China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
U.S. gave it to China as state agency to state agency. China will return one gram in the same state capacity after Wolf Amendment is gone. Individual American scientist is welcome to do their research on the soil sample in Chinese lab and publish the result as co-author with Chinese institute, but they will not own or take the sample away.
I have heard some rumors that Ispace is conducting another hop test this month, higher and with vertical movement this time, and with the same rocket that they hopped in November. Anyone has any concrete info?
by78
General
Testing on Jiuzhou's LY-70 70-ton reusable LOX/Methane engine continues, which has accumulated more 10,000 seconds of hot test runs, with some 120 engine restarts. One test engine has accumulated more than 3,700 seconds, with 30 restarts.
Updated engine specs are as follows:
– Ground thrust: 676kN
– Vacuum thrust: 704kN
– Ground specific impulse: 290s
– Vacuum specific impulse: 350s
– Engine weight: ≯850kg
– Max swing angle: ±8°
– Adjustable thrust range: 32%-106%
– Single-mission restarts: ≥3 times
– Burn time (single run): ≥200s
– Reusability: ≥50 times
Jiuzhou has successfully completed a calibration test run (in accordance with flight profile requirements) of the LY-70 engine. The engine is now ready (or very close to ready) for delivery to end user, which in this case is the private launch provider Space Epoch (a.k.a. Beijing Arrowhead). The engine will be used in Space Epoch's reusable XZY-1 rocket that recently passed its first splashdown test.
Unless China faces some major delays on their crewed landing, it's very very likely that China will beat NASA to a crewed landing on the Moon. Honestly the Artemis program is a cluster fuck, Starship itself, the human rated lunar Starship, orbital refueling, orbital fuel depots, whatever is going on with the Lunar gateway. Each is a massive technological mega-project that would be difficult enough to develop and work in isolation let alone all together in some complicated time sensitive mission before 2030.
The orbital refuelling/fuel depot is probably the one that needs the most work, even when you compare it to Starship. Liquids don't flow the way you want them to in microgravity and there's the issue of propellant boil off and loss from mirco-debris impacts that we also know next to nothing about. And they can't even start building/testing it until Starship is making regular flights, which is itself going a megaproject that might take years. It's going to be so complex that I could see the Starship HLS system taking well into the 2030s until it actually delivers a crew to the Moon.
Nasa might cut it's losses and just opt for a simpler mission with something like Blue Origin's Blue moon lander instead if they want a chance at beating China back to the Moon. But well, BO isn't known for delivering things on time and with the political climate I don't see Nasa snubbing Elon/SpaceX anytime soon.
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Blue Origin isn't known for delivering. Period.
There is nothing wrong with the propellant depot idea. As for claims it never has been done before, the ISS is regularly refueled with all sorts of liquids, including propellant. This is done with the Progress spacecraft. I am fairly sure the Chinese automated transport spacecraft which supplies the Chinese space station also transfers water and propellants to it.
There is nothing wrong with the propellant depot idea. As for claims it never has been done before, the ISS is regularly refueled with all sorts of liquids, including propellant. This is done with the Progress spacecraft. I am fairly sure the Chinese automated transport spacecraft which supplies the Chinese space station also transfers water and propellants to it.
The ISS uses hypergolic fuel, which is specifically used because it's very stable, not cryogenic liquid oxygen and methane. Hell, methane itself is a very new fuel that just made it into orbit this year, we have no data how a giant tank of it will behave in space over a long period of time, unlike say liquid oxygen/hydrogen/Kerosene. And there's a big difference in the amount of fuel that the ISS uses and what a fuel depot needs to store to refuel Starship. Also ISS just receives fuel, a fuel depot has to be able to hand loading and unloading fuel, again, something that is much harder to do without gravity, the plumping systems on rockets are complex for a reason. I'm not saying that it's impossible or even a bad idea, it's just a very complicated system among another half a dozen very complicated systems that all have to work perfectly the first time.
For example imagine you have the depot 50% fueled and there's another big Starship failure that grounds Starship for a few months, a chunk of your stored fuel boils off and you're having launch another couple Starships to make up for the fuel loss. And of course there's the fact that you need a functional Starship if you want to even test the idea of building a fuel depot, let alone testing fueling and refueling it. It's dozens of new techologny that depends on each other, if just one link in the chain fails, everything will suffer massive delays.
Not a issue when you aren't in a rush, but it's pretty clear that Nasa/America doesn't want China to land before them, they have been talking about beating China to a crewed moon landing for the last 2 years, there will be a lot of egg on their face if that doesn't happen.
Sure, it is a complicated plan that would take a long time to implement. But using propellant depots allows making much larger missions than would otherwise be possible with the same launch vehicles. There have been proposals to use expendable vehicles with propellant depots. And this has nothing to do with the vehicles being reusable. Reusable vehicles just make the whole concept even more cost effective. Heck, the original Von Braun Mars mission proposal was like that.
The idea was to use small space launch vehicles to assemble the spaceship which would fly to Mars in Earth orbit. This would then be fueled and the mission would proceed.
The US has already gone to the Moon before. The next time it is done, it needs to be done in a more cost effective way, or else it will just get cancelled just like the original lunar program was. Making a huge disposable one way rocket that only flies once every two years isn't the right way to go about it.
My main gripe with Starship is that it is just too large to be a cost effective rocket in the first place. The whole idea of using reusable launch vehicles, propellant depots, in orbit assembly to make Moon or Mars missions isn't the problem.
The idea was to use small space launch vehicles to assemble the spaceship which would fly to Mars in Earth orbit. This would then be fueled and the mission would proceed.
The US has already gone to the Moon before. The next time it is done, it needs to be done in a more cost effective way, or else it will just get cancelled just like the original lunar program was. Making a huge disposable one way rocket that only flies once every two years isn't the right way to go about it.
My main gripe with Starship is that it is just too large to be a cost effective rocket in the first place. The whole idea of using reusable launch vehicles, propellant depots, in orbit assembly to make Moon or Mars missions isn't the problem.
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by78
General
This is the Chinese space program thread. Read the room, get a clue, and take your off-topic discussions elsewhere.
