The point was that the amount of engines consumed by CZ-10 per year could be so many that they significantly impair the production of CZ-10A. As I understand it, CZ-10 is not reusable, at least not when used for lunar missions.
That is a good point. But does it alone explain a 41% difference, also considering the other advantages that CZ-10A benefits from?
Repurposing production facilities that exist but are suboptimal, with a major impact on performance, seems to me like another indication that CZ-10A is not intended to have a long production run or be produced at very large scale. I assume CASC could establish better production facilities if they wanted to. I suppose that they could at some later time, although then it wouldn't really be the same CZ-10A as the one we are talking about.
Space Pioneer advertises a payload mass fraction of 2.88% to LEO for the TL-3 on their website. That is similar to F9FT to a favorable LEO orbit. Do Space Pioneer get that through aluminium lithium and fricion stir welding, or could they be using something else to compensate? Is it much easier and faster to begin production of that with 3.8m diameter than with 5m? Maybe Space Pioneer's figure refers to an expendable variant without indicating it, or maybe the figure is more aspirational than real.
Good point. But I still think it might be a problem. For example, the difference between 12 times and 50 times reusable is the difference between 1.58 engines consumed and 1.14 engines consumed per launch. That is a 39% difference. Other Chinese launch companies such as Galactic Energy and Space Pioneer brag on their websites about 50 times engine reusability, although that might just be an ambitious target rather than something that they are likely to actually achieve.
This paragraph suggests that you interpreted my posts as impudent verbal assaults on CASC, became angry and felt the need to launch a counter-assault to smack me down. There is no assault. I didn't intend to "dunk" on anyone. It was entirely for the purposes of furthering interesting discussion. There is no need to be angry.
Maybe you thought I tried to accuse CASC of incompetence. It is quite the opposite. The aim with my posts on CZ-10A was to list what I thought might be logical reasons for CASC to not consider the CZ-10A to be their paramount priority. I didn't intend to present myself as Nostradamus. Nor did I intend my arguments to rest on the basis of me being a definitive authority. Please continue to discuss the other points I raised, if you have any thoughts on them. As long as people make meaningful replies, that is interesting.
This I knew. I am not sure what I wrote that in any way contradicted this.
I did not know this. Interesting. However, since the CZ-5 boosters are 3.35m diameter, I don't think it negates the point about whether SAST facilities could easily be converted to building the CZ-10A, unless SAST also has facilities to manufacture the 5m diameter CZ-5 core.
As I understand it, all CZ-2-4 share a common heritage going back to the DF-5, CZ-5-8 are based on common elements, and CZ-6A/6C/7A/8/boosterless 8 are all in some sense variants of CZ-7. Although they are still distinct rocket designs, no? When I meant adopt, I meant in the sense of manufacturing a straight "copy". Is it common that SAST manufactures all of most of a CALT design, or vice versa?
The point with mentioning other engines was that, even if SAST rockets move away from using the YF-100, they would still have an impact on YF-100 availability for the CZ-10A. The end point was that, it might be that not very many YF-100 engines will be available for CZ-10A, thus not a very large fleet will be built.
I did not know this. I thought the engines that were, at least at some point, intended for CZ-9 versions were YF-130, YF-135, YF-215, YF-79, YF-90. Do you have any more info on how they are intended to be used? That is interesting, however I don't think it negates the point about YF-100 availability limitations, because it is also a rocket that isn't CZ-10A and that needs engine production capacity.
I can't really say that I do. I have been learning it, and I have some basic ability to read. However, I have a hard time getting through a simple news article without frequently consulting a dictionary.
That is not what I meant. What I meant is that both rockets by CALT and by SAST will need engines from AALPT. As I understand it, CALT and SAST facilities are to a large extent geographically disparate, and the resources of one cannot easily be transferred to or combined with the other. To underutilize the resources of one would be wasteful. CZ-10A does not have 3.35m boosters like the CZ-5, making it hard to distribute workshare in the manner of CZ-5. Unless SAST facillities also start CZ-10A main component production with the associated 5m tanks, there should continue being many rockets other than CZ-10A that need engines from AALPT even after CZ-10A has entered mass production. This would be a factor that contributes to restricting the number of YF-100 available for building CZ-10A.
