China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
Interesting. Space pioneer only just launched their first rocket this year and they expect to launch their Tianlong-3 by May next year, though the date will probably slip. The Tianlong-3 has a payload of 17 tons to LEO, so that's a huge step up in development. That's the 2nd most powerful rocket in China after the long march 5 and comparable to the Faclon 9. Most other private chinese rocket companies won't even have flown any liquid fueled rocket by then, and the one that do, are tiny rockets with a payloads of only a few tons. That's crazy development speed, hopefully they can get the Tianlong-3 reusable with the same speed by 2025.
Space pioneer might be China's spacex with that kind of speed. Hard to see how other rocket companies, even the state backed ones like CAS space can compete with this kind of competition.
antiterror13
Brigadier
China has conducted a total of 25 launches (all successful) in the first half of 2023.
How this performance compare to US, Russia, French, UK, Japan, India, Canada. South Korea, etc
antiterror13
Brigadier
if you exclude SpaceX and exclude Chinese private launches .. I think China has more than the US
Why should exclude anything, SpaceX launch various types of satellites, civilian/military, for many countries...
Even if exclude starlink missions, US is still in lead. China needs mass produced, cheap/reusable mid/heavy lifts asap to catch up.
LM-8 if mass produced and cheap enough might be a good stopgap solution until other vehicles enter service.
Even if exclude starlink missions, US is still in lead. China needs mass produced, cheap/reusable mid/heavy lifts asap to catch up.
LM-8 if mass produced and cheap enough might be a good stopgap solution until other vehicles enter service.
Is there still plans to upgrade the long march 8 into a reusable variant? Or has that been scrapped? I have been seeing conflicting information about that
Almost all US launches are now SpaceX. Here are the numbers so far this year.
China successful launches : 25
US successful launches: 46 (44 of that are SpaceX launches and 50% of that is Starlink launches) [49 if you include the Electron launches from New Zealand]
So that is 24 non-Starlink successful US lanches, and as you mentioned some of them are missions for foreign countries.
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