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China's Rocket Fails After Liftoff (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes CNN:
The second launch of China's new-generation Long March-5 carrier rocket failed Sunday -- dealing a blow to the country's ambitious space aspirations. Carrying an experimental communications satellite, China's largest rocket lifted off at 7:23 p.m. local time (7:23 a.m. ET) toward clear skies from the seaside Wenchang space launch center on the southern Chinese island of Hainan. But 40 minutes later, the state-run Xinhua news agency flashed a headline declaring the launch a failure -- without providing any details.
Dubbed "Chubby 5" for its huge size -- 5 meters in diameter and 57 meters tall -- the LM-5 rocket is designed to carry up to 25 tons of payload into low orbit, more than doubling the country's previous lift capability... The launch failure means further delay for a series of planned Chinese space endeavors -- including its robotic and eventual human lunar programs -- according to Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor at the US Naval War College and an expert on China's space program... China has announced plans to land a robotic probe on the dark side of the moon later this year and to reach Mars around 2020. All such future missions will depend on the LM-5 and space officials told reporters Sunday that the latest launch would help perfect the rocket design, including enabling it to send a space station into orbit "in a year or two."
This morning Elon Musk tweeted his condolences, adding "I know how painful that is to the people who designed & built it."
Dubbed "Chubby 5" for its huge size -- 5 meters in diameter and 57 meters tall -- the LM-5 rocket is designed to carry up to 25 tons of payload into low orbit, more than doubling the country's previous lift capability... The launch failure means further delay for a series of planned Chinese space endeavors -- including its robotic and eventual human lunar programs -- according to Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor at the US Naval War College and an expert on China's space program... China has announced plans to land a robotic probe on the dark side of the moon later this year and to reach Mars around 2020. All such future missions will depend on the LM-5 and space officials told reporters Sunday that the latest launch would help perfect the rocket design, including enabling it to send a space station into orbit "in a year or two."
This morning Elon Musk tweeted his condolences, adding "I know how painful that is to the people who designed & built it."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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the state-run Xinhua news agency
funny how you never hear:
the state-run BBC news agency
so very funny
Just because it's a national broadcasting company doesn't mean it's state-run. You say "state run" when you're referring to the Chinese news in this case because the government gets editorial power. That's nothing at all like the BBC.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
The BBC is state funded, not state run.
There's some reasonable, in-depth analysis on the failure here: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=42798.200. Be warned, if you like rockets and spaceflight, going to that site will cost you time.
Summary: The first stage/boosters failed to generate enough thrust to achieve the proper staging point, as shown by the planned plot on the broadcast and the actual track. Some speculation points at a failure of one the boosters during the initial flight phase (before the boosters separate). The second stage separated and fired considerably later than planned and at some point, the mission was declared to be unsuccessful, due to flight anomalies.
Politics aside, please note that the open broadcast of the launch is what enables this informed discussion, and for that, us space geeks can appreciate the access granted by the Chinese Space Agency to the live broadcast.
Opinion: this was not helpful for the Chinese launch program, but at least the vehicle didn't RUD (rapid unplanned disassembly). Analysis of the telemetry will assist them in determining the cause, and may help them to engineer a fix. It's still a setback to their heavy lift ambitions for this year.
The Internet has no garbage collection
Classic nonsense from the ignorant. The BBC is not state funded. It has a Royal Charter to operate and is funded by a license fee which is collected entirely separate from taxes. That is it goes nowhere near the general consolidated fund and if you dont known what that is you don't know what you are talking about. Her Majesty's government only gets involved in renewing the Royal Charter and in setting the licence fee. It is neither state run or state funded, with every government in my living memory complaing it is biased against them, which is a pretty good indication to me that it's not actually biased at all.