Slashdot Mirror
China Launches New Heavy-Lift Long March 5 Rocket For First Time (space.com)
hackingbear writes from a report via Space.com: China launched its second new rocket in the year. The Long March 5 rocket, lifted off from the Wenchang launch center on Hainan Island, off China's southern coast, at 8:43 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT; 8:43 p.m. Beijing time), carrying to orbit an experimental satellite called Shijian-17, which is designed to test electric-propulsion technology. Capable of a 25 metric ton payload to low-Earth orbit (LEO), Long March 5 is among the most powerful rockets in service. Besides the scheduled launch of China's upcoming space station, the Long March 5 will also loft Chang'e-5, a robotic sample-return mission to the moon. Chang'e-5 is currently scheduled to lift off sometime next year, Chinese space officials have said.
It's awesome that we (humans) are going to be surpassing where mankind left off on our endless adventure. Whatever language we speak, wherever we live, I really hope we celebrate this instrument of adventure and science the way it deserves to be. China is still somewhere on that pale blue dot.
The full launch-to-orbit sequence has been posted on YouTube.
Support a Europe-related section on Slashdot!
Since the US has obviously taken a backseat on space exploration it is good another nation is willing to step up.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
hasn't the balls to kick out Oettinger for his xenophobic comments about the Chinese.
I mean, one might criticize China's political system and government (I sure do!) but babbling about "the Chinese" in derogatory tone in front of industry leaders, as our EU Commissar Oettinger did... disgusting.
So congrats, China, for your outstanding achievement, and sorry for Oettinger and Juncker. As an European I'm ashamed that we haven't been able to dispose of those politicians yet. We keep trying.
# Everybody have fun tonight ...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I think what is so remarkable about this is not so much China's individual achievements, but the fact that they clearly follow a long-term plan. Not to belittle American and Russian achievements, but they basically made it up as they went, and it did go much further than getting a bloke to the Moon and back again. NASA's scientists have always kept pushing for more exploration and shown great leadership, but the necessary, political will has been missing, and that is what the Chinese have. I think more or less everybody now agrees that China are definitely going to build one or more spacestations, and then go on to build a base on the Moon - and dare we hope, on to Mars? They have taken the lead, simple as that, and the rest of the world will follow. It feels good.
The moon mission next year will be Chang'e 4, not 5
Since the US has obviously taken a backseat on space exploration it is good another nation is willing to step up.
Care to back that assertion up with any actual data? The US has more active deep space probes than anyone. The US has more orbital launches than anyone else and that is despite temporarily lacking human rated launch vehicles. Heck, SpaceX alone has more orbital launches than every country except for China and Russia. US Astronauts logged more EVA time in 2016 than astronauts from all other countries combined. The US has the most active spaceport in the world (Cape Canaveral).
While I'd agree that the US isn't doing as much as it could in space, the US space program isn't second to anyone at the moment by most objective measures.
"Shijian-17, which is designed to test electric-propulsion technology" is the real news here is it not? As recently revealed, rumors of professor Yangs retirement has been greatly exaggerated (the chinese professors lab that validated emdrive thrust claims). This could very well be an emdrive prototype.
The U.S. didn't lack long term plans for space in the 60's but an economic wake-up call in 1973 rendered most of them financially unreachable.
The only thing that hurt the space program was a lack of political will to support it. Despite what many believe even at the height of the Apollo program during the 1960s the space program had plenty of detractors. There was never at any time a lack of available funds if we had cared to devote them to the space program. Our "fearless" leaders decided they wanted to prioritize other things but at no time was the actual ability of the US government to fund NASA in question. Funding dropped around 1973 to roughly current levels as the Apollo program was shut down. Adjusting for inflation NASA's budget today is roughly identical to the budget it had in 1973. Funding for NASA's budget as a percent of the federal budget was already being cut long before 1973 to roughly the amount.
Shijian-17 is an ion engine. Emdrive is a hoax. Bold or no bold.
When the article mentioned launching an electric drive, I was hoping it would be an EMDrive since they did some testing and validation of Roger Shawyer's impossible microwave in a coffee can drive, but looks like it is just an ion drive that is going up. Guess we will have to wait for Cannae Inc cubesat http://www.popularmechanics.co... or Roger's version that maybe the military has already send into space. Who knows.
was trying to linebreak ..
would have worked better, ill grant you that.
Right now, China,is about where the USA was in the 60's with regard to space technology. Since everything is "made in China", they have the bulk of the worlds money, and can afford to develop things like this, whereas the rest of the global economy IS IN THE TANK. Once China's economy comes back to Earth (no pun intended), the entire world will be in another DEPRESSION, most likely leading to another global war. HAPPY FRIDAY!
Ok, so lack of political will made them financially unreachable. It still happened.
The point is that it did not happen because the USA was suddenly unable to fund NASA. NASA's budget grew for geopolitical reasons and then shrank when those same geopolitical reasons diminished in urgency. Merely a question of priorities rather than capabilities.
It's worth noting that even with the long term funding rate since the mid-70s, NASA could have done a hell of a lot more than it has. Funding is not the only reason for failure here.
I don't think anyone sensible would dispute that NASA hasn't achieved as much as possible. The space shuttle is a huge part of that. While I won't argue that it was completely without value, it did consume a vast and disproportionate amount of resources for a launch system that really wasn't economical or sensible. The idea of a reusable launch vehicle is a good one but the shuttle was a bad design for one.
Everyone agrees that China plans their space missions such that they learn the maximum from the current one before planning the next one. The lessons are learned and applied before moving on the next step, hence the result that they are learning the same things on much smaller budgets.
What I am amazed is that the Russians managed to achieve what they did despite the very incompetent political leadership. One highly incompetent (and mostly illiterate) politician used to sit close to the rockets during launches to prove to the engineers that they had nothing to fear, and that they should trust the wisdom of the party.
During the height of the space race with NASA, the Russian engineers were simply informed by the politicians when the next launch will take place, typically on some politically important date. They rarely had more than 2 years to prepare and therefore had to cut a lot of corners to meet the deadline.
It is remarkable that they had so few accidents.
There's no solid evidence it's a hoax, and the results have been independently reproduced. I wouldn't call it a hoax just yet.
...What the hell are you talking about? "We"? Even the starving kids in the desert? Surpassing? Surpassing what? A demo of modified ICBM technology from half a century ago that ultimately meant nothing?
"Emdrive is a hoax"
It hasn't been disproven, yet. We should know one way or another in the next few years as I think there are some plans to put a test article in space and run it for a few months/years to see if it works. Revolutionary ideas need to be looked at with a healthy amount of skepticism to be sure, but the conception that we know everything that is impossible/possible at our current level of development is laughable. We've had even a basic grasp of electrical engineering/physics for what, 70 years? As recently as 100 years ago scientists were still trying to prove the existence of Luminiferous aether (the "stuff" light traveled through like sound through air). We've barely scratched the surface in terms of technology & our understanding of physics.
Lets not get ahead of ourselves. The YF-100 engine on the LM-5 is still basically a Chinese copy of the very old Russian RD-170 with some improvements given it is a whole new century. The Chinese are still actively in talks with Russia to try to get more modern versions of the RD-181 or RD-191 class rocket engines for the Long March series. The Russians are not too eager to share. They wont even sell RD-191's to Orbital. Orbital only gets the RD-181-- a slightly throttled down version.
A basic comparison of Long March 5 to the American Delta IV will show just how badly they still lag. While both rockets life 25,000kg to LEO the LM-5 is +/- 187 tons heavier than the Delta IV. Why? Inferior stage 1 engines. So while this is a big step for China it still means they are 2 generations behind the Russians and the US. The Delta IV isn't exactly new and the LM-5 has worse specs. The Russians are currently working on a improved RD-191 with higher thrust so the Chinese will really be 2.5 generations behind in the next 2 years.
Engine technology is not like reverse engineering a chip. It is really the height of all technology. It is a measure of the health of every sphere of a nation's sciences from material sciences to computer sciences and the Chinese are still very far behind both Russia and the US.
It's harder to compare LM-5 to the Angara-A5 because Angara is only launched from Plesetsk right now which is basically the North Pole as far as these things go. The Russians are claiming just 24,500kg to LEO with Angara-A5 but from Plesetsk. It would also probably get 25000kg worth of payload if launched from Hainan or Florida but Russia being Russia they launch from Plesetsk and pay for it. The new launch base at Vostochny will be only marginally better too.
And while I love SpaceX -- right now the Falcon IX is a toy and there is no SpaceX offering in this class. The US has a lllonnngg way to go before it can really compete with the Russians on both price and specs at all throw weights. When the Russians started feeling the burn from SpaceX all they did was cut the price of RD-181's for the Antares by 50%. And guess what -- they are still probably making a healthy 50% margin at $12 million an engine. They were gouging the US and abusing their monopoly position for a long time and SpaceX changed that but that doesn't mean SpaceX really has a hope in hell of under pricing them. The per unit manufacture cost is like $8.3 million. If SpaceX pushes the Russians EASILY have the economies of scale to cut another 1/3 off the price and SpaceX has no hope of going that low. When RD-191 production ramps up it should be about 10% per engine cheaper than the current RD-181 line because of a new less labor intensive production line they are building (robots and CMCs) too.
Vote Trump!
Build that space wall!
Make space great again!
A space wall would be like a dyson sphere, so long as it is around the sun and not the earth, I am all for it but neither Trump nor Mexico nor Both have enough money to make that happen. Trump's tendency to stiff contractors for pay would be severely frowned upon on a project like that too!
Finding a new theory of gravity does not mean down becomes up. The new theory must account for all observations of the old one, specifically the parts that show that conservation of energy and momentum aren't just arbitrary guesses. Anyone that thinks that there is any substance to the emdrive is an idiot, and yes that includes several people with advanced degrees who happen to rent space at NASA. The evidence for its existence does not even have basic error analysis, and there has never been any experiment which detected anything above the noise floor. This is experimental error. This is an infinite energy device. It's bullshit on its face and even Rossi has better experimental standards.
That's not even touching your anti-science idea that magic will be possible in the future (and therefore we know nothing at present). Empiricism works, and you don't get to throw that out the window because you have a feeling that things will be better tomorrow.
Saying that the Chinese are ahead of SpaceX in heavy lifters depends on how you measure "ahead". Although it has never flown in this configuration, the Falcon 9 Full Thrust in expendable configuration (no landing legs or grid fins, and no propellant reserved for landing) is a heavy-class lifter. It's only 22.8T to LEO vs. the Long March 5's 25T, and the difference in GTO capacity is much more pronounced (8.3T for F9E, 14T for LM5, probably because of the LM5's LH2/LOX upper stage), but SpaceX does already have a heavy lifter if they want it to be that. Falcon Heavy, in expendable configuration, is vastly more powerful still; a super-heavy class rocket with a LEO payload limit of 54.4T and GTO limit of 22.2T.
So, *at this point*, the Chinese have demonstrated a more powerful rocket than SpaceX has, yes. However, SpaceX demonstrated a heavy-class rocket before the Chinese did, and has a super-heavy design nearly ready to fly. To the extent they are ahead at all, it is fleeting.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Talk is cheap. Don't count your launchers before they explode.
If I see that SpaceX has actually sent 54 tons to LEO, that is when I will believe that they can do it.