China announced on Monday that it is upgrading the Long March-6 rocket with four additional boosters to increase its lifting capacity. This is ahead of a busy year of launches including the Chang’e-5 mission to bring back soil samples from the moon.
The improved medium-lift carrier rocket will embark on its space trek in a year or two, mainly for commercial launches, according to its designers at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. The rocket wrapped up two space tests in September 2015 and November 2017, carrying 20 satellites and three satellites respectively.
The three-stage rocket is 29.3 meters long, with a launch weight of 103 tons and can carry one ton of payload into a sun-synchronous orbit. Long March-6 is the first Chinese carrier rocket that uses non-toxic, non-polluting fuel – it runs on liquid oxygen and kerosene.
Beijing wants to develop rockets that might eventually be superior to the US, but the Long March rockets are fragile and prone to accidents.
Early last year Elon Musk’s Space X Falcon Heavy negated Chinese state media’s cheers about its indigenous rockets, which have launched some 170 satellites into space since the 1970s.
The Long March V, which has the biggest capacity of any Chinese rocket to date, put some 25 tons of cargo into orbit on its maiden launch in November 2016. Theoretically, it could ferry a 5-ton load to Mars. But that is less than a third of the 16.8 tons the Falcon Heavy is capable of carrying to Mars (a payload of 16.8 tons).
China also had to endure the embarrassment of a bungled launch in 2017. That mission, in July, had to be aborted due to cascading engine failures, as the Long March V cast a 7.5-ton satellite into the Pacific. The mishap effectively postponed Beijing’s Chang’e-4 lunar program by almost a year, till the end of 2018.
Xinhua has also noted that the Long March V, the jewel in the crown of China’s engineering, may not be able to propel a Chinese shuttle, with taikonauts and rover, to the moon, which is the ultimate goal of Beijing’s lunar exploration program. It has the stated goal of doing that by the 2030s.
China will have to come up with a more powerful rocket for such a feat. But, given the sheer strength of the Falcon Heavy’s 27 Merlin 1D engines, it should be a breeze for it to send American astronauts back to the moon.
The Long March 9 rocket, earmarked for Beijing’s manned lunar project, has an anticipated maximum payload of 140 tons to Low Earth Orbit and 50 tons to Lunar Transfer Orbit. That would put China well in the game.
But it will take a lot of serious development and testing before that goal is achieved.
With almost everything which seems to be building inside this subject material, a significant percentage of viewpoints happen to be relatively radical. Having said that, I beg your pardon, but I can not subscribe to your whole strategy, all be it exhilarating none the less. It would seem to everyone that your commentary are actually not totally rationalized and in reality you are yourself not really wholly convinced of the argument. In any case I did take pleasure in reading through it.
Amazing! This blog looks exactly like my old one! It’s on a completely different topic but it has pretty much the same layout and design. Excellent choice of colors!
Very nice post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wished to say that I have really
enjoyed browsing your blog posts. In any case I’ll be subscribing to your
rss feed and I hope you write again very soon!
What’s up it’s me, I am also visiting this site
on a regular basis, this website is truly fastidious and the viewers
are truly sharing nice thoughts.
I’m not certain the place you are getting your information, but good topic.
I must spend a while learning more or understanding more.
Thank you for excellent info I was on the lookout for this info for
my mission.
Your blog is really a guidance to people who are learning more on this topic. Thanks
Good article. I am experiencing many of these issues as well..
Hi, i think that i saw you visited my weblog so i came to “return the favor”.I am attempting
to find things to improve my site!I suppose its ok to use some of
your ideas!!
I will right away grab your rss as I can’t find your email subscription link or newsletter service. Do you have any? Kindly let me know so that I could subscribe. Thanks.
Hi there, I enjoy reading through your article post. I wanted to write a little comment to
support you.
Everything is very open with a precise description of the issues.
It was definitely informative. Your website is very useful.
Thanks for sharing!
Nice blog! Is your theme custom made or did you download it from somewhere?
A theme like yours with a few simple adjustements
would really make my blog jump out. Please let me know where
you got your design. Kudos
I’d like to thank you for the efforts you’ve put in writing this site.
I really hope to check out the same high-grade content by you
in the future as well. In truth, your creative writing abilities has inspired me to get my own, personal
site now 😉
Hello to every one, it’s in fact a pleasant for me to visit this website,
it consists of important Information.
Great information. Lucky me I came across your site by chance (stumbleupon).
I’ve saved it for later!
Greetings! Very useful advice within this post! It’s the little changes that make
the biggest changes. Many thanks for sharing!
Im obliged for the article.Really looking forward to read more. Really Cool.
Have you ever thought about publishing an e-book or guest authoring on other sites? I have a blog based on the same ideas you discuss and would love to have you share some stories/information. I know my visitors would enjoy your work. If you’re even remotely interested, feel free to shoot me an e-mail.
If you are going for best contents like I do, only go to see this web page all the time because it gives feature contents, thanks
Woah! I’m really enjoying the template/theme of this website. It’s simple, yet effective. A lot of times it’s difficult to get that “perfect balance” between usability and visual appeal. I must say you’ve done a excellent job with this. In addition, the blog loads extremely fast for me on Firefox. Outstanding Blog!
whoah this blog is excellent i really like reading your posts.
Stay up the good work! You already know, a lot of
individuals are searching around for this information, you could aid them
greatly.
I think the admin of this web site is genuinely working
hard in favor of his web site, for the reason that here every information is quality
based stuff.
Wonderful blog! Do you have any helpful hints for aspiring writers?
I’m planning to start my own site soon but I’m a little lost on everything.
Would you recommend starting with a free platform
like Wordpress or go for a paid option? There are so many options out there that
I’m totally overwhelmed .. Any tips? Many thanks!
Hello, after reading this awesome paragraph i am also happy to share
my familiarity here with colleagues.
I always emailed this weblog post page to all my contacts, as if like to read it
afterward my contacts will too.
Major thanks for the article.Really looking forward to read more. Cool.
hi!,I love your writing very much! proportion we communicate extra approximately your article on AOL? I need a specialist in this house to resolve my problem. May be that is you! Having a look ahead to look you.