China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
by78
General
DeepBlue's high-altitude VTVL test has been delayed slightly to early September. If the test goes well, a 100km VTVL test will quickly follow in October.
The test is a failure. Flight was normal up until the final leg. The company is working to discover the cause and hopes to resume testing as soon as possible.
Damn, almost. It looks like the engine didn't throttle down enough and then suddenly cut. It makes me appreciate what a remarkable feat of engineering Landspace's TQ-12B is.
Or may be the radar or whatever sensor system they used for altitude measurement malfunctioned. To me it looked like the engine throttled and shutdown as it was told, but it got the wrong altitude measurements.
Drone footage
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there was clearly a 2 to 3 seconds hovering just before crashing. The rocket was in good orientation. The hovering indicates the engine's throttling depth is good. It seems that the throttling down after hovering is too fast leading to accelerated landing. However the cause of it can be anything from engine response characteristic to altitude sensor and software. It could even be that it run out of fuel.
by78
General
Yan Zheng (晏政), a senior engineer at the Wenchang launch complex, revealed that two new assembly facilities are currently under construction, along with two new mobile launch vehicle transfer platforms. In the future, Wenchang will double its launch capacity for Long March 5 and Long March 7 launch vehicles.
I'd say for hopper purposes it's probably a success in terms of what they were testing for.
Apparently they have a back up and will be proceeding with a higher altitude test in November which indicates that the important goals were attained.
Imo the loss of a vehicle isnt necessarily important -- the most useful thing demonstrated by private space companies thus far is the willingness to conduct tests that achieve progress even if it results in the loss of a vehicle (so long as a loss is done safely, which it was here).