China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
very interesting, so this carbon fiber fairing will be used in launches for GW satellite constellation.
Also this means China is utilizing private launchers in this project, since TL-3 here is being used for that purpose
I really like the part on cost being reduced by 30% and production efficiency being increased by 20%. That's pretty big deal
Is this good enough for you @Blitzo ?
It depends, how quickly can they ramp up to launching 3-4 rockets a week...
do they have a need for that in the next 3 years? They only have so much capacity for producing satellites at the moment.
Then that imo would be considered an industry/sector issue.
Whether they have "need" for it IMO is the wrong question, the better question is whether they have the ability to do so.
For example, one could make a case that the PLA "needs" 30,000 14 ton LEO SAR satellites for 24/7 GMTI/SAR purposes of the entire globe, and that possessing such a capability would be vital to their strategic power and if they were able to attain it in the span of three years, then it would be a massive boost to their regional and global ISR capabilities in every domain of politics and war.
But the industry is unable to support both the launch pace for such a thing (rockets pov) nor the satellites (payload pov)... but between the two, I think having the launch vehicle capacity wait for the payload capacity is a better tradeoff if you had to choose one to be ahead of the other.
In any case, if the question is about whether "this" is "good enough," the answer I suppose is "it depends".
I think a 500 kW laser would be able to shoot down satellites that fly by at small angles relative to normal.
so how do you get enough satellites with 500 kw laser and power them without getting questioned during peace time?
30000 14 ton leo sar satellites is not reasonable or possible due to the fact that you can only have so many leo satellites in the air and starlink is filling up the sky. So the only way China can not loose out completely in this race is by putting up similar functioning and small satellites in the air. The starlink satellites are about 250kg. So you can get maybe 20 of those satellites in the air per launch.
The question I think worth asking is which private player is going to get involved here that will really drive the push to greater satellite production and rocket production capacity. I can think of one particular company that is currently making money hand over fist from selling AI chips that would be particularly interested in a LEO constellation.
Once you get the technology ready, the next question is how they can increase # of launches per year and production of everything.
It seems to me that the current launch plans are still relatively conservative compared to what spacex is doing. I don't know if that's due to private industry not being involved or what. But certainly getting private money in there would be important.
And then there are the supply chain questions. What is the technology needed for both data transmission satellites and SAR satellites? How quickly can you ramp up the production of components needed for satellite sensors?
ground based 500 kw lasers. LEO is only 200 km up while satellite to satellite distances can be 1000's of km easily.