Just for argument's sake, what is wrong of continuing using hypergolic rocket? Of course wrong in your mind, but it isn't really your business, isn't it? It is dirt cheap even condisering the possible compensation. It does the job perfectly. CASC is well experienced in handling it. As far as CASC and the government's concerns it is a good work horse. As far as the villager's concern they may make more money from the compensation than from the crops destroyed. You just think too imortant of your own opinion.
I literally just typed out a whole post about it above. It complicates supply chains, increasing costs and is toxic as hell.
But the most important thing is that it impairs future development of technology. Just look at it this way. Why does China have to develop the J-20? The 4th generation fighters can do 80% of it's mission profile, 4th gen fighters are much cheaper, you can probably get a dozen J-10s for a single J-20, China has nukes and doesn't intend to fight a war anytime soon. Why bother with a 5th generation plane? There's plenty of countries that are perfectly fine with sticking to 4th gen fighters.
If China had decided not to develop 5th gen planes, you shortsighted people would be praising that decision "saves cost", "china can do no wrong" "who need 5th generation fighters anyway, we can get 20 J-16s for the cost of a F-22"
Take the long view. The most important part of the J-20 program is that it feeds into a dozen other different technologies and systems. Without the J-20, you wouldn't have the H-20, J-35, the dozen or so stealthy drone designs, stealth helicopters, stealth missiles etc etc. Reducing the radar cross section is so important for basically every aspect of warfare, even the designs to reduce the RCS of warships probably drew knowledge from the J-20 program. All of those programs draws lessons, institutional knowledge and technology that won't be possible without pouring how many tens of billions into the J-20 for the last decade. They would have to start from scratch pretty much.
And that's not all. Because the J-20 is comprised of so many technologies, it pushes other systems like the WS-15 engine, which in turn advances basically every aspect of engine technology in China. Metallurgy and material science are some of the easiest fields that can be used to benefit other fields after all. There's also data links, loyal wingman designs, avionic etcs. Most importantly, it's going to be near impossible to make a future 6th generation fighter without first developing the J-20
All those side benefits would never come about if China just decided to not invest in a 5th generation fighter, and just mass produce a few tens thousand J-16s for the price of all the above programs.
That's cryogenic rockets in a nutshell. Harder to work with, but they force you to come up with tons of new technology that could benefit other areas. Reusable rockets didn't pop out of the blue for no reason, they came to be because America had tons of experience with cryogenics rockets. There was a whole thing about the spin-off technology that NASA produced. Like I said before, something like expander cycle engines is only possible with cryogenic engines, cryogenics force you to better develop better lightweight insulation, working with liquid oxygen means that you have to find alloys that are chemically resistant to it and working with RP-1/Hydrogen/methane and it's combustion with oxygen is basically the entire field of internal combustion engine, but pushed to it's limits. Having to use an igniter means that you need to get good at it, which is very important for reusable rockets. There's dozens more examples. By comparison, hypergolics are kinda of a dead end.
It's called a virtuous cycle. Starlink wouldn't be a thing without the Falcon 9 after all. One techologny naturally leads to the other.
But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too
This quote sums it up pretty well. Either you always go the cutting edge, continuously pushing the boundary, even if it's bloody diffcult or you fall behind. What's next, China shouldn't try to make 2nm semiconductors and just rely on 40nm semiconductors for the next 20 years? Which are still perfectly fine for basically most modern technology btw. Would you be okay if China just decided to stop trying in critical areas of techologny and just slowed R&D efforts to a crawl?
Just look at the mess that complacency mindset got China. "It will cost too much to develop semiconductor tools like DUVi or EUV, let's just focus on the transistor side of things, we can always buy the tools from America/Japan/ASML, who cares if we're 15 years behind in this niche lithography techologny", well it turns out that better funding SMEE 15 years ago and investing more on the tool side and more focus on lithography could have saved China from a lot of headaches today.
ASML didn't magically get EUV one day. They got it because they were the world leader in lithography systems for decades, while SMEE was struggling with minmnal funding and support. Like I said, virtuous cycle, one techologny naturally leads to another, being good at DUVi means that getting to EUVi is easier. Being good at cryogenic rockets means that you have to be extremely good at igniting a rocket, something that hypergolic rockets don't have to deal with, and mastering rocket ignition means that you can get to reuable rockets easier. Being the world leader at 40 year old hypergolic rocket designs gets you ???
So yeah, how can China improve if it just farts around with 40 year old rocket designs? Just like how China only really rushed development of the space industry after they got a real wake up call from SpaceX, it really seems like China always has faster development with a knife to her throat forcing the country to actually innovate instead of being complacent.
Many of the founders of these "private" companies are former employee of CASC, the designs were made when they were sill employed by CASC.
What point are you trying to make here? CASC/CALT works with rockets, train up staff and some of this staff goes off to work for the private sector. You also have the reverse, where staff from the private companies go back to the govenment.
This is important because the more experienced the government sector is, the better staff the private sector can require. When China launched it's first cryogenic rocket in 2015, some of the older private companies like Landspace were already founded. Ispace was founded in 2016. American/Chinese private space companies drew it's staff from the government sector, a huge chunk of SpaceX employees were former NASA that had experience with cryogenic rocket/fuel systems. While for China, a lot of the private companies were probably former CASC/CALT engineers that had little to no experience with actually lauching cryogenic rockets considering that the first cryogenic rocket launched after the company was founded is also important. No wonder it's taking some of this early companies so long to get a cryogenic rocket in operation, they basically have to learn everything from scratch. The lack of trained staff familiar with cryogenic rockets probably hampered their growth greatly.
Those other suppliers may very well by CASC or CASIC factories, we know for a fact that at least two engines used by "private" companies are sourced from CASC.
"May very well be" is not confirmation. And if they are indeed using all this spare parts and industrial capacity from CALT/CASC, that just makes it worse you know. That means that CALT/CASC had all this extra parts and factories just sitting around not being used for some reason.
Engines and tanks may be built by other suppliers somewhere else.
This might be the case for some, but like I said, there's 5-6 of them, all with new modern deep throttling restart-able designs for reusability.
Oh and it doesn't matter. Unless the supplier is foreign, CALT/CASC could have just found this magic suppliers that somehow can produce hundreds of brand new engines designs and ask them to make them a dozen long march 7/8s to replace the hypergolics.
The Methane engines around 70t class are based on the work of 101th institutes work in the 1990s. So when you want to denounce CASC, it is decades of work without progress, but when you want to praise the magic of "private" the same work becomes success in a short few years?
America in the 1960s already made a super heavy lift cryogenic rocket, something that China still doesn't have access today. I'm just stating facts here. Private sector is doing what they should have done 20 years ago. Something that they are still unable to do today, with dozens of hypergolic rockets still launching every year and growing. "But it's cheaper" I can already hear you saying, completeting ignoring the long view and how techologny develops.
