Interesting
Finally bigger jump for number of launches
Finally bigger jump for number of launches
China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
Another rocket same as Long March 8 in capacity ..
CASC has a new rocket named Long March 12 this year!
D3.8m
4 YF-100K kerolox engines in 1st stage
2 YF-115 kerolox engines in 2nd stage
10 tonne capacity to LEO
6 tonnes to 700km SSO
This will also be the debut launch of YF-100K, which will power the moon rocket Long March 10
CASC has a new rocket named Long March 12 this year!
D3.8m
4 YF-100K kerolox engines in 1st stage
2 YF-115 kerolox engines in 2nd stage
10 tonne capacity to LEO
6 tonnes to 700km SSO
This will also be the debut launch of YF-100K, which will power the moon rocket Long March 10
Last edited:
What's the point of long march 6 and 8 variants and the long march 12-which seems to be an upgraded version of the long march 8 anyway? Considering the development time on rockets, those projects has to have started maybe around 5 years ago. Such a waste considering that they aren't planned to be reusable. In 2024, any new rocket coming out that isn't designed to be eventually reusable is already obsolete. Well maybe solid fueled rockets meant for fast response launches with minimal infrastructure still have a use but this new long march rockets aren't that. Should have been cancelled years ago and the money and developmental team roped in to work on the CZ-10 instead, or the project never even started in the first place.
This just encourages sunk cost fallacy too. If a private LSP comes up with a workhorse reusable rocket by 2025/2026 and tries to eat into the launch market, how likely are the national team going to let their brand new rocket fade away into obscurity with less then 2 years of service under it's belt? This is when China can't even let their 40 year rockets retire. They will probably fight for launches with vigor, even if it's clearly not competitive with a reusable rocket. And that shit matters, even with an infinite amount of payload and rockets, there's always gonna to be limited pad launch availability, something that the private companies are already struggling with. The new commercial launchpad in Hainan can only support 16 launches a year, that's barely enough to give every new private liquid fuelled rocket in development a single launch each.
And of course the logistics of supporting so many rockets isn't good. Yes, I know that many of the long march series share the same tooling, tanks, engines etc, but that's no reason to have the development of so many different kinds of rockets with so similar capabilities. Not in a field as complex as rocketry, where even simple changes have long development times and engineering challenges and minor issues can lead to a total loss of the rocket . To add insult to injury, even the base long march 6 and 8 has barely launched, the long march 6 has launched at a rate of 1 per year and the long march 8 less than that. It's hard to see their upgraded versions and the new CZ-12 launching much before they get overtaken by reusable rockets. At most they can replace launches from the older hypergolic fleet, but the base LM-6/7/8 are supposed to already do that and has barely made a dent in the number of hypergolic launches.
This just encourages sunk cost fallacy too. If a private LSP comes up with a workhorse reusable rocket by 2025/2026 and tries to eat into the launch market, how likely are the national team going to let their brand new rocket fade away into obscurity with less then 2 years of service under it's belt? This is when China can't even let their 40 year rockets retire. They will probably fight for launches with vigor, even if it's clearly not competitive with a reusable rocket. And that shit matters, even with an infinite amount of payload and rockets, there's always gonna to be limited pad launch availability, something that the private companies are already struggling with. The new commercial launchpad in Hainan can only support 16 launches a year, that's barely enough to give every new private liquid fuelled rocket in development a single launch each.
And of course the logistics of supporting so many rockets isn't good. Yes, I know that many of the long march series share the same tooling, tanks, engines etc, but that's no reason to have the development of so many different kinds of rockets with so similar capabilities. Not in a field as complex as rocketry, where even simple changes have long development times and engineering challenges and minor issues can lead to a total loss of the rocket . To add insult to injury, even the base long march 6 and 8 has barely launched, the long march 6 has launched at a rate of 1 per year and the long march 8 less than that. It's hard to see their upgraded versions and the new CZ-12 launching much before they get overtaken by reusable rockets. At most they can replace launches from the older hypergolic fleet, but the base LM-6/7/8 are supposed to already do that and has barely made a dent in the number of hypergolic launches.
The Long March 6 is a launcher for small sats. And the Long March 8 is just a Long March 7 with two side boosters instead of four.