China's Space Program Thread II

[gelgoog]

SpaceX had access to the entire US space sector. The Merlin engine designer used to work at TRW designing rocket engines there. A lot of components in the Merlin engine, complex items like the pumps, were outsourced to machine shops which are used to doing that kind of work. Try doing that in a sanctioned country like China.

The fact is, China still has more modern engine technology in their operational rockets than the US has at this point. The Chinese YF-100 engine used in Long March 5 and 7 is staged combustion, and the Falcon 9 engines are gas generators. A technology from the 1950s.

China has the 921 rocket in development which will be a competitor to Falcon Heavy. Starship economically does not make any sense. So who cares.

 

[vincent]

Why give excuses like this? Doesn't China have even more money? Don't they have more engineers? It wasn't like Spacex was this titan when they developed the Faclon 9, just a few years before that they were on the verge of bankruptcy and had a just few hundred employees. All this excuses reek of failure.

Uh China doesn't have a nuclear-powered money press and she has other priorities like building a fully domestic semiconductor supply chain, many more J-20/J-35, 055, 054B, and (hopefully) hundreds if not thousands of nukes.

 

[Overbom]

Uh China doesn't have a nuclear-powered money press and she has other priorities like building a fully domestic semiconductor supply chain, many more J-20/J-35, 055, 054B, and (hopefully) hundreds if not thousands of nukes.

SpaceX was actually built very cheap all things considered

By 2021 SpaceX had raised in total $6 billion by equity raising

Starship-class launchers are about to basically open up a new domain, space, to commercial and military applications

If you think that's not important, then you are basically just throwing excuses

 

[vincent]

Starship-class launchers are about to basically open up a new domain, space, to commercial and military applications

If you think that's not important, then you are basically just throwing excuses

Please list all the use cases for Starship-class launchers

 

[Overbom]

Please list all the use cases for Starship-class launchers

Can't even think of use cases, seriously?

What about mass launching of all kinds of satellites to LEO? What about the US basically getting all the orbits by itself and locking China out?

New use cases will be developed when the cost of launching satellites become extremely low. Starlink is one example of that. Imagine Starlink then exponentially growing and capturing the global internet market and all that money flowing to SpaceX. We are basically talking about Pentagon's and NSA's wet dreams becoming a reality. NSA for even greater spying, Pentagon for having the entire world subsiding its rocket programs

And that's just Starlink. Nevermind the dozens of other use scenarios that will come up. Not only in the civilian but in the military sector as well.


Pentagon itself is basically acting as a Starship fanboy.

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The future of Starship includes national security missions​

Starship holds the potential to become a mobility platform for the U.S. military, said Gary Henry, senior advisor for national security space solutions at SpaceX.

Speaking Feb. 21 at the Space Mobility conference, Henry said the experience SpaceX will gain launching Starlink satellites on Starship and developing the vehicle for

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will help the U.S. military better understand how to employ it for cargo delivery and other missions.

On-orbit infrastructure

Henry said Starship’s lunar landing architecture could support the U.S. military by providing on-orbit infrastructure for logistics and refueling.

There are ongoing discussions about “on orbit commodities to enable things like dynamic space operations and ‘maneuver without regret.’”

These are terms used by U.S. Space Command to describe its vision for military operations in the space domain. Dynamic space operations is the ability to maneuver satellites and move payloads across different orbits, something that is not possible today because satellites don’t carry enough fuel and were not built to be refueled.

Horne said the military is “going to need that infrastructure on orbit, not just for cargo, storage and movement, but for a lot of other applications. We’re gonna need gas tanks in the future. We may even have places where we are manufacturing things,” he added. “We’re going to find military-unique ways to use that from a national security perspective.”

Possibilities are endless with Starship. Starlink was just 1 new use scenario that arose from cheap rocket launches, which also affects military capabilities

Your posts about how Starship is not that important are increasingly sounding more like copium and giving excuses. We have the entire US Space Command full of glee awaiting for Starship and you are here spinning excuses. Just say China is behind on this field and thats it. There is nothing bad or humiliating on acknowledging you are lagging behind.

Good thing that China doesn't think like you do and is trying to keep up with Starship advances. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

 

[vincent]

Can't even think of use cases, seriously?

What about mass launching of all kinds of satellites to LEO? What about the US basically getting all the orbits by itself and locking China out?

New use cases will be developed when the cost of launching satellites become extremely low. Starlink is one example of that. Imagine Starlink then exponentially growing and capturing the global internet market and all that money flowing to SpaceX. We are basically talking about Pentagon's and NSA's wet dreams becoming a reality. NSA for even greater spying, Pentagon for having the entire world subsiding its rocket programs

And that's just Starlink. Nevermind the dozens of other use scenarios that will come up. Not only in the civilian but in the military sector as well.

Possibilities are endless with Starship. Starlink was just 1 new use scenario that arose from cheap rocket launches, which also affects military capabilities

Long March 5 has plenty of lift already. Please list use cases that can't be performed by Long March 5

 

[Overbom]

Long March 5 has plenty of lift already. Please list use cases that can't be performed by Long March 5

If you don't understand the difference between Long March 5 and Starship then there is no reason continuing to talk with you.

In case you are serious and you don't know the difference, cost to send a payload per kg to LEO is projected to be vastly different between Starship and Long March 5. That's the revolution Starship is bringing to the game

Anyway, not continuing any further as our viewpoints are fundamentally different. I believe Starship-class launchers are revolutionary and extremely important, you dont believe in that. No need to keep talking, time will show who was right. Reinforcing my point though, China is basically (no issues with that) copying Starship capabilities with Long March 9

 

[gelgoog]

I have heard that song and dance before. Ever heard of Teledesic and Iridium? The fact is, these satellites will always have less bandwidth than fiber, and the latency in most cases isn't going to be better either. While Starlink has plenty of applications, it won't be in most people's homes because of these foibles. Also, good luck trying to service users in large urban clusters with something like Starlink. It simply won't have enough coverage. It is as simple as that.

 

[by78]

The redesign of LM-9 is right and necessary. The old design was obsolete. If you are going down the wrong path, you don't keep going down that path, spending more and more time and resources on a dead end. There is a thing called a sunk cost. China's space program should be commended for recognizing this and switching gears. Right now their main issue is not competing with the Starship... if they can even get something like the Falcon 9, putting an object into space using a reusable rocket, then that would be a nice win. If they can suck private capital into the project to shoulder some of the funding, then even better. If the launch cost is similar or lower than the Falcon 9, then they are in the game.

At the end of the day though, right now Space X's advantage is their speed of iteration more than anything else. Starship launch blew up, but it hardly phased Space X because they are planning to launch again in a few months. So one rocket explosion only sets them behind by a few months. Compared to the Challenger explosion of early 1986... the Space Shuttle didn't fly again until 1989. Or even the unmanned LM-5, when it exploded in 2017, it was two-and-a half years before the next attempt. When every launch is so critical and a failure is a matter of years lost, then your space development will be too slow. If you can just keep churning out rockets at a low cost and fire them away like candy, then you will learn very fast and progress quickly too.

I didn't know that single stick rockets could land under their own power? It's so obvious that China is falling behind so hard that it isn't funny. They're struggling to catch up to the Falcon 9/Falcon heavy while Spacex forges ahead with Starship. Failure to innovate. Sad but this is reality. Anything else is cope. Starship is one thing, but they can't even catch up to the Falcon 9. Spacex was tiny and had a lot less funding when they made the Falcon 9... There's really no excuse, China has way more engineers and money to burn even back in the early 2010s, they just didn't consider the notion, so they didn't put in any funding or attention into developing the concept until Spacex gave them a big shock, so they had to start from scratch

Old dinosaurs can't think outside the box. And that is core to innovation, progressive slow incremental technological development in one thing, but when you innovate you think outside of the box. This lack of innovation isn't excusive to China. I remember an old interview with Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck, he said that he went to ESA a decade ago and floated the idea of a rocket engine whose pumps were powered by electrical batteries, he got laughed out of the room, they didn't even consider his idea. Today the Electron is probably the 2nd most successful smallsat launcher after the Falcon 9 and ESA is considering their own smallsat rocket launcher with electric powered pumps.

Why give excuses like this? Doesn't China have even more money? Don't they have more engineers? It wasn't like Spacex was this titan when they developed the Faclon 9, just a few years before that they were on the verge of bankruptcy and had a just few hundred employees. All this excuses reek of failure.

Assuming you two are indeed separate individuals, please take your SpaceX related thoughts to the appropriate thread. This is the thread for the

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Space Program.

 

[by78]

The internal cargo volume of Tianzhou-6 has been increased by some 20% compared to previous Tianzhou missions, from 18.1 cubic meters to 22.5 cubic meters. It will carry 1.75 tons of propellant, 700 kg of which will be used to replenish the space station. In addition to everyday supplies for the Taikonauts, it will also carry xenon cylinders for use by the space station's electric thrusters. The launch is scheduled for later this month.