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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.
The full launch-to-orbit sequence has been posted on YouTube.
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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.
# 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.
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.
You're not a Europea; you're a Chinese shill. Try harder?
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...
While both rockets life 25,000kg to LEO the LM-5 is +/- 187 tons heavier than the Delta IV. Why? Inferior stage 1 engines.
I find it difficult to come up with a way of looking at the Delta that wouldn't make its first stage engine look inferior. Come on, a hydrolox engine with a Isp that even the RD-701 beats in its mixed fuel mode? How exactly is the RS-68 not inferior to virtually anything else currently in use? For fucks sake, they haven't even ever gotten around to give it regenerative cooling.
Ezekiel 23:20