China's Space Program News Thread
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The LM-5 was never meant to compete against the partially reusable Falcon-9. It's China's version of a maiden heavy lift launch vehicle. The most comparable US rocket is probably the expendable Saturn IB, which could put 21,000kg into LEO and was launched 9 times successfully between 1966 and 1975.
The hard part is convincing investors it is worthwhile to invest in private space companies. This is a very high risk venture compared with electric vehicles. You might end up with nothing.
SpaceX' case is bit unique. They started 20 years ago. For them also it took 6 years from inception to their first successful orbital launch with Falcon 1. Their first 3 orbital tries failed and by the time they tried a 4th attempt they were in the brink of bankruptcy. But that launch success allowed them to secure a big ISS contract from NASA. Musk himself has admitted securing that funding saved the company. And it took them another 2 years to perfect the Merlin engine and launch the F9. Blue Origin is actually a year older than SpaceX and they are yet to deliver an orbital class launch vehicle.
The other successful western startup is RocketLab. They are 15 years old. It took them 12 years from inception to their first successful orbital launch with Electron.
Chinese private launch companies are still much newer than their western counterparts and the progress they are making does not seem very different, if you compare the time frames of development of other companies.
Chinese private company Galactic Energy was formed only 4 years ago. They made their first successful orbit with Ceres-1 (which is in a similar payload class as Electron) only after 2 years of inception. Despite it being an expendable solid fueled rocket their reported price is lower than an Electron. Ceres-1 have been launched twice already and have several lined up for the coming months. Their reusable liquid fueled rocket Pallas-1 is scheduled for first launch early next year.
To compare another US company Relativity Space with Chinese company LandSpace, they both started around the same time. Relativity is developing Terran-1 and LandSpace is working on Zhuque-2. Both of those rockets use new methalox engines and both the rockets are in similar stages of development.
A bit more on the iSpace failure:
Space is hard. People don't appreciate just how difficult this is and why for so long it was only nation-states who could do orbital launches. I hope iSpace continues to learn and tries again.
Space is hard. People don't appreciate just how difficult this is and why for so long it was only nation-states who could do orbital launches. I hope iSpace continues to learn and tries again.
Are you blind? ‘On the ground?’
Actually the upper stage worked for 119.6s, 72.3s more than above table. It provides 132m/s dV, which is 3 times of original design. Can you tell me what ‘ground reasons’ made the 2nd stage lost so much dV?
‘Launching ~ time ~’
even with the extra 3x dV provided by YZ-2, the satellite still didn’t reach GTO. They spent a lot of onboard fuel to fix it.
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I think this is the point. Private space takes greater risks to get faster development, so failures should be expected, and in fact required.
If there are no failures, then the program is too conservative, and they could have developed faster by launching sooner and using failures as tests that generate the best data, like car crash tests.
In other news, plants grow in lunar soli, seems NASA sat on this for 50 years, presumably to try to prevent other nations going there.
Makes me wonder what other revelations we will be hearing about from NASA as China repeats NASAs achievements. Maybe something about microbial life on Mars.
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西安卫星测控中心宇航动力学国家重点实验室是我国第一个研究人造天体运动规律的国家重点实验室。近年来，该室成功抢救“中星9A”、“长征五号遥一”内的众多重大航天任务故障，曾为国家挽回巨大经济损失。该室始终聚焦太空领域国家安全战略和国家航天重大工程需求，以宇航动力学领域前沿性和应用瓶颈性问题为导向，开展相关领域应用基础研究和系统建设，特别是空间操控核心技术研究，处于国内领先地位，并形成了研究特色。（吕炳宏张璐 李永华）
“LM-5Y1…serious trouble”
They saved the satellite by YZ-2, but another problem caused by the failure of 2nd stage is YZ-2 had no fuel to go to graveyard but left some collision risks for payload.
According to that article most of Apollo era soil is still locked away and scientists have been doing experiments with simulated soil. For this experiment also they gave just 12 grams of lunar soil.
China actually had an experiment as part of Chang'e-4 in 2019 where they grew plants on the moon. That was also the first seeds to germinate on an extraterrestrial body. But that was using earth soil carried to the moon as payload. Out of several types of seeds only Cotton was able to grow.
If NASA could have given them some lunar soil may be they could have tried this on the moon using actual moon soil. May be China will repeat this experiment on a future Chang'e mission by sending back some of the Chang'e-5 soil or using an in situ method.
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