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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.
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]
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday July 03 2018, @01:56AM (7 children)
Space Launch System, 130 tons in final configuration, fully expendable, flying late 2020s.
Long March-9, 140 tons, expendable?, flying ~2030.
BFR, 150 tons, fully reusable, flying early 2020s.
China will burn money on a likely inferior rocket, but at least they will be able to send large or fast payloads.
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(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:19AM (5 children)
Actually, BFR is expected to achieve 165 tons to LEO in its completed form. The 150 tons figure was to mars.
However, each of SpaceX's rockets has exceeded design specs by a significant margin, often at the expense of booster return.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:51AM (4 children)
The 165 number is new to me (source?). I heard that the rocket may grow in height and payload from its originally announced design, but I did not see a specific number.
150 tons is given for basically all BFR destinations with refueling. 150 tons to LEO, refuel in LEO with a BFR tanker, 150 tons to Mars, presumably landed. See sidebar here [wikipedia.org].
BFR was supposed to be able to lift 300 tons in expendable mode. At an estimated cost of $335 million, even this extremely wasteful approach would save money over SLS.
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(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:42AM (3 children)
Wikipedia. 330000 pounds payload to leo.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Touché) by bob_super on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:47AM
When talking rockets, people usually talk in metric tons, not short tons.
Something something Mars orbit something...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:40AM (1 child)
It's bog standard to describe the payload in metric tons, i.e. 1 ton = 1,000 kg. I've done so in every submission about rockets, and all the articles I see do it as well. So we are talking about the same rocket. However, the rumor mill suggests that payload could go up a few percent. BFR might be made taller simply to make it taller than SLS and get the tallest rocket in the world bragging rights (currently it's 106 meters for BFR, 111.25 meters for Space Launch System Block 2 Cargo, and 110.6 meters for the Saturn V). Cue the dick jokes.
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:29PM
> Cue the dick jokes.
Elon is compensating because he's also tunneling faster and at smaller diameter than others ?
Or is it because his sports cars are quiet, and all his battery-powered products have at most one speed ?
On the other hand, he's already the only one to stand upright at rest after delivering his payload, getting ready to go again soon...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tfried on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:31AM
Well, the most typical Chinese approach is not to build the best thing in the world, but to build something good enough cheap. No mention of the price-tag, here, but it does not necessarily have to be the most powerful rocket in the world in order to be commercially successful.
Probably, commercial success is not the most important consideration, anyway. They also want to be able to put anything they want into orbit at any time, without having to ask the US (or Russia) for approval. And then, rocket technology is always dual use to a relatively high degree, esp. to a nuclear power.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:15AM (10 children)
It's a little silly to one-up each other, trying to claim some silly title. As time goes on, shouldn't we expect that rockets get more powerful? Kinda like boats and ships. They all started small, like dugout canoes and papyrus rafts. Over time, they got larger and larger, to the point that today's largest ships have the population of a large town or small city.
In 500 years, individual people will own vehicles that put all of our SLS's to shame.
I'm going to buy my defensive radar from Temu, just like Venezuela!
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:25AM (5 children)
Probably not. Its a delicate balance of cost/risk/reward. Some time we are bound to reach a point where its just too dangerous or expensive ti keep build bigger. Don't know when that might be.
Its pointless to make faster and faster processors when you can achieve the same thing with more and more of them instead.
Its pointless to make bigger and bigger railroad engines when you can just lash 5 or 10 of them together and pull a 16,000 double stacked train at 90mph across the entire country.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:35AM (4 children)
Well, sure, there is some upper limit, beyond which a bigger rocket will make little sense. But, space flight is in it's infancy, so we have little idea what that limit might be.
And, rockets are really all we have, until we get anti-gravity working. A space elevator would make a nice interim solution, while we wait for anti-grav. But, even with the elevator in place, we'll still have to depend on rockets to move around.
I'm going to buy my defensive radar from Temu, just like Venezuela!
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:38AM (3 children)
Since we have zero reason to believe antigrav is possible, I'm not pinning too many hopes on it.
Meanwhile, the traditional space elevator is fraught with difficulties, not least of which at a minimum length (for Earth) of ~36,000km it would be by far the largest engineering project ever attempted. And the fact that even flawless carbon nanotubes are an order of magnitude too weak to support their own weight with even normal safety margins doesn't help.
However, there are several other options that actually offer greater long-term potential as well. For example spinning tether/pinwheel skyhooks act as highly efficient angular momentum-batteries, allowing the momentum of a landing spacecraft to be transferred to a launching spacecraft at some later time, as well as being able to "charge up" using highly efficient but low-thrust ion drives, or even geomagnetic drives and then rapidly transfer that momentum to a payload under very and moderate and smooth acceleration. They do require that you navigate the atmosphere on your own, but that's only 10% of the journey to orbit, and means they could enable far less extreme versions of other launch technologies such as airship-to-orbit, pneumatic or lighter-than-air super-towers, spaceplanes, or launch loops (active maglev rails whose internal momentum lifts them above the atmosphere).
And of course, once you're in orbit and no longer have to fight against gravity and friction losses, ion drives blow traditional rockets out of the water. But we're not going to really see them deployed until we reach the point that it makes sense to build spaceships that will never land on a planet(oid).
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:45AM (2 children)
Don't forget runway to orbit.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @08:22AM (1 child)
Naah, Runaway won't get into orbit ever.
Oh, wait...
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday July 03 2018, @08:27AM
I dunno. Sometimes he seems a bit spaced out.
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:44AM (3 children)
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.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:57AM (2 children)
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.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:37PM (1 child)
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
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)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:31AM (1 child)
Dug up this article https://www.wired.com/2014/11/ship-f1-car-across-globe-36-hours/ [wired.com] which talks about the logistics behind Formula 1. Teams ship their two cars and a lot of spares/tools/etc to the races:
In round numbers, this big rocket could hoist three F1 teams to orbit...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:41AM
You just want to test an F1 against Musk's Tesla. The Tesla has a long head start, you better get started!
I'm going to buy my defensive radar from Temu, just like Venezuela!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @03:03AM (1 child)
How about Great Leap Forward? Desipicable chicom fucks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:15AM
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/20/145360447/the-secret-document-that-transformed-china [npr.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by bob_super on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:54AM
> the Falcon Heavy from SpaceX launched 64 tons toward Mars earlier this year.
Unless they replaced the roadster's battery with lead or gold, I'm going to have to go with ... NO!
FH payload to Mars is a pretty impressive 16.8t.
63.8t payload is to LEO, or 3.5t to Pluto, according to Wikipedia.
Basic fact-checking...