China Will Attempt 30-Plus Launches in 2019, Including Crucial Long March 5 Missions (spacenews.com) 64
New submitter starmanaj shares a report: The main contractor for the Chinese space program is planning more than 30 launches in 2019, with major missions including the crucial return-to-flight of the heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket in July. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), announced Jan. 29 that it would aim to loft more than 50 spacecraft on 30-plus launches this year. Among these will be the third launch on the Long March 5, a 5-meter-diameter, 57-meter-tall heavy-lift launch vehicle which failed in its second flight in July 2017, delaying the Chang'e-5 lunar sample return mission and the construction of the Chinese Space Station. The mission will take place in July at the coastal Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan island, CASC vice president Yang Baohua said at a Jan. 29 news conference in Beijing, which also saw the release of a "Blue Book of China Aerospace Science and Technology Activities."
Re:How much... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: How much... (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong; I'm as against govt-enforced monopolies on ideas as the next thinking person... but I'm afraid that description doesn't include you. No offense.
Re:How much... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, Elon's philosophy is that he doesn't mind if another company beats his to achieving things if that makes the things be achieved faster. He's been urging automakers to go electric for ages, he's been rooting for Blue Origin and all the little rocket companies, etc. Certainly hasn't ever taken any steps to harm competitors. He started his current companies because he was a rich guy who wanted to solve more interesting/important problems, not to make money.
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I wish Tesla fans were so accepting too.
One thing Tesla could do to help is to open up their supercharging network. In Europe they are fitting CCS connectors so it's just the backend that they need to sort out, i.e. some way for non-Tesla owners to pay.
Re:How much... (Score:4, Informative)
Elon has copylefted nothing with regards to SpaceX. The main source for information is off-the-cuff announcements via Twitter. No papers describing the rocket, much less CAD or source code. This has to do with ITAR legislation (which makes it a crime to publish such information).
You're thinking of Tesla, which did publish information on the Supercharger design.
Good for them! (Score:2, Troll)
I doubt they're going to get 30+ launches done in a year, unless they've been playing things really close to the vest. But I am delighted to see someone else get into what used to be called the Space Race in a big way.
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I doubt they're going to get 30+ launches done in a year, unless they've been playing things really close to the vest. But I am delighted to see someone else get into what used to be called the Space Race in a big way.
A shame that no one from NASA can (officially) collaborate with them...
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I think I'd rather NASA collaborate with SpaceX to get them up to 60 launches a year.
China is targeting 30 launches to try to catch SpaceX - Good Luck!
Re:Good for them! (Score:5, Informative)
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Thats all tech the USA had to pay for and test.
Dont just give it all away to nations that supported North Korea, Vietnam as policy against the USA.
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It's called peace numb nuts, working together instead of one trying to dominate the other, which leads inevitably to war and that means MAD mutually assured destruction. Peace is not just a symbol, peace is working together upon a basis of trust, integrity and honesty, it is the only way it works, there is no other way, apart from peace by death and extinction.
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Spreading support for the revolution is not "peace".
The Communist policy that gave support to Vietnam, North Korea, over Taiwan is not changing vs the USA.
Communist governments see "working together" as a way in to spy more. To attempt to see who wants to spy.
US tech is lost.
The USA finds it has a lot of new Communist spies in place.
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Ahem, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Why did they cooperate with Communist Russia? Why did they share technology with Russia?
Kennedy was hoping to do the moon missions in cooperation with Russia, partly for peace and partly to save money. Concord could have been another joint project, and maybe it would have had more commercial success.
At least by the time the ISS went up it wasn't such a problem that a lot of it was Russian.
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Communist nations don't do collaboration. They spy.
Concord was a project between France and the UK. They used a treaty to get that set up.
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Well, a lot of it the US stole from the Nazis. Some more they borrowed, bought, or otherwise acquired from the Soviets. Not even the Russians, the Soviets.
Science is a very international undertaking, perhaps the most international undertaking.
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An "international" undertaking would be the NSA and other 5 eye nations.
Supporting EU nations, Taiwan, South Korea. Nations that like and support the USA.
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Your rhetorical style matches modern politics pretty well. Strawmen and outrage.
You said "Thats all tech the USA had to pay for and test." This isn't true. US rocketry technology was developed with collaboration and input from around the world. Including very significant contributions from Nazi Germany and scientists "acquired" from Nazi Germany. Quite a few US Air Force satellites were launched on ULA's Atlas V... which uses a Soviet engine.
Collaboration isn't "just giving" things away.
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That was not "collaboration" with West/East Germany.
The scientists got accepted into the USA. They worked in the USA under US conditions.
Loyalty to the USA and citizenship was often part of the needed approval to get into the USA and work on such projects.
Thats different from China walking out with advanced US tech for free.
Buying a lot of Soviet "engines" does not give advanced very new US tech back to Russi
Re:Good for them! (Score:5, Informative)
Erm, China launched 37 times last year. How is aiming for 30+ this year any sort of stretch or doubtful thing? They've been "playing things really close to the vest" by launching 37 times and then planning 30 for the following year?
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The Last Communist Holdout Being Space Capable... (Score:2)
Re:The Last Communist Holdout Being Space Capable. (Score:4, Informative)
China has 250+ satellites in orbit already... way more than Russia, way more than any country except the USA. If they really care about you so much, they've known what they want to know for a long time.
Queue the Anti-China Trolls ... (Score:1)
... hypocritically harping on about copyright theft in 1 ... 2 ... 3 ...
Equal to Blue Origin, Orbital & SpaceX (Score:4, Interesting)
I know over the years, there have been some discussion on whether or not spaceflight should be big government funded (von Braun was a big proponent of this) or leave it to entrepreneurs/adventurers. While Paul Allen's Stratolaunch is somewhat in limbo now, it seems like in the US the trend is to go with entrepreneurs with SpaceX, Orbital and Blue Origin leading the way. Hopefully the SLS development effort will be retired, as will the Ariane 6 both being too costly compared to the commercial options meaning that the only big government launches will be from Russia and China.
I picked SpaceX, Orbital and Blue Origin because if you total their launch manifests for 2019, they'll have at least 30 - There will be multiple manned missions in there (by Blue Origin and SpaceX) and quite an array of different capabilities.
It's one thing for the second biggest economy in the world to have 30 launches but I think it's a lot more impressive that private capital will provide the same number of launches
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Re:Equal to Blue Origin, Orbital & SpaceX (Score:4, Insightful)
"Why is it impressive when private capital does it?"
Because private capital is taking over a domain that had, up until recently, been strictly based on government programs. How is it not impressive that private companies are seeing a profit motive in such things when in the past they clearly weren't? It speaks wonders to how far what had mostly been government funded development in such areas has come.
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Did you not read my post all the way through or are you an alien?
Let me both repeat myself and expand a bit on the topic. Increasingly private enterprise has been engaging in areas of space tech that they never had anything to do with. Normal humans think it's impressive when things move from the strictly government funded domain to the publicly funded domain. It suggests a level of accessibility to things once considered sci-fi when the funding for such a thing doesn't require the massive wealth of nation
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Except for manned launches, rocket launching in the US has been pretty much private sector for a long time, by the likes of Boeing and Lockheed. Government is certainly a major customer, but that's not going to change. ArianeGroup is also a private company.
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I never said SpaceX is the only launch company (and I feel that you're ignoring my example because I said Blue Origin, despite having a lot of money, has yet to showcase any development).
I've seen a lot of them start and die in the late '90s to the early 2000s.
But I'll bite.
There are other private launch providers.
Stratolaunch? Just announced they're retiring their only ways of achieving orbit.
Virgin Galactic? Not targeting orbital capacity the last time I saw it.
Rocketlab? Targeting a different market.
Sierra Nevada? They're still iterating on the
"Launching rockets just requires money." (Score:2)
I know the engineers, scientists, mathematicians, chemists, aerodynamicists, material scientists, etc. involved in the various efforts to get into space would find your statement quite offensive.
Launching satellites *is* amazing - read up on the subject some time.
Re: Equal to Blue Origin, Orbital & SpaceX (Score:2)
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Blue Origin has 0 orbital launches planned -- if you count Chinese suborbital launches I'm sure they've got a lot more. Orbital has 2 launches planned this year according to my googling, and has never topped 2.
At any rate, "communist" China agrees with you that private enterprise is the better strategy for space -- which is why they've been encouraging their private space industry, which is a pretty crowded sector now which should hopefully produce orbital results soon.
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A single launch of a reusable spacecraft is worth more than all of PR^HLA's.
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Hopefully ... the Ariane 6 both being too costly compared to the commercial options
That's an unrealistic hope. Ariane is seen as strategically important by Europe. We want an independent launch capability, because we've been screwed over by the Americans in the past.
Arianespace is progressing toward the first Ariane 6 launch at a pace that gives me hope they'll be able to transition to reusable rockets (also in development already) in a reasonable timeframe.
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See the answer I just posted on that.
I don't see Arianespace being allowed to continue with the current business model - they really need somebody new and aggressive to change the direction they're going in because unless they do, I can't see them being allowed to continue.
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Ariane won't be retired because there isn't a commercial alternative in Europe. The EU isn't going to give up its launch capability.
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It would be a shame, but from what it sounds like in AvWeek, it's a real possibility that Ariane is going to be allowed to die out. The Ariane 6 looks like a non-starter with it's launch costs being 2x and more than that of SpaceX.
I think they really need some bold leadership there that is willing to look at different operational models if they're going to survive.
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Which AvWeek article is that? Can't find it using their search function.
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Can't find the link either - the latest article on Arianespace was either Friday or Monday and I did comment on it. There is http://aviationweek.com/space/... [aviationweek.com] which was part of the discussion and I commented on that as well.
AvWeek has the world's worst website for a news organization. Amazing articles, shitty, slow website with content appearing and disappearing all the time.
Good luck to china (Score:2)
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"Hopefully, CONgress"
HAHAHA, I see what you did there! You're so clever!
"China will have man on the moon within 7-9 years."
Anyways, we've landed more people on the moon then I even care to look up. It's great China is catching up to our decades old accomplishments and all but how about we aim for better than replicating shit we did half a century ago.
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The US can't even send a person into space and hasn't been able to for years so I don't know why you are looking down at China for. They have more capabilities in space than the US does right now. Maybe you could hitch a lift into orbit sometime with them?
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"The US can't even send a person into space and hasn't been able to for years..."
Because of poor planning. We have a new shuttle in the works now thanks to Obama but Bush Jr. didn't want to pay for one despite the eminent retirement of the shuttles active during his presidency.
Of course none of that refutes the fact that China is replicating half century old American accomplishments. It would be equally impressive if they "invented" personal computers.
Misleading title (Score:1)
The missions aren't really that long, if they're all scheduled for a single day, March 5.