China's Space Program Thread II

[Blitzo]

China seems to work very well for anything planned. Take every projects mentioned in the five year plans. The recreation of entire semiconductor supply chain is no small feat, and arguably more difficult than the reusable rocket development. China had oxygen rich staged combustion engine well in the 2010s, the basics of falcon 9 level of rocket development was not that far off from the tech stack that China had during those time. It feels that the lack of development was and still due to the oversized influence of state owned companies in the aerospace sector, who are better at accomplishing what they are assigned for and not so much for responding to new events and bringing out innovative ideas. While private sectors in US can push the boundaries and set new rules and explore wildly, this relative lack of freedom seems to have hampered the development.

I think you are greatly underestimating the gap of industrial and technology base in rocketry between the US and China in the 2010s.

SpaceX was rightfully able to push the boundaries in the US beyond what existing US contractors were able to do --- but the efforts of SpaceX was a reflection of the existing infrastructure, human resourcing and technological reserves the US already had in its possession at the time. OTOH, the PRC's rocketry infrastructure, human resourcing and technological reserves were far behind the US until recently.



This isn't a case of private sectors being more innovative, but rather that innovation can only occur after:
-sufficient mastery of prerequisite capabilities and technologies and infrastructure
-viable market/customer base/demand
-sufficient time elapsed from funding/technological scarcity

For the PRC's rocket industry, those domains only really occurred in the last half decade plus. There's no need to handwave the idea of innovation as if it is dependent on some nebulous idea of freedom or culture rather than boiling down the material prerequisites first.

 

[NoetherSpudCharge]

The bigger problem with the discourse around reusable rockets in a PRC context is people don't realize how far behind they were in overall technology until recently.

CZ-5 only first flew in late 2016, and PRC maturity of non-hypergolic fuelled rockets is also a fairly recent thing (meanwhile think about comparable milestones for the US, or even Russia), so the idea of pursuing reusable rockets has been quite high risk until the last half decade or so due to lack of mastery of necessary antecedent technologies.

This is an important point. It's only been slightly more than 10 years since China's first kerosene/LOX engine (the original YF-100) made its maiden orbital flight on the first CZ-6 (this was in September 2015). Prior to that the only operational launch vehicles in China were the CZ 2-3-4 hypergolic series. Coincidentally, this was just a few weeks prior to the first successful landing of the first stage by a Falcon 9. All of this just goes to show just how far China was behind the US in terms of its rocket technology even as late as 2018-2019; although it's clear that the government was actively thinking about how it can close the gap (it's around this time that the first initiatives to allow private commercial enterprises to enter the Chinese space sector were coming into being). To me, it's actually a bit amazing how quickly China is moving from hypergolics to RP-1/LH2/CH4 fuels, from expandable cycle to gas-generator cycle to staged combustion cycle to Full-Flowed stage combustion cycle engines, from disposables to partially-reusables and planning for fully-reusable systems, and from LEO to inner solar system and planning for outer system exploration.

China seems to work very well for anything planned. Take every projects mentioned in the five year plans. The recreation of entire semiconductor supply chain is no small feat, and arguably more difficult than the reusable rocket development. China had oxygen rich staged combustion engine well in the 2010s, the basics of falcon 9 level of rocket development was not that far off from the tech stack that China had during those time. It feels that the lack of development was and still due to the oversized influence of state owned companies in the aerospace sector, who are better at accomplishing what they are assigned for and not so much for responding to new events and bringing out innovative ideas. While private sectors in US can push the boundaries and set new rules and explore wildly, this relative lack of freedom seems to have hampered the development.

China had expander cycle liquid hydrogen/LOX engines for quite a while; but these were only for upper stages (much like India's current upper stage engines)., but the road from there to cryogenic fuel main engines for core stage and booster applications was long and hard. In fact, as late as July 2017, the second CZ-5 launch failed due to problems in the turbopump of one of the then new YF-77 gas generator core stage engines; it took another two and a half years before the problems were solved and the 3rd CZ-5 flew successfully on 27 December 2019. So you can reasonably say that the Chinese rocketry turned a new leaf starting on the first day of 2020; before then all their plans, such as reusable rocket technology, lunar and planetary exploration, space stations, etc were only dreams on paper. I don't know just how much truth there is in the US narrative of Old Space versus New Spece, but this narrative is not applicable to China simply because the Chinese material science and engineering talent pool were not sufficient to allow any type of Chinese organization to compete with the US space sector until the last five to six years. Before you can count to 100, you first have to count from zero to one; China has now reached "one" and from all appearances China seems to moving extremely fast from there towards 100 now.

 

[Puss in Boots]

I heard the launch of the CZ-10B rocket has been postponed. Are there any other specific updates?

 

[NoetherSpudCharge]

Current rumor is the CZ-10B launch has been rescheduled for mid to late May; practice for catching the first stage using the ship-based wire-net system is ongoing. ZQ-3 (Y2) is on its way to Jiuquan and launch prep anticipated to be complete by June with launch soon thereafter (complete with another landing attempt). So by mid-year there should be another two landing attempts, hopefully both will be successful (via different methods).

 

[TheRathalos]

I heard the launch of the CZ-10B rocket has been postponed. Are there any other specific updates?

HICAL announced on 4/22 a contract for "hydraulic system repair" of one of its launch site, this *could* be related to this, or it could not, since there are 3 different deluge systems (2 on LCC-2 and 1 on LCC-1)

 

[Maikeru]

Interesting article on the developing US China military competition in Earth orbit.

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[Tomboy]

Following a month of competition, AVIC CAPDI was awarded a 1.59B RMB contract by CALT on April 17th for the construction of the Wenchang Rocket Base Project (Phase I), the scale and timing of the project, including 380x182m integrated production plant, >100m "individual stage asssembly building", and a completion expected before April/May 2028 (similar construction were previous announced to be completed by March 2028) all point toward it being for CZ-9

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View attachment 173878

Looking through the tender, it seems that whatever this new building is, its only 119.5m tall. IMO that seems pretty unlikely to be enough for CZ-9 which is 110m tall by itself and the moving platform will probably add a dozen meters more to its height, you'd probably also want to put cranes and other utility on the ceiling which requires even more clearance between the ceiling and the rocket that doesn't seem to exist.

 

[TheRathalos]

Looking through the tender, it seems that whatever this new building is, its only 119.5m tall. IMO that seems pretty unlikely to be enough for CZ-9 which is 110m tall by itself and the moving platform will probably add a dozen meters more to its height, you'd probably also want to put cranes and other utility on the ceiling which requires even more clearance between the ceiling and the rocket that doesn't seem to exist.

119.5m is specifically for 子级,

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, assembly, not the full stack, given the distances and the fact it'll go through the whole HICAL technical area, IMO CZ-9 will likely be trucked from the assembly area to the launch site stage by stage (maybe the 2nd-3rd-Fairing stage will be assembled together) in a similar manner to Starship, there doesn't seem to be any mobile launcher on rail planned

Actually the overall dimensions are somewhat similar to Boca Chica's latest infrastructure, "Gigabay" and "Starfactory"

 

[sunnymaxi]

119.5m is specifically for 子级,

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, assembly, not the full stack, given the distances and the fact it'll go through the whole HICAL technical area, IMO CZ-9 will likely be trucked from the assembly area to the launch site stage by stage (maybe the 2nd-3rd-Fairing stage will be assembled together) in a similar manner to Starship, there doesn't seem to be any mobile launcher on rail planned

Actually the overall dimensions are somewhat similar to Boca Chica's latest infrastructure, "Gigabay" and "Starfactory"

exactly. i was about to post this.

Starship new facility Gigabay which is only 116 meters in Height despite the 121 meter height of Starship. this Texas facility is build to assemble individual stages of the rocket but not the entire rocket itself. the Gigabay 116 meter height is more than sufficient to house either individual stage with ample room for overhead cranes and internal maintenance platforms.

 

[siegecrossbow]

119.5m is specifically for 子级,

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, assembly, not the full stack, given the distances and the fact it'll go through the whole HICAL technical area, IMO CZ-9 will likely be trucked from the assembly area to the launch site stage by stage (maybe the 2nd-3rd-Fairing stage will be assembled together) in a similar manner to Starship, there doesn't seem to be any mobile launcher on rail planned

Actually the overall dimensions are somewhat similar to Boca Chica's latest infrastructure, "Gigabay" and "Starfactory"

Does the Chinese building for housing the rocket have a name too?