7 ms·

China's new Long March-8 rocket makes first flight

43 points by samizdis 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
adventured 6y ago
It's remarkable that the only serious competitor to SpaceX is China (everyone else will perpetually lag). They have the budget, the iteration pace and will to catch up. If the US wants to get back to the Moon or go to Mars before China gets there, it's entirely on the shoulders of SpaceX to get us there. Much respect to China's accomplishments in this realm. The Russians are broke. I don't know what Bezos is doing with the $10b in cash he has raised from AMZN share sales but it's unlikely he's going to push Blue Origin to go a lot faster (gradatim ferociter and all that). ESA will keep moving along at its fixed institutional speed. JAXA ($1.5b) and ISRO don't have the budget to get there. It's down to SpaceX (big assist from NASA) vs China for the new space race.
- someperson 6y ago
  Both Rocket Lab and Blue Origin are currently ahead of China in developing re-usable rocket technology. Blue Origin is admittedly slower than China in developing rocket technology (they haven't even reached orbit yet), but they have a good engine and the New Sheppard has mastered low-velocity vertical takeoff and landing. Rockets designed in China are blocked from accessing the global launch vehicle market due to satellites containing ITAR restricted components (which is virtually all of them). The reason for this is to curtail China's military acquiring dual-use satellite technology, gaining capital to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles and reducing risk of nefarious actions on the satellites themselves. China say they'll master first stage re-usability of a medium-lift launch vehicle by 2025. For those of use who want to see an actual space race, let's hope this is a case of "under promise and over-deliver", because that's a Blue Origin level schedule.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    China don't even need to have its launch vehicles reusable to be commercially competitive. The cost of hardware is probably just few percents of the cost of running the space programme itself. And on top of that, China is the heavy industry supergigant.
- baybal2 6y ago
  > JAXA ($1.5b) and ISRO don't have the budget to get there. Why so, India among other things managed to pull Martian insertion for 1/10th the cost of analogous US mission. And there is no question, that, at least at the moment, they have both working talent set, and leadership.
  - adventured 6y ago
    Doing a primitive martian insert isn't anywhere in the same universe as landing people safely on the Moon or Mars. India will require several decades of further development yet to attempt a human Moon landing (much less Mars). Russia (nor the USSR before it) can't come close to doing it and they're still far more advanced than India in human launch capabilities. There are simple things (relatively speaking) you can slash the cost out of dramatically, where it doesn't translate to a far more advanced and difficult mission, and that includes landing humans on the Moon or Mars safely. NASA can do cheaper missions. There is nothing particularly special about that for such advanced organizations. NASA spends a lot of money because time (getting a mission right the first time) and scarce human resources are both more important to them than sheer dollar cost in most circumstances, unless we're talking enormous sums of money. They could have attempted James Webb in a much faster timeline at a far cheaper cost, by increasing the risk of failure in the mission; that trade-off is almost always undesirable for NASA. Simply put, a few hundred million dollars is a very big deal to ISRO, it's not a big deal to NASA. If spending $1 billion on a mission gets you down to 5% risk, or you can spend $100 million at 30% risk of failure, NASA will almost always choose the $1b option because there are not enough human resources to throw at numerous copycat missions and the time cost is immense.
  - valuearb 6y ago
    India’s GSLV is less than half the payload capacity of a Falcon 9, and costs as much or lure per launch. India’s space program is funded at $2B a year, significantly more funding than SpaceX has had till recently.
jabl 6y ago
Nice to see China continuing the transition to kerolox lower stages + hydrolox uppers. If nothing else, less disastrous when a stage drops down on some poor village.
- valuearb 6y ago
  Those side boosters burning out before main stage, and hanging on as dead weight seems pretty inefficient.
blackrock 6y ago
Any bets on them sticking the landing next year? It looks like they got the landing legs prototyped and tested. And they’re able to stick the landing on the moon, 3 times now. The moon engine needs to operate in a vacuum. And its landing craft can robotically land itself, after hovering, looking for a suitable landing site, and then softly sticking the landing. The question is if it’s harder to land on earth, where you must deal with the atmosphere, versus on the moon, where there is no atmosphere. My guess is that they’ll stick the landing. Or at least, get really close to success on the first shot.
- someperson 6y ago
  The atmosphere on Earth makes the temperatures a lot higher on re-entry. For rockets without the heat shielding, you need to do a re-entry burn just to slow down. Interestingly enough, unlike the Falcon 9, Rocket Lab's Electron uses carbon fiber wihch doesn't actually need a heat shield. The atmosphere can help slow the vehicle down a lot, but the Earth's higher gravity has a big impact on the rocket equation. I think China will master Falcon 9 level re-usability in the late-2020s. Given SpaceX's development speed so far, by that point the launch market will have moved on Starship super-heavy lift vehicles with full re-usability of both stages. China is blocked from competing in the international launch vehicle market (due to concerns over Chinese military espionage and tech transfer) so the benefit of having a commercially competitive rocket is not actually there. Unlike SpaceX, China can't tap into the demand for 100 launches per year on the global market. Perhaps we'll see a People Liberation Army version of Starlink being launched in 2030, but the pocketbook of the government of China isn't infinite. They are already starting to struggle to provide the aged pension to their people -- culminating in the current push to move the women's retirement age back 10+ years. I can't see China developing a competitive re-usable launcher for anything other than military payloads. Especially given a United States that will sanction any company linked to the Chinese military (just like they sanctioned SMIC when it appeared to be catching up while being a People's Liberation Army supplier).
  - blackrock 6y ago
    Yeah, it doesn’t seem like China is in any rush to do reusability. This is more of a fun hobby now for them. It seems they are more interested in throw-weight, in pursuing the Long March 9. It’s safer to establish the capability first, then, to work on reusability afterwards. And they’re locked out of the western commercial launch market, so, that’s irrelevant to them. So they’ll just have to stick with domestic demand. The next interesting play, is if they go forward with space based solar power. In which, they will need the Long March 9, for its excellent Saturn V level throw-weight.
Gravityloss 6y ago
Some information about the rocket (written before the flight) https://everydayastronaut.com/xjy-7-others-long-march-8/ https://everydayastronaut.com/xjy-7-others-long-march-8/ Since the side boosters stay attached, I wonder if it could do some "flying" before landing. It could have significant lift.
roenxi 6y ago
I don't know where India's rocket program is up to, but I imagine that if it is behind China and America they will be catching up at a ahem rocketing pace. We live in an age of wonders where something close to most of the world have governments that are comfortable with space flight. Well done team humans.
- someperson 6y ago
  As somebody who follows Starship development closely (side note, I recommend the YouTube channels "Marcus House" and "What about it!?"), I don't share your confidence that India (or China) will be able to catchup to SpaceX anytime soon. I don't think that Blue Origin or Rocket Lab will be able to catchup either. Let alone United Launch Alliance. I think Rocket Lab will keep a very comfortable profitable niche for a long time though. The Falcon 9 has really cornered the market for commercial payloads and it's not profitable to compete. And the Starship will cement that place further. Maybe Amazon's Project Kuiper and Jeff Bezos' investment in Blue Origin might make Blue Origin competitive in the long run, but given their current track record I doubt it will happen soon enough to make a difference. I'm sure that they'll be enough military payloads to keep the Ariane/ULA/CASC/ISROs occupied for decades to come. But short of unprecedented industrial espionage, in the next 10 years they'll all going to struggle to develop re-usable rockets that can keep pace with SpaceX.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    > in the next 10 years they'll all going to struggle to develop re-usable rockets that can keep pace with SpaceX. National space programmes don't even need to have re-usable hardware. Building hardware to be mission specific for 2-3 launches per year may well be cheaper than to re-engineer, and then reuse. Saturn 5 is sixties technology, parts, and materials. The biggest thing that contenders in national space programmes lack is really a match of talent with sane leadership. This is the thing that was exposed times, and times again by successes of Indian space programme.
  - dsohn0 6y ago
    Pretty naive. The Chinese and Indians aren't in it for the profit. Even the americans stupid as they are won't allow a single company to dominate space like that.
tomcam 6y ago
Um... the Long March name is derived from the beginning of Mao’s rise to power. He was the most genocidal man in history, responsible for something like 75 million deaths. “Long March 8” is literally worse than calling it The Holocaust Rocket. Anyone else have a problem with that?
- someperson 6y ago
  Thanks for pointing out the historical background of the name. Despite being the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century (through the disastrous Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward), Mao is still a revered figure in China and is considered the father of the nation. His face is even on the currency like the Queen of England is in Commonwealth countries. The government of China censors have re-invented his reputation over there. You'll see the propaganda line that "Mao was 70 percent right and 30 percent wrong" deeply embedded in the psyche of people. Rewriting history is the power of China's censorship system and media control. It's a pretty scary thing actually.
  - spongepoc 6y ago
    >Rewriting history is the power of China's censorship system and media control. It's a pretty scary thing actually. Circling back to space, this is a fundamental reason why China will struggle to make advances in space once the easy gains have been achieved. Creativity and innovation require a free, liberal and open society to thrive. These are the priciples which have propelled America's advances in science as they are principles which attract the brightest from around the world. Very few of the brightest in the world would be willing to sacrifice that freedom to work in China.
    - disown 6y ago
      > Circling back to space, this is a fundamental reason why China will struggle to make advances in space once the easy gains have been achieved. Are they struggling? Because it seems to me that they are catching up rather quickly. > Creativity and innovation require a free, liberal and open society to thrive. This is propaganda we are told over and over again and yet if we bother to think about it for a moment would realize it's a lie. Human civilizations ( greeks, indian, egyptian, chinese, etc ) were never "free, liberal and open". Modern science was built up by european and american societies built upon colonization, slavery and genocide. The greatest leap in american innovation/science/etc happened while we were not free ( slavery/jim crow), illiberal and closed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924 > Very few of the brightest in the world would be willing to sacrifice that freedom to work in China. What freedom? The best and brightest go where the money and opportunities are. And considering china has over a billion people, they don't have to look elsewhere to attract the best and the brightest since they have so many in house.
redis_mlc 6y ago
Just in case you're not aware of modern geopolitics, the current "Long March" is the CCP's plan to destroy the USA. The CCP has been in an ideological undeclared war with the USA since the 1950s, and developed nuclear weapons specifically to destroy the USA. If you've been following Trump/Pompeo's China policies for the past year, it's all about that. The policy framework was completed with the SEC accounting audit changes to "defund the CCP", and the next step is to enforce each of the policies. So while Marxist children burned our city downtowns, the CCP was plotting our demise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March

43 points by samizdis 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

It's remarkable that the only serious competitor to SpaceX is China (everyone else will perpetually lag). They have the budget, the iteration pace and will to catch up. If the US wants to get back to the Moon or go to Mars before China gets there, it's entirely on the shoulders of SpaceX to get us there. Much respect to China's accomplishments in this realm. The Russians are broke. I don't know what Bezos is doing with the $10b in cash he has raised from AMZN share sales but it's unlikely he's going to push Blue Origin to go a lot faster (gradatim ferociter and all that). ESA will keep moving along at its fixed institutional speed. JAXA ($1.5b) and ISRO don't have the budget to get there. It's down to SpaceX (big assist from NASA) vs China for the new space race.

someperson 6y ago
Both Rocket Lab and Blue Origin are currently ahead of China in developing re-usable rocket technology. Blue Origin is admittedly slower than China in developing rocket technology (they haven't even reached orbit yet), but they have a good engine and the New Sheppard has mastered low-velocity vertical takeoff and landing. Rockets designed in China are blocked from accessing the global launch vehicle market due to satellites containing ITAR restricted components (which is virtually all of them). The reason for this is to curtail China's military acquiring dual-use satellite technology, gaining capital to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles and reducing risk of nefarious actions on the satellites themselves. China say they'll master first stage re-usability of a medium-lift launch vehicle by 2025. For those of use who want to see an actual space race, let's hope this is a case of "under promise and over-deliver", because that's a Blue Origin level schedule.
- baybal2 6y ago
  China don't even need to have its launch vehicles reusable to be commercially competitive. The cost of hardware is probably just few percents of the cost of running the space programme itself. And on top of that, China is the heavy industry supergigant.
baybal2 6y ago
> JAXA ($1.5b) and ISRO don't have the budget to get there. Why so, India among other things managed to pull Martian insertion for 1/10th the cost of analogous US mission. And there is no question, that, at least at the moment, they have both working talent set, and leadership.
- adventured 6y ago
  Doing a primitive martian insert isn't anywhere in the same universe as landing people safely on the Moon or Mars. India will require several decades of further development yet to attempt a human Moon landing (much less Mars). Russia (nor the USSR before it) can't come close to doing it and they're still far more advanced than India in human launch capabilities. There are simple things (relatively speaking) you can slash the cost out of dramatically, where it doesn't translate to a far more advanced and difficult mission, and that includes landing humans on the Moon or Mars safely. NASA can do cheaper missions. There is nothing particularly special about that for such advanced organizations. NASA spends a lot of money because time (getting a mission right the first time) and scarce human resources are both more important to them than sheer dollar cost in most circumstances, unless we're talking enormous sums of money. They could have attempted James Webb in a much faster timeline at a far cheaper cost, by increasing the risk of failure in the mission; that trade-off is almost always undesirable for NASA. Simply put, a few hundred million dollars is a very big deal to ISRO, it's not a big deal to NASA. If spending $1 billion on a mission gets you down to 5% risk, or you can spend $100 million at 30% risk of failure, NASA will almost always choose the $1b option because there are not enough human resources to throw at numerous copycat missions and the time cost is immense.
- valuearb 6y ago
  India’s GSLV is less than half the payload capacity of a Falcon 9, and costs as much or lure per launch. India’s space program is funded at $2B a year, significantly more funding than SpaceX has had till recently.

jabl 6y ago

Nice to see China continuing the transition to kerolox lower stages + hydrolox uppers. If nothing else, less disastrous when a stage drops down on some poor village.

valuearb 6y ago
Those side boosters burning out before main stage, and hanging on as dead weight seems pretty inefficient.

blackrock 6y ago

Any bets on them sticking the landing next year? It looks like they got the landing legs prototyped and tested. And they’re able to stick the landing on the moon, 3 times now. The moon engine needs to operate in a vacuum. And its landing craft can robotically land itself, after hovering, looking for a suitable landing site, and then softly sticking the landing. The question is if it’s harder to land on earth, where you must deal with the atmosphere, versus on the moon, where there is no atmosphere. My guess is that they’ll stick the landing. Or at least, get really close to success on the first shot.

someperson 6y ago
The atmosphere on Earth makes the temperatures a lot higher on re-entry. For rockets without the heat shielding, you need to do a re-entry burn just to slow down. Interestingly enough, unlike the Falcon 9, Rocket Lab's Electron uses carbon fiber wihch doesn't actually need a heat shield. The atmosphere can help slow the vehicle down a lot, but the Earth's higher gravity has a big impact on the rocket equation. I think China will master Falcon 9 level re-usability in the late-2020s. Given SpaceX's development speed so far, by that point the launch market will have moved on Starship super-heavy lift vehicles with full re-usability of both stages. China is blocked from competing in the international launch vehicle market (due to concerns over Chinese military espionage and tech transfer) so the benefit of having a commercially competitive rocket is not actually there. Unlike SpaceX, China can't tap into the demand for 100 launches per year on the global market. Perhaps we'll see a People Liberation Army version of Starlink being launched in 2030, but the pocketbook of the government of China isn't infinite. They are already starting to struggle to provide the aged pension to their people -- culminating in the current push to move the women's retirement age back 10+ years. I can't see China developing a competitive re-usable launcher for anything other than military payloads. Especially given a United States that will sanction any company linked to the Chinese military (just like they sanctioned SMIC when it appeared to be catching up while being a People's Liberation Army supplier).
- blackrock 6y ago
  Yeah, it doesn’t seem like China is in any rush to do reusability. This is more of a fun hobby now for them. It seems they are more interested in throw-weight, in pursuing the Long March 9. It’s safer to establish the capability first, then, to work on reusability afterwards. And they’re locked out of the western commercial launch market, so, that’s irrelevant to them. So they’ll just have to stick with domestic demand. The next interesting play, is if they go forward with space based solar power. In which, they will need the Long March 9, for its excellent Saturn V level throw-weight.

Gravityloss 6y ago

Some information about the rocket (written before the flight) https://everydayastronaut.com/xjy-7-others-long-march-8/ https://everydayastronaut.com/xjy-7-others-long-march-8/ Since the side boosters stay attached, I wonder if it could do some "flying" before landing. It could have significant lift.

roenxi 6y ago

I don't know where India's rocket program is up to, but I imagine that if it is behind China and America they will be catching up at a ahem rocketing pace. We live in an age of wonders where something close to most of the world have governments that are comfortable with space flight. Well done team humans.

someperson 6y ago
As somebody who follows Starship development closely (side note, I recommend the YouTube channels "Marcus House" and "What about it!?"), I don't share your confidence that India (or China) will be able to catchup to SpaceX anytime soon. I don't think that Blue Origin or Rocket Lab will be able to catchup either. Let alone United Launch Alliance. I think Rocket Lab will keep a very comfortable profitable niche for a long time though. The Falcon 9 has really cornered the market for commercial payloads and it's not profitable to compete. And the Starship will cement that place further. Maybe Amazon's Project Kuiper and Jeff Bezos' investment in Blue Origin might make Blue Origin competitive in the long run, but given their current track record I doubt it will happen soon enough to make a difference. I'm sure that they'll be enough military payloads to keep the Ariane/ULA/CASC/ISROs occupied for decades to come. But short of unprecedented industrial espionage, in the next 10 years they'll all going to struggle to develop re-usable rockets that can keep pace with SpaceX.
- baybal2 6y ago
  > in the next 10 years they'll all going to struggle to develop re-usable rockets that can keep pace with SpaceX. National space programmes don't even need to have re-usable hardware. Building hardware to be mission specific for 2-3 launches per year may well be cheaper than to re-engineer, and then reuse. Saturn 5 is sixties technology, parts, and materials. The biggest thing that contenders in national space programmes lack is really a match of talent with sane leadership. This is the thing that was exposed times, and times again by successes of Indian space programme.
- dsohn0 6y ago
  Pretty naive. The Chinese and Indians aren't in it for the profit. Even the americans stupid as they are won't allow a single company to dominate space like that.

tomcam 6y ago

Um... the Long March name is derived from the beginning of Mao’s rise to power. He was the most genocidal man in history, responsible for something like 75 million deaths. “Long March 8” is literally worse than calling it The Holocaust Rocket. Anyone else have a problem with that?

someperson 6y ago
Thanks for pointing out the historical background of the name. Despite being the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century (through the disastrous Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward), Mao is still a revered figure in China and is considered the father of the nation. His face is even on the currency like the Queen of England is in Commonwealth countries. The government of China censors have re-invented his reputation over there. You'll see the propaganda line that "Mao was 70 percent right and 30 percent wrong" deeply embedded in the psyche of people. Rewriting history is the power of China's censorship system and media control. It's a pretty scary thing actually.
- spongepoc 6y ago
  >Rewriting history is the power of China's censorship system and media control. It's a pretty scary thing actually. Circling back to space, this is a fundamental reason why China will struggle to make advances in space once the easy gains have been achieved. Creativity and innovation require a free, liberal and open society to thrive. These are the priciples which have propelled America's advances in science as they are principles which attract the brightest from around the world. Very few of the brightest in the world would be willing to sacrifice that freedom to work in China.
  - disown 6y ago
    > Circling back to space, this is a fundamental reason why China will struggle to make advances in space once the easy gains have been achieved. Are they struggling? Because it seems to me that they are catching up rather quickly. > Creativity and innovation require a free, liberal and open society to thrive. This is propaganda we are told over and over again and yet if we bother to think about it for a moment would realize it's a lie. Human civilizations ( greeks, indian, egyptian, chinese, etc ) were never "free, liberal and open". Modern science was built up by european and american societies built upon colonization, slavery and genocide. The greatest leap in american innovation/science/etc happened while we were not free ( slavery/jim crow), illiberal and closed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924 > Very few of the brightest in the world would be willing to sacrifice that freedom to work in China. What freedom? The best and brightest go where the money and opportunities are. And considering china has over a billion people, they don't have to look elsewhere to attract the best and the brightest since they have so many in house.

redis_mlc 6y ago

Just in case you're not aware of modern geopolitics, the current "Long March" is the CCP's plan to destroy the USA. The CCP has been in an ideological undeclared war with the USA since the 1950s, and developed nuclear weapons specifically to destroy the USA. If you've been following Trump/Pompeo's China policies for the past year, it's all about that. The policy framework was completed with the SEC accounting audit changes to "defund the CCP", and the next step is to enforce each of the policies. So while Marxist children burned our city downtowns, the CCP was plotting our demise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March