China's Space Program News Thread

[Hendrik_2000]

Amazingly clear shot of LAX taken from micro satellite launched yesterday
Launched on June 5 by a CZ-11H from a semi-submersible positioned in the Yellow Sea, the Jilin-1-03A satellite returned to the ground its first shots today, taken over Los Angeles. It weighs <40kg, and has cameras with a resolution <1.1m for a swath> 18km.

 

[Hendrik_2000]

Beautiful shot
Launch CZ-11H - H launch for Hai, Sea in Chinese - from a semi-submersible CIMC Raffles on June 5th in Yellow Sea.

 

[Hendrik_2000]

The launch system is exactly the same as Submarine launched Cruise missile

 

[taxiya]

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A weibo article by the company (CGSTL) about the just launched Jilin-1-03A being equipped with the 2nd generation AI based onboard (on-orbit) real time object recognition. It also stated that the 1st generation on board Jilin-1-01 and Jilin-1-02 was able to identify a ship within 3 minutes of system start-up in a test conducted in April 2019.

• 在轨试验案例二

2019年4月16日，在某海域进行船舶自主搜寻试验，成像时刻为上午11：07：04。开机3分钟后，即获取一艘大型船舶信息：位置（东经：139º27’53’’，北纬：35º6’15’’）；尺度（宽度约40m，长度约150m），并以快讯形式传送至地面，接收到的快讯如图2所示。

Example 2
April 16th 2019, the satellite conducted autonomic searching test, image acquired on 11:07:04. 3 minutes after system turned up, location of a large ship was acquired: Location (139º27'53" E, 35º6'15" N); Dimension (beam 40m, length 150m), location information is sent to the ground momentarily, see figure 2 (below)

the ship

 

[AndrewS]

DF-31A with an extra stage. Final stage of the DF-31A would be shorter than the CZ-11

PS:

Another give away is the canister used

The FAA show that a LM-11 launch is being offered for $5.8M

That provides a baseline for extrapolating the cost of other DF missiles

 

[taxiya]

The FAA show that a LM-11 launch is being offered for $5.8M

That provides a baseline for extrapolating the cost of other DF missiles

Who is FAA? I am sure it is not Federal Aviation Administration .
Also, how can the cost of a weapon be extrapolated from a commercial product which is meant to earn profitable as much as possible.

The weapon does not earn profit, in the extreme case (war time), the weapon maker has to work without paid, how could you get a cost of something free?

Please don't feel offended by my exaggerated wording above, I want to emphasize the difference.

[Edit]:
There is a measure of cost by manhour, how many of manhour is needed to make a weapon. But so long as money transfer is out of the picture or excluded within the same entity, a monetized cost can not be calculated. PLA (user) and weapon maker (producer) are within the same entity, this is China, not US where the user and producer are two independent entities.

 

[anzha]

Six experiments have been granted a place aboard to the future Chinese Space Station through a joint international cooperation initiative, with three more receiving conditional acceptance.

The results of the selection process were announced jointly Wednesday by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) on the sidelines of the 62nd session of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in Vienna.

The UNOOSA-CMSA initiative received 42 applications from organizations in 27 countries following an Announcement of Opportunity issued in May 2018. The winning institutions are based in a wide range of countries, namely Belgium, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Kenya, the Netherlands, Norway, Mexico, Poland, Peru, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Switzerland.

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Another Parabolic Arc post says 9:

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[AndrewS]

Who is FAA? I am sure it is not Federal Aviation Administration .
Also, how can the cost of a weapon be extrapolated from a commercial product which is meant to earn profitable as much as possible.

The weapon does not earn profit, in the extreme case (war time), the weapon maker has to work without paid, how could you get a cost of something free?

Please don't feel offended by my exaggerated wording above, I want to emphasize the difference.

[Edit]:
There is a measure of cost by manhour, how many of manhour is needed to make a weapon. But so long as money transfer is out of the picture or excluded within the same entity, a monetized cost can not be calculated. PLA (user) and weapon maker (producer) are within the same entity, this is China, not US where the user and producer are two independent entities.

It is the FAA below

The Annual Compendium of Commercial SpaceTransportation: 2018

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So in order to sell a commercial LM-11 launch, they have to provide a price to a customer.

The LM-11 is solid fueled, which is less cost-effective than liquid fuels used by competitors.
The only reason it exists is because the military versions have already been developed and paid for.

So why not offer commercial launches as well?

It increases the scale of the Chinese rocket industry (which is dual-use).
The additional scale reduces costs for each launch, and also takes business from the US rocket industry.
The private US rocket launch providers are operating AT-COST, because they want to take as much market share as possible, and dominate the space launch industry in the future.

So for those reasons, I don't think there is a huge (or any) profit margin with the LM-11.

In any case, it's $5.8M for a 58 Tonne LM-11 launch which has 3stages. That provides us with an upper cost baseline for other solid fueled missiles.

There's also a DF-21D ASBM cost estimate of $5 to $10.5 million. And the DF-21D only has 2 stages and weighs 4x less.

So even with the additional cost of an ASBM warhead for a DF-21D, we're probably looking at less than $5M for every DF-21D.

 

[taxiya]

It is the FAA below

The Annual Compendium of Commercial SpaceTransportation: 2018

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

So in order to sell a commercial LM-11 launch, they have to provide a price to a customer.

The LM-11 is solid fueled, which is less cost-effective than liquid fuels used by competitors.
The only reason it exists is because the military versions have already been developed and paid for.

So why not offer commercial launches as well?

It increases the scale of the Chinese rocket industry (which is dual-use).
The additional scale reduces costs for each launch, and also takes business from the US rocket industry.
The private US rocket launch providers are operating AT-COST, because they want to take as much market share as possible, and dominate the space launch industry in the future.

So for those reasons, I don't think there is a huge (or any) profit margin with the LM-11.

In any case, it's $5.8M for a 58 Tonne LM-11 launch which has 3stages. That provides us with an upper cost baseline for other solid fueled missiles.

There's also a DF-21D ASBM cost estimate of $5 to $10.5 million. And the DF-21D only has 2 stages and weighs 4x less.

So even with the additional cost of an ASBM warhead for a DF-21D, we're probably looking at less than $5M for every DF-21D.

I seriously doubt if FAA knows what they are talking about, I mean it. How and where did FAA got all these numbers? Here is the part about LM-11, see the highlighted part which says

A commercial variant called LandSpace-1 (LS 1) is now being offered by LandSpace Technology, having been introduced in 2016. The price is expected to be about $5.3M per launch

LandSpace-1 is also called Zhuque-1 which is a product by CIVILIAN company "Lan Jian" (蓝剑). We know it is not related to any Long March family that is produced by the SOE CASC. Besides, from the look, the two rockets are different in size and payload. Also, LS 1 has NEVER succeeded in launching anything into orbit, the last launch and only launch failed. So that $5.3M has nothing to do with LM-11.

The only common thing is that LS-1 was allowed to use Jiuquan launch site where LMs are launched.

Also I don't buy the speculation of connection between LS-1 ($5.3M) and any DF missiles. Think about it, if it is a variant of DF how could an operational missile in the hundreds serving many years with many successful test fires FAILED miserably by the same group of engineers and technicians?

 

[by78]

KZ series will make an appearance at the Paris Airshow...