China's new Long March-8 rocket makes first flight
phys.org
phys.org
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.
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).
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.
Since the side boosters stay attached, I wonder if it could do some "flying" before landing. It could have significant lift.
If nothing else, less disastrous when a stage drops down on some poor village.
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.
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.
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.
- Develop indigenous technology, reduce dependency on technology transfers - Become a technology provider for defense, as in cheaply available satellites, as well as Research and Development for missiles, etc. - Get some market share in the international satellite launch market and make a bit of money.
If you observe, Indian missile technology and Indian Space Research Organization, ISRO have grown together.
In India, the Defense is not as advanced and gravitational as in the US, so the idea that the military will have 2 generations advanced tech is not true here (this is my guess)
That is the reason we have missions to moon, mars and all, to develop expertise in technology and build strong institutions that become the bedrock for future endeavors.
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.
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.
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.
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.