Chinese Stuff

[Yazata]

China is promoting several ostensibly "private enterprise" small satellite rockets to compete with Rocketlab's Electron, but not having a whole lot of luck with them.

This is a rocket from something called Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology Company. The company calls itself 'I-Space' for short. (It shouldn't be confused with the other I-Space companies out there,, such as the Japanese company that's designing lunar landers for Jaxa.) Here's Beijing Interstellar Glory's Shian Quxian-1 making its second try at orbit. (edit: This was not intended to be a recoverable rocket, though Beijing Interstellar Glory say that they are working on a recoverable propulsively landed rocket. This isn't it.)

Looked good at first

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Moment that it went bad

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This doesn't look right... and this in a country where range safety isn't a thing. In other photos it can be seen breaking up into at least two pieces.

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But despite the failure to achieve altitude, there's no shortage of attitude on Chinese social media. (See below.) Even the style is stolen from Japanese anime.

Apparently the Chinese government makes solid rocket engines manufactured for the Chinese military available to jump start these little companies in hopes of creating a Chinese SpaceX. So the little Chinese companies often use solid engines the government provides rather than design their own engines. Cheaper, quicker and easier.

But if they really intend to build a reusable rocket that lands propulsively like the Falcon 9, they will have to use liquid fueled engines that they can throttle, shut down and relight. (To say nothing of the elaborate control software.) I expect landing a reusable booster will take them a while.

The US has been building rocket engines for something like 70 years. China makes pretty good rocket engines too. But if these little companies think that they can dispense with that vital kind of rocketry expertise and still become a new SpaceX, they are unclear on the concept.

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[C C]

[...] But if they really intend to build a reusable rocket that lands propulsively like the Falcon 9, they will have to use liquid fueled engines that they can throttle, shut down and relight. (To say nothing of the elaborate control software.) I expect landing a reusable booster will take them a while.

The US has been building rocket engines for something like 70 years. China makes pretty good rocket engines too. But if these little companies think that they can dispense with that vital kind of rocketry expertise and still become a new SpaceX, they are unclear on the concept.

They'll eventually catch up by just stealing what they need to know. If that's not the universal Sino-Solution for technological obstacles, then it certainly is for trans-cultural socialist market economies, as learned from their pre-hybrid ancestor (communism).

[Yazata]

They'll eventually catch up by just stealing what they need to know.

Here's the concept for a new Chinese rocket. (Hummm... wonder where they got THIS idea?)

Credit to Eric Berger of Ars Technica for discovering this at China's sixth national Space day in the city of nanjing, at a booth run by the Chinese Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, a state firm that's their major manufacturer of rockets. Screen shots from a video that was playing there:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/04/...ook-alike/

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Here's the whole video - (China 2021)

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/mzNhrUQ_Qls

If it looks a little familiar, compare it to this famous video (SpaceX 2017)

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/zqE-ultsWt0

[C C]

With respect to the first image, the four "lightning rod" towers around Chinese launch pads (and in old Japanese Godzilla movies) always seem to be more visible or obvious than their US counterparts. Quite frankly, 90% of the time I never even notice the American ones.

I guess it's because the Asian towers feature non-bland colors like red. But there are American sites like Vandenberg that don't seem to need them at all, in contrast to the weather and ground conditions of Florida.

The old Space Shuttle lift-offs may have had only one "rod", atop on the launch pad itself. Other locations in the US may only exhibit two, that look more like the monopoles for mobile phones in towns and cities. (Or maybe that's what they really are, if some of the lesser known spots don't have any lightning protection, either.)

[Yazata]

With respect to the first image, the four "lightning rod" towers around Chinese launch pads (and in old Japanese Godzilla movies) always seem to be more visible or obvious than their US counterparts. Quite frankly, 90% of the time I never even notice the American ones.

At Cape Canaveral it depends on which pad you are looking at. Of the pads SpaceX uses, SLC 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station features four big lightning towers that everyone always asks about:

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But pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral doesn't at first glance have any. What it does have is a huge service tower next to the pad with a very prominent lightning rod on top of it. (This is the Canaveral version of the Orbital Launch Integration Tower at Starbase in Boca Chica, currently under construction. Texas gets quite a bit of lightning so it will probably have a rod on top of it too.)

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I guess it's because the Asian towers feature non-bland colors like red. But there are American sites like Vandenberg that don't seem to need them at all, in contrast to the weather and ground conditions of Florida.

Vandenberg don't need no stinkin' lightning rods. (They get very little lightning.)

The old Space Shuttle lift-offs may have had only one "rod", atop on the launch pad itself.

The Shuttles used 39A, the pad in the photo above. The Saturn moon rockets launched from that pad too. All with that one lightning rod. 39A is an almost sacred place in NASA lore. It was SpaceX that put the black siding on the tower that covers up the framework that used to be exposed in the Saturn and Shuttle days.

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In more China news, today they launched three Chinese 'taikonauts' (their word for astronauts) up to the core module of their new space-station Tiangong-2 (heavenly palace 2). It turned out that they had an English language livestream, but I didn't know about it until too late. Interestingly, this is the first Chinese human spaceflight since 2016. The reason for the five year hiatus isn't known.

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Video of the liftoff here

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/stat...4056691717

[Yazata]

If anyone wonders what happened to the boosters from the Shenzhou-12 mission (the apparently successful flight to orbit of the three 'taikonauts' in the post above) here's one of them (dunno if its the core or one of the four side boosters) spewing brown nitrogen tetroxide, a very poisonous gas. (In the US its presence demands use of hazmat suits.)

https://twitter.com/AJ_FI/status/1405803156924243973

[Yazata]

Here's a photo of one of the Chinese Taikonauts referred to above doing work on their little Tiangong-2 space station. Worth a post just because of its beauty.

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[Yazata]

The Chinese have announced plans to build a... Mars helicopter! (Humm... wonder where they got that idea?)

I'd guess that between hackers and spies, they have the technical drawings and specifications for most of our technology. Then it's a relatively simple task to copy it, without all that R&D hassle.

I am impressed by some of the things China does. Landing on Mars on their first try was no small feat. But... I'd be more impressed if they tried new things that nobody has done before. They won't be where they want to be until they are a leader instead of a follower.

If their Mars helicopter looks a little familiar (is that you, Ingenuity?) what can I say...?

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[Yazata]

Chinese "new space" company CAS Space has announced new designs for their Lijiang PR2 and PR3 heavy lift rockets.

Somehow, they look a little familiar...

It looks like they want to copy SpaceX's Falcon Heavy and Starship, as well as Blue's New Shepard

Stealing other people's plans is a lot easier than having your own engineers produce a clean-sheet design, I guess.

https://twitter.com/DongFangHour/status/...9614714061

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