China Secretively Launches Reusable Suborbital Vehicle for Space Transportation System (spacenews.com) 53
"China conducted a clandestine first test flight of a reusable suborbital vehicle Friday as a part of development of a reusable space transportation system," reports Space News:
The vehicle launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center Friday and later landed at an airport just over 800 kilometers away at Alxa League in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC) announced. No images nor footage nor further information, such as altitude, flight duration or propulsion systems, were provided. The CASC release stated however that the vehicle uses integrated aviation and space technologies and indicates a vertical takeoff and horizontal landing profile.
The test follows a September 2020 test flight of a "reusable experimental spacecraft". The spacecraft orbited for days, releasing a small transmitting payload and later deorbited and landed horizontally. The spacecraft is widely believed to be a reusable spaceplane concept, though no images have emerged. Giant space and defense contractor CASC also developed that vehicle and stated that the new vehicle tested Friday can be used as a first stage of a reusable space transportation system. The implication is that the two vehicles will be combined for a fully reusable space transportation system. The developments have not come out of the blue. China stated in 2017 that it aimed to test a reusable spaceplane in 2020...
Chen Hongbo, from CASC's China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), told Science and Technology Daily (Chinese) in 2017 that the reusable spacecraft would be capable of carrying both crew and payloads... Chen stated the aim was full reusability, moving beyond partial reusability of Falcon 9-like launchers. The spaceplane, the development and testing of which is to be completed by 2030, should be capable of being reused more than 20 times.
The vehicle launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center Friday and later landed at an airport just over 800 kilometers away at Alxa League in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC) announced. No images nor footage nor further information, such as altitude, flight duration or propulsion systems, were provided. The CASC release stated however that the vehicle uses integrated aviation and space technologies and indicates a vertical takeoff and horizontal landing profile.
The test follows a September 2020 test flight of a "reusable experimental spacecraft". The spacecraft orbited for days, releasing a small transmitting payload and later deorbited and landed horizontally. The spacecraft is widely believed to be a reusable spaceplane concept, though no images have emerged. Giant space and defense contractor CASC also developed that vehicle and stated that the new vehicle tested Friday can be used as a first stage of a reusable space transportation system. The implication is that the two vehicles will be combined for a fully reusable space transportation system. The developments have not come out of the blue. China stated in 2017 that it aimed to test a reusable spaceplane in 2020...
Chen Hongbo, from CASC's China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), told Science and Technology Daily (Chinese) in 2017 that the reusable spacecraft would be capable of carrying both crew and payloads... Chen stated the aim was full reusability, moving beyond partial reusability of Falcon 9-like launchers. The spaceplane, the development and testing of which is to be completed by 2030, should be capable of being reused more than 20 times.
Jack Ma (Score:1)
China's Global Times has reported an official denial that Jack Ma was on board.
When asked if they had attempted to beat Western Capitalists at their own game, Ma responded "Jeff who?".
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Maybe that is the reason for the secrecy, keep the trade secrets secret. If it works it would be very competitive.
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Maybe that is the reason for the secrecy, keep the trade secrets secret. If it works it would be very competitive.
You mean the trade secrets they perhaps stole from the US and/or other Western countries? I'd want to keep those a secret too...
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Yeah, I figured to run into this racist bigotry and here is already in the third post. Do you really believe that a country with 1/4 of the world's population is unable to invent anything on its own?
In case you didn't know, the Chinese actually invented the rocket in the first place.
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Yeah, I figured to run into this racist bigotry and here is already in the third post.
Not so much when they have a track record of this type of behavior. Keep in mind that I said "perhaps" ...
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This is why the West keeps getting caught out when China suddenly shows a technical lead like it did with 5G. The assumption is everything is stolen until suddenly oh shit they were putting in the R&D the whole time while we just assumed there was no real competition.
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The assumption is everything is stolen ...
I did say "perhaps" ... But they do have a track record of that kind of behavior.
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So does the West, we just don't like to admit it.
NDAs are common for a reason.
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baseball.
is jeff who a descendant of the famous first baseman
Why keep it a secret? (Score:2)
Asking for a friend.
Re: Why keep it a secret? (Score:2)
A first stage which can land horizontally? (Score:3)
A practical first stage which can land horizontally ... I guess you could build it, but it's so fucking impractical. Suboptimal shape, all that extra hardware to make it flyable/landeable.
A boondoggle they were able to get into the air and fly for 800km to extract more money, that's more believable to me.
I love pronouncements like this... (Score:5, Insightful)
...because they're always proven wrong. It might take longer than the people working on them expect to, but in the end, with a bit of perseverance, they generally hit their goals.
Five years ago, I saw nothing but disdain for SpaceX's Falcon 9 and how impractical and suboptimal the idea was that you'd return the first stage booster - now SpaceX owns the commercial launch market with the exceptions where national boosters are heavily subsidized by their source countries to keep their production going. What about electric cars - lots of people say they're impractical and needlessly expensive? There will be 50 more new models coming out in the 2022 model year. In ten years there will be a fair number of electric or hydrogen powered commuter airliners in operation as well as autonomous (electric) air taxi services between airports and commuter hubs. All of these technologies have (had) their detractors saying that their products will never work or be competitive.
I'm sure there are a lot of people and companies who would like you to hold their beer and watch them succeed at single-stage to orbit and horizontal landing.
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Not proof. They aren't trying to prove anything the OP didn't. So there is no need to refute personal opinion. Instead the reply basically says just that, these personal opinions are often rooted in overt skepticism. The X-37B was last launched on a Falcon 9, so basically China is following this example with the major difference being there is no mention of this being autonomous. Which is to say they are building a space craft like NASA's shuttle using the current paradigm of space flight, reusable first st
one step at a time (Score:2)
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The funny thing is the skepticism seems to miss others are already doing this. It's not like they are the first to be following this path. The example has already been set.
This is actually often where China really excels. In many fields they still haven't proven their ability to innovate (the largest exception being quantum technology). However, once the example has been shown they are often very good at working backwards from it and building on it to make it a process to relatively cheaply produce and scal
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Betting on failure for any given company betting on unconventional endeavours is a much safer bet, most fail.
Most electric airplane companies will go bankrupt, regardless if the concept succeeds.
Re: A first stage which can land horizontally? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think they mean using a parachute like many re-entry vehicles used for space travel. The advantages of a space plane is to aim the re-entry better, so the personnel and any return payload can be more easily transported. Either way the X-37B is doing this, so the negativity here is kind of like missing the point that the Chinese are developing a similar capability, maybe if for no other reason than parity but likely there are better reasons that aren't being adequately addressed by these posters and their
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It apparently uses a scramjet to get into orbit, so the first stage only needs to get it up to speeds where the scramjet starts working.
Could be a rocket plane or something like that.
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If they can pull that off, it would be quite the revolution. A rocket-scramjet-rocket hybrid might be more practical than things like SABRE.
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What makes you think it's a first stage?
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What makes you think it's a first stage?
Maybe he read the summary?
secrets (Score:1)
It's only a secret until they confirm it's working, then it'll be all over the news in China. If on the other hand it fails, all we'll hear is crickets. What rocket?
Gotta love state run media.
Live broadcasts are a lot more engaging anyway. When the only thing they show to you is the good news, it raises the question "I wonder which attempt was this? How many failures happened before this one?"
Loading twitter to see what Elon has to say when one of his rockets experienced a "rapid unscheduled disassembly
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It's only a secret until they confirm it's working, then it'll be all over the news in China. If on the other hand it fails, all we'll hear is crickets. What rocket?
On other hand, why waste news time and bandwidth with announcements of tests that fail? Unless, of course, you are a declared enemy of China who desperately wants it to fail.
Here in the West I have been annoyed by repeated headlines about rockets that crash and burn or take off and blow up.
When it works reliably, I will be interested.
If it's reported _here_... (Score:5, Interesting)
...it's hardly clandestine.
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IKR. Just silly sometimes.
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...it's hardly clandestine.
To be fair, the headline refers to it as being done “secretively”, as in, trying to keep it a secret, rather than saying it was done “secretly”, as in, successfully kept it a secret. But yeah, calling it clandestine right after that is a bit much.
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...it's hardly clandestine.
To be fair, the headline refers to it as being done “secretively”, as in, trying to keep it a secret, rather than saying it was done “secretly”, as in, successfully kept it a secret. But yeah, calling it clandestine right after that is a bit much.
Perhaps you missed the following in the summary
Publicly announcing something is the exact opposite of "clandestine" or "secretive".
clandestine? (Score:2)
but what is really?
clandestine /klandestn,klandestn/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
adjective: clandestine
kept secret or done secretively, especially because illicit.
"she deserved better than these clandestine meetings"
PERFECT example of misleading spin.
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Misleading spin suggests that the guys saying it don't really believe what they are saying. But in fact it is the underlying assumption in everything we say about adversary states that whatever they do is illegitimate, as stated here in the 'civilized vs the uncivilized nations': .
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
So the spin is merely giving away actual assumptions
"Secretly"... (Score:1, Interesting)
Yeah, must be clandestine evildoing because they didn't announce it to you so you couldn't sabotage it again, like you do with everyone because you think everything is a "war" because otherwise the population cannot be held at bay to toe the line.
I wonder if anyone in the US realizes how ridiculous all of this propaganda sounds. Apart from making the US look more and more like another China / or Soviet or South American dictatorship with al that blatantly obvious and over the top propaganda.
Oh, and go ahead
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A classic straw man attack. BAReFO0t's comment doesn't mention China except as the target of foreign sabotage and propaganda.
If you had bothered to read it, you would have noticed that he calls China a dictatorship and criticises it (indirectly) for "blatantly obvious and over the top propaganda".
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Forewarning I generally like China and live there but I mean you are completely right. I think anyone that takes a moderated approach to the anti-China rhetoric quickly gets slammed on basically any dominantly American social media website (at least without a cult following). They miss anything negative we may say about China and instead focus on the fact that we wish to make clear that America is at times following the same playbook.
I don't like calling China a dictatorship though. It's authoritarian which
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I seem to recall that Slashdot moderation rules explicitly forbid moderating down because you don't like the author or his opinions.
BAReFO0t's comment is shrewd, insightful and to the point. I'm sorry if you dislike it, but please don't distort the moderation system because you have an axe to grind.
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Interesting Article (Score:3)
So many of the comments are about the usage of clandestine or the lack of proof. It's far more interesting to look at the article.
"The plans also included fully reusable launch vehicles and, around 2045, a nuclear-powered shuttle."
Nuclear what? It's going to do a nuclear retro burn? Isn't it understood that leads to nasty fallout or are the downsides there mostly about launch and not re/entry? Maybe if you land in a desert, it doesn't matter?
"meet the needs of military and civilian payloads, and be applicable for space tourism."
Such an odd mix of customers. Is any lunch vehicle currently catering to all these? Seems like space tourism companies and military applications are generally too divergent to be met by a single launch vehicle. In theory maybe the super heavy by SpaceX could cater to all three?
If China pulls this off, it seems like it could be better than the X-37B in regards to many applications involving science, such as ferrying astronauts to a space station. There is no mention of it being autonomous so maybe a safe assumption it's piloted? If that's the case down scaling to a drone version might be easy which is the only thing the nuclear powered concept seems to make the most sense. Get it into orbit then use a small amount of nuclear power to keep it there for what is likely an absurd period of time as a drone craft.
Lot's to consider with that potential, such as how it plays into treaties involving nuclear weapons because that's potentially one hell of a nuclear weapon for a shit ton of reasons.
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Lot's to consider with that potential, such as how it plays into treaties involving nuclear weapons because that's potentially one hell of a nuclear weapon for a shit ton of reasons.
Today, in 2021, both the USA and Russia have enough thermonuclear warheads and delivery systems to wipe out all human life and make a very big dent in all other species. China, India, Pakistan, France, the UK and Israel also have very substantial thermonuclear arsenals ready to fire.
Of course any proposal to use nuclear power in rockets, shuttles, space craft, space stations or anything else above the atmosphere is fraught with risk, and should be examined very, very carefully. Isn't that the main reason Or
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No, the reason that Orion was cancelled was purely political, the military wanted complete and 100% control over anything nuclear, and there's no military use for an Orion-class craft. Werner von Braun actually wrote a white paper endorsing Orion over his own chemical rockets, but because it contained info on the yield of some of the weapons they were considering using (information which was already widely available) the Pentagon immediately classified it and now claim that it's "lost".
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/u/cusco has interesting points about Orion and I cannot refute them, so they are worthy of consideration. Maye the potential fallout is minimal.
The point I was making about MAD is it relies on a couple of things especially in terms of defense. To defend against a nuclear weapon you need to detect it early enough to shoot it down in the first third of it's journey before it's sub-orbital. This is a large reason for many of the forces the US deploys around the south China sea. We couldn't stop Taiwan from a
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Nuclear powered spacecraft don't necessarily create a lot of fallout, the NERVA rocket engine used the nuclear pile to heat an exhaust fuel and the later iterations of the Orion proposed clean laser-initiated fusion of hydrogen pellets. Both projects ran into the immovable wall of Pentagon control of anything nuclear.
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I didn't realize this was the issue with Orion. I always thought it was scrapped for the potential damage to environment; not bureaucracy but meh. I guess China has the chance now because they have a completely different approach to these kinds of things (not that they lack bureaucracy but it simple has different pitfalls).
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It was the 1960s, concern for the environment didn't really become a thing until the end of that decade. They were still doing open air nuclear tests at that point.
Freeman Dyson, one of the primary minds behind Orion, was a Quaker. When studies showed that each launch of the Orion (using fission bombs) would cause between 0.1 and 1.0 deaths from the fallout, and because his religion found that to be unacceptable he withdrew support for the project.