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posted by janrinok on Monday September 21 2015, @07:33AM   Printer-friendly

China has successfully conducted the debut launch of its Long March-6 (Chang Zheng-6) rocket:

China initiated a new era in its space exploration with the debut of a new family of launch vehicle. The first Long March-6 (Chang Zheng-6) rocket was successfully launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, with a multi-payload cargo of 20 small satellites. Launch took place at 23:01:14.331 UTC on Saturday.

[...] The core stage consists of a single 120t-thrust YF-100 engine that burns oxygen and kerosene (LOX/Kerosene) propellant, which causes less pollution compared to the UDMH/N2O4 (nitrogen tetroxide) propellant currently in use. The Long March-6 is designed for small-load launch missions, with a sun-synchronous orbit (700km SSO) capability of 1,080 kg.


Original Submission

Related Stories

China Plans to One Up NASA's SLS With the Long March-9 24 comments

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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 21 2015, @08:01AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 21 2015, @08:01AM (#239262)

    I thought March 6 always had 24 hours, just like any other day (apart from the days when daylight saving starts/ends).

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by K_benzoate on Monday September 21 2015, @08:33AM

      by K_benzoate (5036) on Monday September 21 2015, @08:33AM (#239270)

      It was kind of a thing [wikipedia.org] in the beginning history of modern communist China.

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      • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday September 21 2015, @08:42AM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Monday September 21 2015, @08:42AM (#239271) Journal

        Kind of like naming a shuttle "Columbia", which of course would make no sense in Chinese, since Columbia would be 哥伦比亚. See? That would never work. Nations name things after important events in their history. Which is why I cannot understand why one mercenary contractor in Iraq (from America) was called "Custer Battles". I have been to the Little Bighorn. Not auspicious.

        • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday September 21 2015, @10:19AM

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 21 2015, @10:19AM (#239286) Journal

          With or without his final defeat, there was nothing auspicious about Custer. A pompous ass is a pompous ass, in any language.

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        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 21 2015, @02:08PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 21 2015, @02:08PM (#239344) Journal

          Which is why I cannot understand why one mercenary contractor in Iraq (from America) was called "Custer Battles". I have been to the Little Bighorn. Not auspicious.

          Custer was a glory hound, but a glory hound with some notable victories to his name. In particular, he helped the North (the USA or Federals) win the crucial Battle of Gettysburg by apparently playing an important role in keeping a large Confederate cavalry force away from the rear of the Federal army during Pickett's Charge, a large frontal assault on a prepared position which was suicidal in the absence of the cavalry support. He also destroyed a cache of vital supplies during the final route of the Army of Northern Virginia (the primary force keeping the Northern armies from capturing the capital of the Confederacy/South) in 1865, forcing the surrender of that army and effectively ending the Civil War (the rest of the armies surrendered over the course of a couple of months). Those appear to be legitimate feats, though he did have the habit of routinely exaggerating his endeavors.

          His defeat at Little Bighorn is a classic cautionary tale of hubris and what happens when you don't analyze a situation well enough, commit everything without a backup plan, if things go bad, and catch a bullet right at the start.

          He does have his admirers even today. And maybe the name of the company is a pun as well.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 21 2015, @09:18AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 21 2015, @09:18AM (#239276)

        There's another thing [urbandictionary.com] that is completely applicable here.

  • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by Entropy on Monday September 21 2015, @09:56AM

    by Entropy (4228) on Monday September 21 2015, @09:56AM (#239284)

    That's nice. Maybe this is a way America can get back into the space age. Maybe if they pay some foreign workers they can copy the Chinese rocket eventually..

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by gman003 on Monday September 21 2015, @02:18PM

      by gman003 (4155) on Monday September 21 2015, @02:18PM (#239350)

      In the time it took China to design this rocket (2001-2015), SpaceX was founded and went through at least two rocket designs (three, if you count v1.0 and v1.1 separately). And yes, Falcon 9 is completely comparable to this rocket - China's only announced this thing's payload to Sun-Synchronous Orbit, a pretty uncommon target, but there are Falcon 9 SSO-bound missions about 50% heavier than LM6's advertised max.

      Yeah, not really buying the whole "China is doing space better than us" angle.

    • (Score: 2) by Gravis on Monday September 21 2015, @02:36PM

      by Gravis (4596) on Monday September 21 2015, @02:36PM (#239357)

      umm... what do you think SpaceX is for?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @02:50AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @02:50AM (#239707)

        You're not the real Gravis!

        The real Gravis would berate SpaceX as a greedy corporation stealing from poor people working for the government for the greater good of all mankind, or some shit.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by gman003 on Monday September 21 2015, @01:32PM

    by gman003 (4155) on Monday September 21 2015, @01:32PM (#239333)

    The Long March 6 looks like a fairly competent design, departing from convention in only a few places.

    It's a three-stage rocket, which seems to have fallen out of favor. Most new rockets are two-stage, which is obviously more economical and reliable, but has stricter requirements for mass efficiency. Given their relative inexperience with orbital rocketry, and their unusual economic situation, going for the easier three-stage design is an understandable decision.

    They're using completely ordinary fuels - RP1+LOX. This means there's basically no relation to earlier Long March rockets, which burned UDMH+N2O4, a fuel only used (in first stages) in military designs. UDMH+N2O4 is hypergolic (ignites on contact), which means when you push the big red button, the rocket is going somewhere, and it's a room-temperature fuel/oxidizer, so you can keep it in silos basically forever, fully-fueled and ready to launch. But it's nasty stuff - caustic, toxic, carcinogenic, and quite frankly, liable to explode if you so much as look at it funny. Civilians don't care as much if you need a month to set the rocket up, as long as they can put it in their gantt chart, and generally would rather you abort the launch rather than explode their expensive payload. So UDMH+N2O4 only gets used in a main stage for ICBM designs, then plowshared into civilian launchers like Proton, Delta or Titan. Maneuvering thrusters are a different matter - there, the temperature stability and hypergolic nature are really useful, and the low amount needed make the cost and safety less problematic.

    They notably aren't using LH2+LOX, the current favorite of the west (save SpaceX). LH2 is the king of specific impulse, but it's expensive and difficult to design around. Long March 6 is basically a repurposed booster from the still-unlaunched Long March 5, which uses a LH2+LOX core with RP1+LOX boosters. So with that design constraint, it's a pretty conventional choice.

    What *isn't* conventional is the engine cycle. Oxidizer-rich staged combustion? You really only see that on Russian designs, the NK-33 or RD-120 or the like - fuel-rich staged combustion has basically the same benefits and is much easier on your materials (because you don't have burning-hot oxygen being piped around), and full-flow staged combustion is (at least in theory) more easily scalable, although more complicated. China did acquire several RD-120 engines for testing, so it's pretty likely that's where they got this technology.

    Their final stage uses RP1+H2O2, a combination I think is hypergolic. If it is, it's a logical choice for the final-stage - for LEO, you don't need nearly so much specific impulse, and hypergolics are more reliable. Hydrogen peroxide isn't a popular oxidizer these days, but it used to be common, and it's a well-proven choice. I can't recall it being paired with kerosene, but it makes sense.

    In short: the only thing really odd about this rocket, they "borrowed" from the Russians (who weren't using it anyway). Nothing sticks out as bad design, at least at this high-level overview. I would have tried to go for the two-stage design, even with the cobbled-out-of-spares constraint, but Chinese designs have always been conservative.

    • (Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Tuesday September 22 2015, @10:02PM

      by el_oscuro (1711) on Tuesday September 22 2015, @10:02PM (#240230)

      liable to explode if you so much as look at it funny.

      I think my Kerbal Space Program rockets use that same fuel.

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