development slightly faster. Imagine if China was slightly faster by a year, and had say 600 sats in orbit right now, instead of 72. Trying to attract customers looking to move away from Starlink would be so just easier if they actually had a service that customers could actually use today. What a difference a year of development makes, since 600 sats is their the end of 2025 target.
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So based on fellow complaints, it dawned on us moderators that you might be the permanently banned @tacoburger
With similar passion to disrupt the space program thread. So, are you looking to get permanent banned again?
Orbital resource is indeed taken by the first occupier. However one owns the whole set of orbital resources if one launches and puts in operation a very limited number of sats. SpaceX' thousands is equal to Guowang's 10 or Spacesails' 10. This is the rule.