China's Space Program Thread II

[tacoburger]

Hypergolic are storable. LOX and LH2 aren't. This has strategic implications. They're also cheap and only require standard chemical grade handling equipment rather than both chemical and cryogenic.

You can have solid fuel rockets for ICBM work. Or keep a small number of hypergolic rockets in service if you don't want the skillset to die off. Having them take up half the number of annual chinese launches just means that you have an inefficient supply lines, ground support system and production lines have to support two very different kinds of rockets. And this is about talent too. Spacex famously poached a ton of it's employees from NASA. Lots of private chinese rocket companies are former CNSA/CALT employees. If they worked on hypergolics exclusively, then they will more or less be have to relearn a lot of shit when they join a private rocket company that is working on cryogenic rocket systems. Or there's some young super talented engineer that's assigned to produce dead end decades old hypergolic engines instead of working and improving on state of the art staged combustion engines.

You can literally make this argument for anything. Why don't we send soldiers to fight with sticks and stones? They're basically free. That's basically what all of American oldspace was saying too, they stuck with decades old rocket designs because "Cheap, easy and a hint of corruption", but at least they still worked with cryogenic engine systems instead of fucking hypergolic. And look at the state of ULA and NASA now. Completely outcompleted and driven out of the market.

You can easily make any amount of aurgments that Spacex could have stuck with the Falcon 1 for another decade, pushed for the smallsat market. Or that they could have sat on the Falcon 9/Falcon heavy for another decade and focused on Starlink and dominated the market. Instead they are always pushing the envelope and basically creating entire new markets. Even back in 2016 before the Falcon 9 landed, Elon was already talking about the ITS for landing on more than a 100 tons on Mars.

Isn't that the whole point of the virtuous cycle? Invest and push for modern rocket engines, more production lines means more economy of scale, which means cheaper rockets, which means more launches, which means more production lines, cheaper rockets and more and more talented minds working on improving them. I don't see that happening when half the launches are two decades old hypergolic rockets that are basically an dead end technology at this point. And it's not slowing down either, there's still going to be dozens of hypergolics launches until ??? 2030 maybe?

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

You can have solid fuel rockets for ICBM work. Or keep a small number of hypergolic rockets in service if you don't want the skillset to die off. Having them take up half the number of annual chinese launches just means that you have an inefficient supply lines, ground support system and production lines have to support two very different kinds of rockets. And this is about talent too. Spacex famously poached a ton of it's employees from NASA. Lots of private chinese rocket companies are former CNSA/CALT employees. If they worked on hypergolics exclusively, then they will more or less be have to relearn a lot of shit when they join a private rocket company that is working on cryogenic rocket systems. Or there's some young super talented engineer that's assigned to produce dead end decades old hypergolic engines instead of working and improving on state of the art staged combustion engines.

You can literally make this argument for anything. Why don't we send soldiers to fight with sticks and stones? They're basically free. That's basically what all of American oldspace was saying too, they stuck with decades old rocket designs because "Cheap, easy and a hint of corruption", but at least they still worked with cryogenic engine systems instead of fucking hypergolic. And look at the state of ULA and NASA now. Completely outcompleted and driven out of the market.

You can easily make any amount of aurgments that Spacex could have stuck with the Falcon 1 for another decade, pushed for the smallsat market. Or that they could have sat on the Falcon 9/Falcon heavy for another decade and focused on Starlink and dominated the market. Instead they are always pushing the envelope and basically creating entire new markets. Even back in 2016 before the Falcon 9 landed, Elon was already talking about the ITS for landing on more than a 100 tons on Mars.

Isn't that the whole point of the virtuous cycle? Invest and push for modern rocket engines, more production lines means more economy of scale, which means cheaper rockets, which means more launches, which means more production lines, cheaper rockets and more and more talented minds working on improving them. I don't see that happening when half the launches are two decades old hypergolic rockets that are basically an dead end technology at this point. And it's not slowing down either, there's still going to be dozens of hypergolics launches until ??? 2030 maybe?

US flew hypergolic up until 2005 with Titan IV. It cost $400 million per flight.

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China flies hypergolic now. It costs $25 million per flight in 1999 and with inflation costs about $50 million today.

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So the cost considerations between US hypergolics and Chinese hypergolics are totally different. It made sense for US to retire them, doesn't make sense for China to do so.

It's still more difficult to use solid fuel launchers for precision or tricky orbital insertions as they can't be stopped controllably, they either can't stop at all or can only stop at predetermined burn stages. If you want to loft a tricky polar orbit or SSO satellite with 5-10 ton mass within days, hypergolics are a good and cost effective bet.

 

[Blitzo]

Well maybe they could have done it sooner if they had actually had the foresight to invest and develop the capability instead of waiting to copy Starship.

You make it sound like that China as a nation had sufficient space launch technological reserves and industry to be the first mover on this.

It isn't just about throwing around words like "innovation" and "foresight". The word "innovation" should be understood as "mastering the actual technological and industrial preceding domains before moving onto a subsequent new step".
In that regards, SpaceX had access to the US space industry that had the most mature and advanced human resources in the world and most established existing space and govt infrastructure to support private ventures, to the degree that they have been able to exceed all other existing players in the US space industry as well (even leaving China aside).


If anything, China should be commended for actually having the will to change their design of LM-9 from when it first emerged in 2016 to now, and their willingness to change and fiddle with the rocket's fundamental design and propulsion is actually a sign of flexibility rather than committing to a potentially obsolete design.

It would have been perhaps been better if they could embark on the current design from the outset, but the viability of such a pursuit at the time likely was viewed as beyond China's means as well as a potentially non-viable concept to begin with.

 

[Bellum_Romanum]

You can have solid fuel rockets for ICBM work. Or keep a small number of hypergolic rockets in service if you don't want the skillset to die off. Having them take up half the number of annual chinese launches just means that you have an inefficient supply lines, ground support system and production lines have to support two very different kinds of rockets. And this is about talent too. Spacex famously poached a ton of it's employees from NASA. Lots of private chinese rocket companies are former CNSA/CALT employees. If they worked on hypergolics exclusively, then they will more or less be have to relearn a lot of shit when they join a private rocket company that is working on cryogenic rocket systems. Or there's some young super talented engineer that's assigned to produce dead end decades old hypergolic engines instead of working and improving on state of the art staged combustion engines.

You can literally make this argument for anything. Why don't we send soldiers to fight with sticks and stones? They're basically free. That's basically what all of American oldspace was saying too, they stuck with decades old rocket designs because "Cheap, easy and a hint of corruption", but at least they still worked with cryogenic engine systems instead of fucking hypergolic. And look at the state of ULA and NASA now. Completely outcompleted and driven out of the market.

You can easily make any amount of aurgments that Spacex could have stuck with the Falcon 1 for another decade, pushed for the smallsat market. Or that they could have sat on the Falcon 9/Falcon heavy for another decade and focused on Starlink and dominated the market. Instead they are always pushing the envelope and basically creating entire new markets. Even back in 2016 before the Falcon 9 landed, Elon was already talking about the ITS for landing on more than a 100 tons on Mars.

Isn't that the whole point of the virtuous cycle? Invest and push for modern rocket engines, more production lines means more economy of scale, which means cheaper rockets, which means more launches, which means more production lines, cheaper rockets and more and more talented minds working on improving them. I don't see that happening when half the launches are two decades old hypergolic rockets that are basically an dead end technology at this point. And it's not slowing down either, there's still going to be dozens of hypergolics launches until ??? 2030 maybe?

Why are you so mad at China for sticking with their timeline and chosen rocket tech? I don't understand what's up with your demanding ass like you're owed or something? You Chinese from China and in China? If not, then calm down man. Lol

 

[BoraTas]

Very interesting to see a professional calculation of re-usability.

It really is. And it illustrates well why reusability wasn't a big thing until a celebrity billionaire made it flashy. Of course a future rocket design will be more reusable and will require less refurbishment between launches. So we will eventually see huge reductions in cost from re-usability. But now? It is only cost-effective if you are sending payloads way below the rocket's capability or if you are recovering the booster at another location.

Looking at it, if you are launching to GTO instead of LEO. Cost per kilogram is more expensive even for ASDS recovery.

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There is probably no current scenarios full reusability is cheaper than expendable.

 

[Michaelsinodef]

Yes.

No, it really isn't a sign of complatency, if they stopped investing and trying to make new rockets after they made those hypergolics, that would actually be complacency, but that's not the case.

So the same reasoning that NASA, boeing and ULA have fallen into. "We are using old space shuttle hardware because of costs, let's waste billions and many of our talented engineers on obsolete hardware instead of actually developing something new" China isn't a small country, modern rocket engines are a mature tech, they could have easily pushed for expanding production lines to provide more than enough engines for use without having to split production lines and complicate logistics by using an toxic dead end fuel system.

They aren't though, the production lines are mature, so little actual engineer talent and time is used lmao.
How can you not even know this.

If SpaceX had used this same line of logic, they would still be launching their Falcon 1. Or they wouldn't have even started work on starship and continued with the Faclon 9 for another two decades. ULA fell into the same trap and continued using the same general hardware for decades instead of aggressively pushing the envelope.

Yea, and China is ramping up productions of new rockets, expanding facilities at Hainan, research and making new rockets.

Ergo, not complacent.

EXTRA: As for innovation, you should look into this thread in regards to like the TengYun project that's being researched/invested into.

 

[tankphobia]

It really is. And it illustrates well why reusability wasn't a big thing until a celebrity billionaire made it flashy. Of course a future rocket design will be more reusable and will require less refurbishment between launches. So we will eventually see huge reductions in cost from re-usability. But now? It is only cost-effective if you are sending payloads way below the rocket's capability or if you are recovering the booster at another location.

Looking at it, if you are launching to GTO instead of LEO. Cost per kilogram is more expensive even for ASDS recovery.

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There is probably no current scenarios full reusability is cheaper than expendable.

I wonder if this would scale with payload/rocket size, I would imagine there's a lot more value in recovering a large rocket compared to a smaller one, since the initial investment would also be more expensive.

 

[BoraTas]

I wonder if this would scale with payload/rocket size, I would imagine there's a lot more value in recovering a large rocket compared to a smaller one, since the initial investment would also be more expensive.

Opposite. Scaling law (volume increase cubic, area increase quadratic, dimension increase linearly) means you get a better propellant-weight to dry-vehicle-weight ratio as you grow the rocket. So if you scale your rocket up until it becomes 2x heavier, you get a payload increase above 100%. Bigger rockets are more cost effective per kg provided that you have a payload to justify their use. Currently, the cheapest way to launch things to orbit is an expendable Falcon Heavy.

This is also why it is always a better idea to have a single body rocket. 4 booster designs like the LM-5 are inherently handicapped.

 

[pevade]

China has a massive innovation problem, especially with their space program. They are the only modern space program that is still flying hypergolic rockets, not just one or two, but dozens of them every year. That's hundreds of engineers and technicians, ground support systems, hundreds of millions of yuan a year spent on a dead end technology.

That all money and manpower could have been for any other of innovative ideas and development, or at the very least on expanding modern liquid fuelled engine production for better economy of scale and a better train workforce. But nope, for unknown reasons, but probably because for reliability or corruption or maybe because some old dinosaur in charge doesn't want to see his beloved hypergolics go away, there's more hypergolic launches than ever, even though China has fully matured and domestic modern kerosene/hydrogen rocket engines and the ability produce them at scale to replace hypergolic rockets.

The smart thing would have been to very quickly phase out hypergolic rockets and standardise all ground support systems, fuel production and production lines for modern kerosene/hydrogen engines for better economy of scale, logistics and training. But at the rate things are going, the Long march 3B, 4C and 2F are still going to be flying when the Long march 9 makes it's first flight. It's embarrassing and pathetic.

This unwillingness to change demonstrates just how assbackwards the chinese space program is. Just imagine how Spacex would have turned out if they didn't stop developing and producing their Falcon 1 even after getting their Falcon 9, splitting up production lines and engineers to work on an obvious dead end.

I mean the LM2F is their only Human rated rocket AFAIK, so hypergolics wont be going away anytime soon unless a replacement is found. Also given the impeccable history of the LM-2F I don't think they will be hopping to change anytime soon.

 

[gelgoog]

The LM-7 has roughly the same performance as the LM-2F.