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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday July 03 2018, @01:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the just-over-the-next-hill dept.

China has big plans for its massive new rocket

Researchers are developing a rocket that would be more powerful than any U.S. spacecraft, Chinese state media reported Monday. Phys.org reports that the Long March-9 rocket, set to be complete by 2030, would be capable of delivering 140 tons into low orbit.

NASA's upcoming Space Launch System, meanwhile, aims to deliver 130 tons, and the Falcon Heavy from SpaceX launched 64 tons toward Mars earlier this year. China is reportedly hoping to surpass its American and European competitors, planning to spend billions of dollars developing its space programs.

Full reusability for the Long March-9 is not mentioned.

Long March rocket family.

As a point of comparison, the Saturn V rocket:

The Saturn V was launched 13 times from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with no loss of crew or payload. As of 2018, the Saturn V remains the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful (highest total impulse) rocket ever brought to operational status, and holds records for the heaviest payload launched and largest payload capacity to low Earth orbit (LEO) of 140,000 kg (310,000 lb), which included the third stage and unburned propellant needed to send the Apollo Command/Service Module and Lunar Module to the Moon.[5][6]

Related: China Launches Long March-6 Rocket
Chinese Long March-5 Rocket Launch Fails
China Will Open its New Space Station to International Partners


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  • (Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:44AM (3 children)

    by suburbanitemediocrity (6844) on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:44AM (#701703)

    Not necessarily. Planes got bigger, but now they're getting smaller as other metrics become important. It's long overdue, by half a century, that we should be seeing rockets become less expensive.

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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:57AM (2 children)

    by frojack (1554) on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:57AM (#701751) Journal

    Right, we can use several rockets to do the same work as one gigantic one.

    But saying it's 50 years overdue is a wish, not a fact. We simply didn't have the computer technology in the quantity that we needed 50 years ago. Radars were huge power sucking slow low resolution contraptions. Both were totally unsuited to landing a rocket on its tail.

    --
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    • (Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:37PM (1 child)

      by suburbanitemediocrity (6844) on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:37PM (#701910)

      Yes we did have the computer technology. The equations are not that involved, maybe 200 lines executed at 100hz if even that. There is a lower limit as to what is needed to control something, but it's also close to the upper limit as to what can be done. GHz processing power may make video games look better, but it doesn't do much to make rockets fly better past a couple hundred khz.

      I worked on a flight computer for the space shuttles and the thing that new tech has over older is in size, weight and power requirements. What used to take hundreds of watts of power and the area of a washing machine can now be done in a shoebox, or even with a raspberry pi.

      • (Score: 2) by bitstream on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:27PM

        by bitstream (6144) on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:27PM (#702087) Journal

        What is that made rocket tail landing a possibility now and not earlier?

        (and what will Musk do to get the next 10x cost reduction?, re-use is just one)