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China Space Transportation

China Plans Superheavy Rocket, Ups Reliability 86

Posted by Soulskill from the fly-me-to-the-moon dept.
hackingbear writes: China is conducting preliminary research on a super-heavy launch vehicle that will be used in its manned missions to the moon. Liang Xiaohong, deputy head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, disclosed that the Long March-9 is planned to have a maximum payload of 130 tons and its first launch will take place around 2028, comparable to U.S.'s SLS Block II in terms of capability and likely beating its schedule. The China National Space Administration has started preliminary research for the Mars exploration program and is persuading the government to include the project into the country's space agenda, according to Tian Yulong, secretary-general of the administration. Separately, China's Long March series of rockets completed its 200th flight on Dec 7. It took 37 years for the Long March series to complete their first 100 flights, but only 7 years for the second 100 flights. In addition, the programclaims (link in Chinese) a success rate of 98%, on par with E.U.'s and beating U.S.'s 97% and Russia's 93% success rates.
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China Plans Superheavy Rocket, Ups Reliability More

China Plans Superheavy Rocket, Ups Reliability

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  • It helps to have a multi-trillion dollar economy and a billion workers. Let's cook!

    • I look forward to the US saving money in the space program by using cheap Chinese rockets, we can concentrate on more advanced payloads

      • Cheap? Nope.
        SpaceX is cheap. CHina is very expensive. In fact, going to China with Manufacturing is the MOST expensive thing that you can do.

        • you are sitting at a chinese computer system typing those words, because China is the land of cheap manufacturing

          • Are we talking about plastic molds, or high technology? I'm pretty sure my last "Chinese CPU" had "diffused in Germany" written on it.

            Let me know how this cheap this "cheap Chinese manufacturing" turns out to be once their labor costs rise anywhere near American or European levels.

            • This is going to go the same way as those maglev trains that everyone thought were so unbuildable and theoretical until the Chinese just went out and built one. Now you folks have high-speed testing underway in Yamanashi for the next generation maglev Shinkansen.

              Meanwhile in California, they're still filing lawsuits over the route for the new conventional-tracked high speed rail.

              • And that technology for the maglev came from transrapid, that China stole from them.
                Germany, just like other western nations, is in such a hurry to make sales that they are gutting their future.
          • Sigh.
            Losing your technology and ultimately company, is not what I call cheap manufacturing.
            When you outsource to China, they watch and see what is selling and what is not. If you have something that is selling, they will produce generic versions of it using your tech/molds/etc and sell it through several of the box stores.

            That is the most expensive cheap manufacturing that any company can have.

            • waa waa waa competition scares me

              • compettition is great.
                Only an idiot plays in somebody elses yard in which they control the rules and have already proven that they will not even honor the rules that they created.
  • The headline initially confused me as to how United Parcel Service or uninterrupted power supplies could be connected to China's space program. I thought: is this some sort of T. Rowe Price commercial about a complex interconnected global economy?
  • Reliability was a problem in the early US and Soviet years. All the new German ideas needed to be understood and worked with under local conditions.
    Operation Paperclip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] gave the US a lot of German experts with no questions asked.
    Over the years the US had to understand what was been constructed for them.
    India had to build its own rockets and now has the local technology that is well understood and can be funded.
    China faced the same issues with its advanced technology. Buy

  • Have they picked a fuel yet? (Score:3)

    by gman003 ( 1693318 ) on Monday December 08, 2014 @10:54PM (#48552737)

    Last I'd heard, the Long March 9 was so early in development that they hadn't yet decided on two options: either a LOX+RP1 first stage with liquid boosters, or a LOX+LH2 first stage with more powerful solid boosters.

    Current Long March rockets, by the way, use N2O4+UDMH exclusively (save for the very first few, which used RFNA+UDMH). Very military design.

    If you're not into rocket science, those are different enough that you can't just swap out the fuels. You'd be changing the engines, the fuel pumps, the tankage, the whole frame, pretty much everything. Normally this is one of the first things you settle. Car analogy: this is like deciding how many wheels to have when building a car. You can't really just throw another pair on there.

    Then again, China's got the budget, they could design and even test both, then decide which is better and declare that CZ-9.

    • The Chinese have had last stage engines powered by LOX/LH2 for quite a long time now. Long March 5 is supposed to have staged combustion LOX/RP-1 propulsion in the first stage. They are building the launch facilities in Dainan island as we speak. They have had some manufacturing issues with it but it was supposed to have the first launch this year. The Long March 5 family, much like Angara in Russia, is supposed to replace all their current launch vehicles with state of the art rockets.

      Last I heard they ha

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

      Well I would say they have a good chance.
      The US started on the Saturn V in 1962 first flight 1967 so just five years.
      The Saturn V was designed using pencils and slide rules.
      Today China has PCs "and better" and CAD/CAM.

  • Not surprised (Score:3)

    by Camembert ( 2891457 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2014 @12:30AM (#48553051)
    I currently live in Hong Kong, and I do several business trips to Chinese cities. I am not surprised that China is catching up in the space race, based on the general impresson of ambitious, intelligent and thorough workers. Indeed, they have not caught up everywhere (both as in the geography where there is a divide - but closing, and as in product categories), but it is obvious that China will only get more dominant.
    A lesson for western countries (I am European btw) may be to increase school quality. Schools in HK and China can be VERY high in quality (perhaps pushing the kids too far), andI learned twice already from chinese expats in the west that their kids found the supposedly excellent local western schools too simple. Eduation is investment in the future, and I notice that China does that well.
    Meanwhile, when I go back to Europe every half a year, I am saddened by the general lack of ambition. People tend to wait for th e government to do something for them. Over here, people are much more ambitious and enterprising.

    • That happened back in the 1970's (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Taco Cowboy ( 5327 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2014 @01:03AM (#48553139) Journal

      ... and I learned twice already from chinese expats in the west that their kids found the supposedly excellent local western schools too simple ...

      I came from China, landed on the US soil as a refugee

      When I left China I was in my mid teen. The last school I attended in China (regular school) was something equivalent of a junior-high of the United States, and at the time I left, China's society was in a totally chaotic state, and the schools I attended were also upside down in terms of "teaching/learning"

      But still, when I landed on the US soil, at first I was enrolled in an American high school (I knew almost nothing in English, except the A-Z alphabet and simple "Yes/No/Thank you") but when it came to math, it was, to me, totally ridiculous

      In the American high school the math they were doing I did it in my primary school, in my 3rd and 4th year, as a matter of fact

      After I got my English straightened out, I got into a community college, and even then, in the freshman and sophomore years (the first two years of my university life I studied in community college) the math they taught there was still lower than what I had (in "junior high") back in China, and I ain't talking about simple business math course either, as I was aiming for a science stream, so the math courses I was taking were things like Calculus, Advanced Calculus, and so forth

      And yes, that was back in the 1970's, and even back then, the school standard of the United States was already lower than that of China

      Today, the gap between the school standard in Asia, specifically those in Korea, China, Singapore, Japan and that of the West, specifically the U. S. of A. has grown wider, much wider

      If the West do not improve, in a generation or two (give or take 50 years) Asia will lead the world in Science and Math

      • If the West do not improve, in a generation or two (give or take 50 years) Asia will lead the world in Science and Math

        I think they have for the past 30 years already.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jabuzz ( 182671 )

        Please stop equating the west with the USA. The maths that Americans do is way behind their European counterparts as well.

        Part of it is much shorter school years in the USA. Typically 20 less each year. By the time you get to 16 that is over a year less education than their European counterparts.

      • do you have actual examples, or just an nice big stinky ass pull?
        if you were in the remedial math classses in college, maybe you are not as smart as you think you are. plenty of kids roll right into the nasty math if they were not punters in lower school.

      • I disagree with some of the pretenses here primarily that higher level math directly equates with a better performing student. I went to grad school for chemical engineering with 1/3 US students and 2/3 foreign all from China and India, and I will agree that their skills when it came to even engineering math (e.g. calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, numerical analysis) all surpassed what I and other domestic students knew.

        But I think this is because of a fundamental difference in evaluating wh

    • im dating a native chinese girl, here for about 4 years.
      they commonly HATE their education system.
      its not, "what do you want to do," its "what is the best use we can make of you"
      many have jobs that they are competent enough at, but have zero drive to do well.

      • Absolutely not the case where I live in HK, and not perceived at all during my trips to Shanghai and Beijing.

    • While an interesting comment, it is sort of counter to your argument. A space program isn't something that normal enterprising people can do, it is something that only their governments can do. While you might argue that due to educational culture, the Chinese might be more inclined to produce more engineers than say financial advisers, however I don't think that there is a lack of those people in the other space fairing nations.

  • China's launch record is quite good, but when they fail, huge numbers of people die. China doesn't use launch abort systems like the US does. When a US rocket fails, it is destroyed immediately to minimize damage. When a Chinese rocket fails, people die. One launch in the 90s killed over 500 people when a Long March III basically bombed a town and they couldn't stop it due to the lack of any abort system. Atypical to be sure, but they've had other launches that have killed people, and these are just the one

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      China doesn't use launch abort systems like the US does.

      Got a citation for that? Or did you just make it up? Certainly there's no lack of mention of these systems, and things like escape towers in the manned Shenzhou rockets.

      One launch in the 90s killed over 500 people when a Long March III basically bombed a town and they couldn't stop it due to the lack of any abort system.

      Six fatalities, about 60 injuries. You get the 500 off Fox or cook it up yourself?

      Basically what I'm saying is that China really needs to put launch abort systems in their rockets.

      Yes, and I'm sure that never occurred in the 13 years and 75 Long March launches since then. If only they had Western armchair experts to point these things out.

      they've had other launches that have killed people, and these are just the ones we know about.

      Why those pesky commies and their imaginary secret space launch disasters we don't know about!

  • I guess we have some time to catch up, eh? We went from first orbit to the moon in less than a decade, so come on folks, let's make it snappy!

    • We also had a government that *wanted* to go from first orbit to the moon in a decade. Not the case today.

      Today we have a government that just wants NASA to not screw up.

  • Hmmm. How come China does not release the data associated with this?
  • That's something I've always wondered, they're already busy with the rocket, so why would it still need almost 14 years to get the damn thing off the ground...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Russia had its N1, Buran or Angara projects. The US also had its own ideas about it can put into LEO.
      Few nations have the skills or budgets. China will take its time like India and get every part of the production lines working well.
      Then the next generation can build on that. Other nations just spend on huge projects and have to start again.
  • They're talking about building a rocket whose first launch is in 14 years. Yeah, I know it takes a long time to engineer something complex like a HL rocket, but I think in this case they're hedging their bets. A valid strategy might be to just go slow work up a design and then watch what SpaceX and NASA does and modify their design based on the lessons learned from those HL systems.

    It's not a bad way to go, but it also means in the short term no Taikonauts will be leaving LEO...

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