They’re not going to let a few dead civilians slow them down.
Meanwhile, environmental and regulatory issues are hamstringing SpaceX in Boca Chica.
9 thoughts on “China Is Serious About Space”
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They’re not going to let a few dead civilians slow them down.
Meanwhile, environmental and regulatory issues are hamstringing SpaceX in Boca Chica.
Comments are closed.
Much as I enjoy the way Zimmerman and his commenters love to hate on Commies, I don’t think anyone was killed this time (the main time was when they dropped an entire fully fuel rocket on a village only to miles!! from the launch pad).
Unlike the US, which has the Atlantic and Pacific (and even the Gulf), no part of the Chinese coast faces a “limitless ocean.” Wenchang, on Hainan Island, is launching across the South China Sea, over the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia, a couple of hundred miles away. North of there, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Sakhalin Island (Russia). I think the facilities in Sinkiang date from the early development area and will be closed when the old rockets are retired. My understanding is, they intended to launch across Mogolia and Siberia (both largely uninhabited) but were on the outs with USSR.
My understanding is that the PRC’s older launch sites were located well inland for the same reason that new U.S. defense plants were comparably sited during WW2 – to put them beyond reach of carrier-based enemy aviation. In early 1942, the U.S. had a not-unreasonable fear that the Akagi or Shokaku might put in a sudden appearance off Manhattan Beach and attack Hughes, or Northrop or Lockheed or the Long Beach Navy Yard. Wenchang is new and reflects the latter-day PRC’s confidence in its ability to defend its own coast.
I’ve heard that one too. Another view is the NE and SW ones were well suited as IRBM bases for firing on Korea/Japan and India/Taiwan. The one out west is handy to Lop Nor. I think the size of rockets that are/will be flying out of Wenchang reflects a limit to what you can dump on a large city. Killing peasants is one thing. Burning down the mall where your kids shop is quite another.
I think the US needs to start launching from inland. F9 is good enough (from Edwards, with RTLS, the second stage would pass across Texas in a couple of minutes. Very little danger (considering the Shuttle broke up over Texas and no one was hit). The danger from Starship will be even less. It’s time.
I think US should get serious about launching rockets from the ocean.
And related to this is making cheap floating breakwaters.
My idea is make them out of balloon tanks filled with pressurized freshwater. With the skin of titanium.
“Cheap” and “titanium” are mutually exclusive and will only get more so given that the main supplier of titanium has been Russia.
Fresh water isn’t enough less dense than seawater to work as a flotation medium for any kind of metal tankage. Cheap and still floatable would take you in the direction of polyethylene or PET tanks – perhaps even made from recycled material – and plain old seawater for optimal ballasting.
Also keep in mind that floating breakwaters still have to be anchored, so they are not a practical technology for waters of arbitrary depth. For relatively shallow waters – 100 meters or less – such as those in the Gulf of Mexico at no more than 30 or 40 miles from shore along the TX coast, or in the Atlantic at comparable distances from the FL coast, anchorage should be neither excessively complex nor expensive.
9 meter diameter made of marine aluminum, 6061-T6:
https://metalboatkits.com/a-guide-to-marine-grade-aluminum/
40,000 Yield strength 42,000 Ultimate Tensile Strength
9 meter = 354.331″
.003 meter = 0.1181102
354.4″ = Outside diameter (in)
.118″ = Wall thickness
40000 Yield strength (psi)
42000 Ultimate (tensile) strength (psi)
0.72 Total Design Factor
Internal Pressure at Minimum Yield (psi): 26.6
Ultimate Burst Pressure (psi): 28
Maximum Allowable Pressure (psi): 19.2
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/barlow-d_1003.html
Want freshwater at 10 psi
Does it float?
9 meter outside diameter and 8.994 meters inside diameter
Mid way: 8.997 meter diameter
8.997 times 3.14159 = 28.26488523 meters circumference
make it 100 meter long: 2826.488523 square meter of 3mm thick, 6061-T6.
It’s density is about 2700 kg per cubic meter:
2826.488523 square meter times .003 meters = 8.479465569 cubic meter of 6061-T6 x 2700 kg =
22894.5570363 kg
Saltwater is 1020 kg to 1028 kg per cubic meter
Freshwater at it’s most dense is at 4 C and is 1000 kg per cubic meter
9 meter has cross section of 63.6171975 meter times 100 meter long is 6361.71975 cubic meter times 20 kg = 127234.395 kg
127234.395 – 22894.5570363 = 104339.8379637 kg
It would float if you put 90 tons on top of it.
Would use stronger and thinner titanium which has higher tensional strength and unlike marine aluminum,
titanium doesn’t corrode is sea water. But if just wanted it lasting 10 years, marine aluminum would work.
Polyethylene or PET corrodes in sea water and have make it thicker and thereby cost more than titanium if you wanted it pressurize it to 10 psi.
What is important in terms of cost is fabrication cost.
And this is similar to making the hull of a starship which is also a ballo0n tank design which can take about
100 psi- or major difference is making the walls, thinner {which would have problems to do}.
Though could make it, out of more metal, more like the Starship- and put 10 psi of pressurized air in it.
The smallest diameter which floats with freshwater is about 5 meter diameter and it seems the largest one could want to make is 20 meter in diameter {which floats higher- and I think it make better surfing waves- though it is more metal per mile and harder to make.
“Also nuclear rockets don’t get the Oberth effect.”
I said: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4631/1
I was also wondering about using Ion engines to get to Mars faster. They don’t get it, either.
So, mostly chemical rocket power, doing non hohmann Mars transfer and ion engines are cancelling the Sun’s gravity loss.
NASA: Artemis moon program launch schedule intact for now
https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2023/08/08/nasa-artemis-ii-iii-moon-mars-crew-update/9771691520610/
Linked from: https://instapundit.com/
It doesn’t seem like a good idea to delay the lunar crew program. And I also don’t think we should spend much time on Lunar crew program.
It seems starship and even New Glenn could speed up the lunar crew program, and get going on Mars crew program, sooner.
Cylindrical Autonomous Drilling Bot Could Reach Buried Martian Water
https://www.universetoday.com/162766/cylindrical-autonomous-drilling-bot-could-reach-buried-martian-water/
“NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts NIAC) support the Borebots concept back in 2021, and the engineers, led by Quinn Morley and Tom Bowen, produced a mammoth 96-page report of their efforts. That report details how Borebots are unique in the world of extraterrestrial drilling and how widely accepted the concept was in numerous other exploration contexts.
But the context it was designed for was to look for underground water in the Martian south pole. The engineers estimated they could collect interesting scientific data from a borehole measuring about 50 m down. ”
It could also be used with space rocks or dwarf planet Ceres.
It seems one would have drill deeper than 50 meter to find mineable water on Mars, but 50 meter could give more information about what could be deeper.