3 ms·
No, this is unusual because it is a first stage booster (it is lit on the ground, making it "first" stage in most people's common usage of the term (in reality,
by JshWright 5y ago
No, this is unusual because it is a first stage booster (it is lit on the ground, making it "first" stage in most people's common usage of the term (in reality, there's no hard and fast definition)). It is definitely not the "second stage" (the second stage of the Long March 5 is the CZ-5-HO).
This would be like the center booster of a Delta IV Heavy making it to orbit.
Second stages pretty much invariably make it to orbit. To say "it happened" to SpaceX makes it sound like something went wrong... it's just how rockets work. The central booster of a Long March 5 making it to orbit is unusual (though it has happened before).
- anovikov 5y agoJust because this is launch of a very heavy payload onto a low earth orbit. So there is no upper stage as there is no need for it. Center core of Delta IV Heavy can't make it to orbit in any normal circumstances.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- JshWright 5y agoI haven't done the math, but I would be surprised if a Delta IV-H couldn't fly a similar profile, resulting in the first stage being in a low orbit. DIVH and LM5 have similar LEO payload capacities, and the mass of everything above the first stage (dry second stage, propellant, and payload) is ~90t for both. So, quick napkin math looks like it works (obviously there are a lot of other complexities I'm ignoring here, for the sake of simplicity).
- anovikov 5y agoIt can get to orbit technically of course! For that matter, just simply a single Delta core almost can do it, falling just short of LEO. All i wanted to say is that there are no possible payloads for this scenario (payload will be so small, a much smaller and cheaper vehicle could deliver it). It's not an operational configuration of DIVH because it makes no sense.