China Unveils 'Haolong' Space Shuttle (space.com) 22
A reusable uncrewed spaceplane was unveiled this week for delivering and returning cargo from the Chinese Tiangong space station. It was built by the Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute (part of the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China). (See YouTube footage here...)
Long-time Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis writes: Like the Sierra Space "Dream Chaser" [still under development], the vehicle is to be launched as a payload on a separate launch vehicle, and land horizontally on Earth on a runway. The design is aerodynamically a hybrid, incorporating features of both winged and lifting-body designs. A model of the Haolong will make its debut at the 15th "Airshow China", November 12 to 17 in Zhuhai.
"The China Manned Space Agency shortlisted the spacecraft as one of two proposed affordable cargo spacecraft designs," reports Aviation Week.
Long-time Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis writes: Like the Sierra Space "Dream Chaser" [still under development], the vehicle is to be launched as a payload on a separate launch vehicle, and land horizontally on Earth on a runway. The design is aerodynamically a hybrid, incorporating features of both winged and lifting-body designs. A model of the Haolong will make its debut at the 15th "Airshow China", November 12 to 17 in Zhuhai.
"The China Manned Space Agency shortlisted the spacecraft as one of two proposed affordable cargo spacecraft designs," reports Aviation Week.
12 inches (Score:1)
how long is a piece of string!
Haolong (Score:2)
Re: Haolong (Score:2)
Haolong did it take for them to build it?
Hinges (Score:2)
They stole our IP...oh yes they did!! (Score:2)
I know it won't be long before I hear some fellas scream...
"That's our IP...they stole it..."
Even with no evidence! Huh!!
Re:They stole our IP...oh yes they did!! (Score:4, Funny)
Hao long will it take for people to make that claim?
Re: (Score:2)
we've had forty years to build a real rotating space station and a moonbase, no surprise sooner or later someone would bypass us
our greed destroyed our dreams
Re: (Score:2)
If NASA had maintained the minuscule 4% of the budget they maxed out at during the Apollo push they expected to be opening a moon base in the early to mid-80s. Instead the congresscritters decided that killing brown people (and its associated graft) was a higher priority than the future of our species. Predictable for a herd of lawyers, I guess.
Re: (Score:2)
they had the budget, they spent it on expensive remote control 'probes' to take get date (pretty pictures) to use to get more funding
not to even mention all the years of vanity science 'experiments' going on at the ISS
we could have an orbital economy if NASA hadn't wasted it it on astronomically high salaries, benefits and pensions and all those unnecessary bureaucratic positions with built in tenure
we built an earthbound bureaucracy, not a spacebase
Re: (Score:2)
No engines in the rear. In this respect it's more like the Dream Chaser or the Russian Buran than the Space Shuttle. Like X-37 or Dream Chaser, it's launched by a separate booster (presumably a Long March, although the articles I've seen in English don't make that specific). That's the docking port in the back, not engines.
The design pulls elements from several different designs, but isn't a copy of any of the previous spaceplanes.
Re: Clone ... (Score:2)
All these different space companies keep coming up with completely different designs.
SpaceX: A huge rocket with a giant second stage with heat shields and flaps to skydive with
NASA: A small space plane with that launches on top of a rocket with small wings and normal aircraft control surfaces.
Rocket lab: a rocket with an incredibly light second stage that can be treated as effectively disposable, with a first stage that envelops it and returns to launch site.
Stoke Space: a multi chamber engine that can fire
Space Shuttle it is not. (Score:3)
It's tiny-tiny (look at 0:25). Where is the lunch system? It is not the "Space Shuttle" comparison at all. It's just a crew/cargo module that can glide back to the surface. Not clear why this would be beneficial at all.
Re: (Score:2)
10m long, 8m wide. Like the Buran, it will launch on the back of a rocket, it doesn't have main engines like the US Shuttle. It's called a "shuttle" because it glides to back to a runway landing, and is fully reusable. It's for cargo only.
Very useful vehicle for getting stuff to their space station, and should be low cost since they are also developing reusable boosters on the same timeframe.
Re: (Score:2)
Where is the lunch system? In the cafeteria, where else?
No scale (Score:2)
Haolong is it?
when do we get to copy something from China? (Score:2)
when do we get to copy something from China?
between the rips of the stealth jets after all the hacks and spies exfiltrating details... to engineers defecting...
when does the west finally get a chance at saving billions in development costs and rip off something China comes up with?
This looks like a rip off from X-37 program.
Re: (Score:2)
It's called "convergent engineering", if you're going to design something like a spacecraft or submarine simple physics forces everyone to come up with a similar design.
The US doesn't seem to be able to copy much tech from China, we have too much cruft of "installed base" in place and capitalism demands that it be utilized until completely amortized. Their electrical grid for example is decades ahead of ours, their cellular system is far superior with real 5G rather than our "marketing-speak" 5G, incredibl
Re: (Score:2)
Rocketry was invented in China. As were guns and handguns.