China's Space Program Thread II

[Blitzo]

That may have been the thinking historically, but I have a very hard time believing the Chinese government still thinks that way given how drastically the game has changed.

As for the CZ-9, what's important is that it has a competitive payload and architecture. The important thing is getting it flying ASAP, the missions planned for it and its launch cadence can change quickly once it exists.

I do expect that they've likely undergone some revisions in expected goals, and the 1-2 launches a year thing is what I mention simply because that's the most recent news we've had about CZ-9 launch cadence from them, even if it is a couple of years old. We just don't have an update from them as to what they truly want to get out of it.

See, that might have been the case, if not for the fact that like 5 chinese private rocket companies have all stated that their various rocket factories will be capable of producing dozens of rockets/hundreds of engines every year, all those factories built within the last 5 years for brand new rocket designs and on a shoestring budget of a few hundred million yuan. If they can mass produce modern reusable engines that fast, with such a fraction of the resources that something like CALT has, then I can't see how CALT couldn't have built enough infrastructure 7 years ago to produce enough long march 7/6/8s to fully meet China's launch needs today, without sucking enough resources to impact the launch rate.

No other space agency was stuck on purely hypergolics that long too. It took almost 50 years for China to launch her first cryogenic LOX rocket in 2015 after making it into orbit in 1970s.

I think someone really high up on the ladder is just really reluctant to move on to cyrogenic rockets. Maybe he owns the plot of land that the current hypergolic factories sits on, or he's just in love with hypergolic rockets and doesn't want them phased out.

I mean, commercial space rocket companies have the drive and incentives to be more competitive, and they are coming from it in a bit of a "post SpaceX" perspective as well.

This is why in the last few posts I've been saying the most important part is to try and assess where the Chinese government is at with their actual space ambitions, and how/if they are able to adequately pivot and respond.

 

[antiterror13]

Interesting "article" on Quora of comparing ISS and CSS, very interesting indeed

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So CSS has 100kW generation capacity while ISS has 120kW ... but CSS only has half the area of solar panel of ISS

There are five major advantages, so interesting and encouraging

Anybody has any objections or further comments ? Interesting constructive comments too, one that is interesting is from John Lee

"There's some other advancements. China invented a space microwave, takes minutes to heat up food while usa needs to use hot water and takes tens of minutes.
China space station basically recycles 100% of water and oxygen production, ISS is not even close.
Chinas robotic arm is double edged and both sides detachable, so it can crawl around like a caterpillar and go anywhere from any angle, and there is also smaller and longer arms which can connect to each other also for different types of work and jobs."

 

[tphuang]

I think SpaceX can be a useful reference to the thread's topics if it is contained, in that it can serve as a guide for future PRC launch capabilities (or indeed what high capacity launch/access can achieve in general, for any nation or company in the world), or to discuss and review PRC space policies/goals.

But people should also be aware that simply posting about the differences in launch capacity/access and bemoaning why the gap isn't going to be immediately reduced in the short term etc, isn't useful... in the same way that ignoring SpaceX and what they are able to demonstrate with both Falcon 9 and their pursuits of Starship may be able to do.

Because if SpaceX is able to get Starship/Super Heavy up and running even at a fraction of their actual launch rate ambitions, then the implications for orbital access is rather significant (that is to say, even if we ignore Starship's utility for moon and mars missions and pretend that Starship will never be used for those missions, the mere existence of Starship/Super Heavy for LEO and GEO access is a huge gain in capability).

My question for you is what does industry need and whether they have enough launch capacity for it. There is a rush now because of concern that starlinks will take over the entire usable leo air space. Hence the rush for China’s own satellite constellation

we basically need enough capacity to deliver 30000 starlink size satellites to leo over the next 7 to 8 years. Can we get there with casc, landspace, ispace & some of these other private ones. If zhuque 3can deliver 16t reusable payload to leo & do it cheaply, that’s pretty good.

For additional capacity offered by starships, what is going to deliver exactly? After starlinks, what’s the next project if musk can’t make money on starlinks?

so I think aside from capacity, we also have to think about need.

if they can do reusable 15t to leo and launch like 2 to 3 per quarter, that seems like a lot. And have this replicated across private players, that seems enough

 

[LawLeadsToPeace]

I have a question in regards to debris, specifically rocket boosters. Supposedly, there is footage being shared on Weibo of a Long March 3B rocket booster crashing into someone’s home in Guangxi, and given its content, it released a toxic oxidizer. I know this happened in the past, but I’m surprised it is still happening. In addition, supposedly, the Chinese government may even bill the owner of the house for the cleanup since they supposedly did it in the past because “screw the minorities”. To those who are very active on Weibo, is this just fake news being spread by bad actors?

 

[tphuang]

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This is what I'm talking about with Satellite constellations.

Shanghai has its own program called G60 satcom network. It's first digital faction just produced its first satellite. Took just 13.5 month to build factory.

Looks to have initial network of 108 satellites by end of 2024.

By end of phase 1, will look to produce 300 satellites/year. IIRC, 1200+ satellites in phase 1.

To be complete in 3 phases, with 12000+ satellites.

 

[tiancai8888]

I have a question in regards to debris, specifically rocket boosters. Supposedly, there is footage being shared on Weibo of a Long March 3B rocket booster crashing into someone’s home in Guangxi, and given its content, it released a toxic oxidizer. I know this happened in the past, but I’m surprised it is still happening. In addition, supposedly, the Chinese government may even bill the owner of the house for the cleanup since they supposedly did it in the past because “screw the minorities”. To those who are very active on Weibo, is this just fake news being spread by bad actors?

You can't really know exactly where a free-fall object will land. If you check the debris NOTAM. The debris zone usually have few hundreds square KMs large. The problem was relatively minor few years ago when Chinese launch less. They are upgrading the booster with parachute to cut 80%~85% area of the debris zone.

 

[tiancai8888]

See, that might have been the case, if not for the fact that like 5 chinese private rocket companies have all stated that their various rocket factories will be capable of producing dozens of rockets/hundreds of engines every year, all those factories built within the last 5 years for brand new rocket designs and on a shoestring budget of a few hundred million yuan. If they can mass produce modern reusable engines that fast, with such a fraction of the resources that something like CALT has, then I can't see how CALT couldn't have built enough infrastructure 7 years ago to produce enough long march 7/6/8s to fully meet China's launch needs today, without sucking enough resources to impact the launch rate.

No other space agency was stuck on purely hypergolics that long too. It took almost 50 years for China to launch her first cryogenic LOX rocket in 2015 after making it into orbit in 1970s.

I think someone really high up on the ladder is just really reluctant to move on to cyrogenic rockets. Maybe he owns the plot of land that the current hypergolic factories sits on, or he's just in love with hypergolic rockets and doesn't want them phased out.

The commercial sector clearly is accelerating in 2023. Major commercial launch service providers' liquid rocket plan to fly in next 2 years.
The rocket factories of major ones have already completed. Most of them claimed they could build more then 20~30+ rockets per year.

Of course, there is a big question mark if they could stick to their plan. Next year is crucial for the commercial sector.

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[by78]

A KZ-1A rocket has successfully launched four meteorological satellites for the Tianmu-1 constellation (天目一号气象星座), which is a atmospheric science constellation. This was the 23rd launch of KZ-1A. The last image is a collage of previous launches.

Yet another KZ-1A launch (three days after the previous one), and just like the previous flight, this latest launch added four more satellites to the Tianmu-1 constellation. This marks the the 24th flight of the Kuaizhou-1A launch vehicle.

 

[by78]

On December 27, 2023, the satellite factory for the G60 broadband internet constellation was

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, with the first satellite rolling off the production line on the same day. The current production capacity is 300 satellites per year. This factory is part of the broader space industrial chain being built in Shanghai, which will by 2025 have the capacity to produce 50 commercial rockets and 600 satellites per year.

 

[anzha]

A couple papers:

Character and spatial distribution of mineralogy at the lunar south polar region

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Influences of geometry configurations on the performance of micro-nozzles

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