China's Space Program News Thread
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Quickie
Colonel
This comes out to an average of 30 launches per year! Assuming increasing rate, the year 2020 will likely have more launches than 2016.
150 Long March rocket launches scheduled 2016-2020
by Staff Writers
Beijing (XNA) Apr 25, 2016
"Our first 100 Long March missions took us 37 years. But it only took us seven years to complete the latest 100," Chen said.
China will launch about 150 of its Long March carrier rockets over the next five years, one of its space chiefs said on Friday, days ahead of celebrations marking the launch of the country's first satellite 46 years ago.
"In the 13th Five-Year Plan period [2016-2020], we will see about 30 launches [of the Long March series] each year," Chen Xuechuan, assistant president of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, told Xinhua.
There were 86 Long March missions in the five years from 2011 to 2015, and 48 from 2006 to 2010.
Chen said China is quickly catching up with other countries after being a relative latecomer in human space endeavors.
The launch of the SJ-10 retrievable scientific research satellite earlier this month marked the 226th mission of the Long March rocket family, and the pace of launches is accelerating.
"Our first 100 Long March missions took us 37 years. But it only took us seven years to complete the latest 100," Chen said.
This year alone, China will conduct more than 20 space missions, including launching two navigation satellites, and a satellite designed for high-definition Earth observation.
China's second orbiting space lab, Tiangong-2, will also be launched in fall this year, and it is scheduled to dock with manned spacecraft Shenzhou-11 in the fourth quarter.
Shenzhou-11 will reportedly carry two male Chinese astronauts for a 30-day mission on board Shenzhou-11 and Tiangong-2.
In addition, two new-generation Long March rockets, the heavy-lift Long March-5 and the medium-sized Long March-7, will also make their maiden space trips this year, according to Chen.
He said the two less environmentally damaging models will eventually replace the earlier Long March rockets to meet demand for space launches at home and abroad.
China's first Space Day has been scheduled for April 24, the day in 1970 on which Dong Fang Hong 1, or The East is Red 1, was launched into Earth orbit on a Long March rocket.
150 Long March rocket launches scheduled 2016-2020
by Staff Writers
Beijing (XNA) Apr 25, 2016
China will launch about 150 of its Long March carrier rockets over the next five years, one of its space chiefs said on Friday, days ahead of celebrations marking the launch of the country's first satellite 46 years ago.
"In the 13th Five-Year Plan period [2016-2020], we will see about 30 launches [of the Long March series] each year," Chen Xuechuan, assistant president of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, told Xinhua.
There were 86 Long March missions in the five years from 2011 to 2015, and 48 from 2006 to 2010.
Chen said China is quickly catching up with other countries after being a relative latecomer in human space endeavors.
The launch of the SJ-10 retrievable scientific research satellite earlier this month marked the 226th mission of the Long March rocket family, and the pace of launches is accelerating.
"Our first 100 Long March missions took us 37 years. But it only took us seven years to complete the latest 100," Chen said.
This year alone, China will conduct more than 20 space missions, including launching two navigation satellites, and a satellite designed for high-definition Earth observation.
China's second orbiting space lab, Tiangong-2, will also be launched in fall this year, and it is scheduled to dock with manned spacecraft Shenzhou-11 in the fourth quarter.
Shenzhou-11 will reportedly carry two male Chinese astronauts for a 30-day mission on board Shenzhou-11 and Tiangong-2.
In addition, two new-generation Long March rockets, the heavy-lift Long March-5 and the medium-sized Long March-7, will also make their maiden space trips this year, according to Chen.
He said the two less environmentally damaging models will eventually replace the earlier Long March rockets to meet demand for space launches at home and abroad.
China's first Space Day has been scheduled for April 24, the day in 1970 on which Dong Fang Hong 1, or The East is Red 1, was launched into Earth orbit on a Long March rocket.
Quickie
Colonel
How come we don't see more live video from space? If my memory serves me right, this seems like the first one I've ever seen.
150 launches over 5 years is a lot.
But I'm disappointed that there's no mention of using reusable rockets like with SpaceX, because that is where the future lies.
I think everyone is very impressed with what they've done eg.
a) Bidding 40% less than ULA for space launch contracts even without having to reuse the rockets.
b) And once they start reusing the rockets, their launch costs could easily drop 10x.
Even the Chinese rocket guys have said publicly that they can't currently match them for costs, and this is pretty old news.
So why isn't there any mention of reusable rocket development?
The US places an embargo on the use of US space and rocket technology to China - so China is going to have to develop this by themselves anyway - so I find it very curious that we haven't heard anything.
Perhaps the space industry in China is ripe for opening up to private investment like in the US?
Within China, we've seen an explosion of electric vehicle and autonomous vehicle development since the industry was opened up to private investment. And like in the USA - it is China's technology companies/billionaires that are leading the disruption. And given the conditions in China - the auto industry experts publicly state that they expect China to lead the industry - despite all the publicity about Tesla.
The investment required to kickstart a private space industry also looks affordable if we look at the SpaceX costs, and the Chinese companies have the advantage of modelling much of their operation on what SpaceX has already done and learned from
Falcon 1
$100million Development Cost
$7million Single Use Rocket Launch Cost
180-600kg Payload to LEO
Falcon 9 v1
$300million Development Cost
$60million Single Use Rocket Launch Cost
10,450 kg Payload to LEO
Falcon 9 v1.1
$850million Development
$61million Single Use Rocket Launch Cost
13,150 kg Payload to LEO
And the key principles they would be working to are:
1. Reusability
2. Standardisation
3. Builtin Redundancy eg. One engine failure allowed on launch, Second engine failure allowed after xx seconds. Or the use of COTS hardware with multiple redundancy instead of expensive radiation hardened components.
4. A general lean engineering exercise
But I'm disappointed that there's no mention of using reusable rockets like with SpaceX, because that is where the future lies.
I think everyone is very impressed with what they've done eg.
a) Bidding 40% less than ULA for space launch contracts even without having to reuse the rockets.
b) And once they start reusing the rockets, their launch costs could easily drop 10x.
Even the Chinese rocket guys have said publicly that they can't currently match them for costs, and this is pretty old news.
So why isn't there any mention of reusable rocket development?
The US places an embargo on the use of US space and rocket technology to China - so China is going to have to develop this by themselves anyway - so I find it very curious that we haven't heard anything.
Perhaps the space industry in China is ripe for opening up to private investment like in the US?
Within China, we've seen an explosion of electric vehicle and autonomous vehicle development since the industry was opened up to private investment. And like in the USA - it is China's technology companies/billionaires that are leading the disruption. And given the conditions in China - the auto industry experts publicly state that they expect China to lead the industry - despite all the publicity about Tesla.
The investment required to kickstart a private space industry also looks affordable if we look at the SpaceX costs, and the Chinese companies have the advantage of modelling much of their operation on what SpaceX has already done and learned from
Falcon 1
$100million Development Cost
$7million Single Use Rocket Launch Cost
180-600kg Payload to LEO
Falcon 9 v1
$300million Development Cost
$60million Single Use Rocket Launch Cost
10,450 kg Payload to LEO
Falcon 9 v1.1
$850million Development
$61million Single Use Rocket Launch Cost
13,150 kg Payload to LEO
And the key principles they would be working to are:
1. Reusability
2. Standardisation
3. Builtin Redundancy eg. One engine failure allowed on launch, Second engine failure allowed after xx seconds. Or the use of COTS hardware with multiple redundancy instead of expensive radiation hardened components.
4. A general lean engineering exercise
Searching "China reusable rocket" will actually bring up quite a few recent articles which directly address your inquiry.
An English language article, reporting from a CALT official that they definitely are looking into reusable rockets, with one method involving the use of parachutes which has already been tested by prototypes:
More importantly, this is the earlier original Chinese language article from a couple of weeks ago, where the CALT official goes into more detail about the kinds of methods they're looking at -- parachute+airbag (which seems to be the one which had recently undergone a prototype test of some sort), and vertical landing (which is similar to Falcon/Blue Origin powered landing) are the ones they're investigating:
Funnily enough, the CALT official in the article literally said "不用担心，中国运载火箭技术研究院研发中心一直在做可回收火箭的研发，我们只是说得少而已" -- which translates to "don't worry, CALT has been constantly doing R&D of reusable/recyclable rockets, we just talk about it less"... and I think that is probably a direct response to people who wonder if SpaceX's reusable rockets will somehow immediately leave all other space competitors in the dust.
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So in short, CALT definitely is looking into reusable rockets and increasing affordability, and have been doing so for a few years now.
Even without reusability, they're developing a whole bunch of low cost single use satellite launching rockets like Naga for short term competitiveness.
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