China's Space Program Thread II

[by78]

Some presentation slides from Deep Blue Aerospace. The company plans to carry out the first high-altitude VTVL test of its Nebula-1 rocket next year. Nebula-1 is a reusable rocket with a payload capacity of 2000kg to LEO and 1000kg to SSO. It's powered by the Thunder-R1 (a.k.a. Thunder-20) engines (20-ton thrust per engine, LOX/Kerosene fuel, nine engines for the 1st stage and one for the 2nd stage).

A few more parameters of the Nebula-1 reusable launch vehicle:
– Height: 35m
– Diameter: 3.35m
– Takeoff mass: 150 tons

 

[by78]

The 40-meter-diameter antenna dish for the radio telescope has been installed at the new Changbai Mountains observatory, which along with a similar facility being built in Tibet, are a part of the critical infrastructure for future lunar missions and deep space exploration.

The 40-meter-diameter radio telescope located at Changbai Mountains Observatory has passed pre-acceptance evaluations. It has been handed over to the end user for trial operations.

 

[sunnymaxi]

LANDSPACE is going for full-flow staged combustion cycle methalox engine & fully reusable 2-stage rocket, confirms the CEO ZHANG Changwu in an interview

Engine will be 200t-thrust Raptor alike.
Rocket will obviously be Starship-like.
The goal is to achieve it around 2030.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1864715514200887482

LANDSPACE's FFSC 200 tons methalox engine is named BF-20 (Blue Flame 20)

 

[tphuang]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1864890218350063660

this is certainly good news for Leo constellation

 

[by78]

Some slides on the XZY-1 launch vehicle from Arrowhead/Space Epoch and the company's future plans.

Specs:
– Payload to LEO: 6.5 tons
– Reusability: 20 times
– Length: 64m
– Fairing diameter: 5.2m
– Stainless body, splashdown recovery

The company aims to have the capacity for 25 XZY-1 launches annually. First-stage splashdown recovery test will be carried out in June of 2024, to be followed by a sub-orbital splashdown recovery in December of 2024. The company aims to achieve full reusability by the end of 2026.

Updated specs of the XZY-1 launch vehicle. Height has been increased from 62m to 64m, takeoff mass decreased from 515 tons to 509 tons, payload capacity increased from 6.5 tons to 7 tons. Arrowhead/Space Epoch now aims for an annual capacity of 26 launches, an increase of one. The diameter of the rocket is 4.2m.

 

[by78]

A KZ-1A solid rocket successfully launched Haishao-1 (海哨一号/Sea Sentinel 1) remote sensing satellite into orbit. The KZ-1A used in this launch is upgraded from previous KZ-1As. It has an enlarged fairing (increased from 1.4m to 1.8m in diameter) and a larger payload capacity to LEO (increased from 300kg to 450kg). Haishao-1, also known as AIRSAT-08, is an ultra-low-orbit X-band synthetic aperture radar with a resolution of less than 1 meter.

Haishao-1 has beamed back the first batch of images.

 

[tphuang]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1865760090382311750

China's rocket launch cadence is about to really ramp up over next few years. By 2030, they'd probably need to do 4 or 5 times a week in certain part of the year.

 

[antwerpery]

Easier said than done. Having huge plans, or having the thousands of satellites waiting in a warehouse means nothing when the bottleneck is launches. China was clearly leaning on the private sector to step up for more launches, they have been disappointing so far. SpaceX is really just built different, because the private Chinese rocket companies keep missing targets, keep fucking up and are just super underwhelming so far. Anyone hoping for a Chinese SpaceX or for the private sector to deliver a reusable rocket anytime soon will be disappointed.

 

[GulfLander]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm hearing rumors that some major upcoming scientific projects like the CFER or CEPC didn't get their funding approved in the latest major funding rounds for this kinds of projects, meaning that they are basically quietly cancelled or put on hold indefinitely. This is just a rumor, but from what I can tell, both projects don't actually have official approval yet, despite them being massive projects that need to have construction started on soon if they want to be finished before the late 2030s. So there might be a grain of truth to this. Anyone have any concrete info?

Easier said than done. Having huge plans, or having the thousands of satellites waiting in a warehouse means nothing when the bottleneck is launches. China was clearly leaning on the private sector to step up for more launches, they have been disappointing so far. SpaceX is really just built different, because the private Chinese rocket companies keep missing targets, keep fucking up and are just super underwhelming so far. Anyone hoping for a Chinese SpaceX or for the private sector to deliver a reusable rocket anytime soon will be disappointed.

I am curious on your info sources..

 

[antwerpery]

I am curious on your info sources..

It’s pretty clear that the Chinese private rockets companies are not doing well. Ispace has like a 60% failure rate, even with simple solid rocket motors. Space pioneer had its little accident that bought increased safety standards onto the entire private rocket sector, they were to have launched their TL-3 twice this year were it not for that. Land space launched a single rocket this year. Deep blue and GE both delayed the debut launch of their liquid fuelled rockets to next year. GE had a launch failure that saw them suspend their launches for 3 months straight. China is also nowhere close to hitting her goal of 100 launches a year and it’s clear that the poor performance of the private sector is a large factor in this. Only two companies even have liquid fuelled rockets in service, they have launched those rockets like a combined total of 5 times. I was hopeful that this would be a breakout year for the industry, but nope. I don’t see it likely that any of them actually land a rocket next year if they are clearly still having so much growing pains with even basic launches.

As for my CFER and CEPP claims, it’s just rumours that I have seen while browsing the internet. I’m not sure, hence me asking around in this forum. But like I said, this projects have been in the funding/approval process for a while now, and I haven’t heard of them actually getting approved and construction starting, which tracks with the rumours.