Queqiao-2 will relay data between Earth and Chinese spacecraft on the far side of the Moon.
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Rocket launch marks big step in building China’s lunar infrastructure
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Amazing that we will see lunar bases in our lifetime, and if we are fortunate, entire cities.
Would love to watch zero-g football live via Starlink playing at Moon City of Hong Kong Luna (straight out of Heinlein).
Would love to watch zero-g football live via Starlink playing at Moon City of Hong Kong Luna (straight out of Heinlein).
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PatientZero
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I was going to make a joke like, "Kerosene, nice; maybe in another 15 years they'll have methane-powered"...
...but then I remembered that a Chinese methane-powered rocket already beat both ULA, BO, and SpaceX to orbit, so, oh well.
...but then I remembered that a Chinese methane-powered rocket already beat both ULA, BO, and SpaceX to orbit, so, oh well.
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I'm curious why the Long March 8 warranted a new designation. From the general details on Wikipedia, it looks like a Long March 7 with half the boosters.
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From what I can tell, the LM8 also differs in that it uses a hydrolox second stage that is typically the third stage of the LM7A. So it seems to be an LM7A without the kerolox middle stage and with fewer boosters.
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The hydrolox stage is shared one of the older hypergolic Long March rockets too, it looks like. Either way, unless there are more changes under the skin, it doesn't seem to warrant a new model number, like how the (frankly terrifying) Long March 5B configuration didn't get its own number.
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Indeed. Seems they really do like playing dial-a-rocket with all these variants.
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I'm sure this will come across as naive, I'm well aware of why it won't happen...
It's really a pity that nations can't get along at a human level to co-operate with each other to further our technological advancements. For example imagine if all of the scientists in nations with rockets were fully allowed to collaborate without the restrictions of politics, religion, etc., etc.
Pity.
It's really a pity that nations can't get along at a human level to co-operate with each other to further our technological advancements. For example imagine if all of the scientists in nations with rockets were fully allowed to collaborate without the restrictions of politics, religion, etc., etc.
Pity.
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Go Go China to Space 中國加由.
If we are honestly looking for an "offramp" to improve relations with China, cooperate in space for the betterment of all.
If we are honestly looking for an "offramp" to improve relations with China, cooperate in space for the betterment of all.
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Yet, somehow, I'm sure we will still have Flat Earthers. I bet some will even be fans of lunar football.
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It always felt weird to me why NASA sent multiple imaging and relay satellites to Mars but didn't do the same with the Moon, although that chunk of rock is a lot closer. Get a network of cheap birds to orbit the Moon both to image it and to act as comm relays for future missions, then send a horde of cheap landers to look for in-situ resources needed for multiple lunar bases.
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China's Chang'e Moon mission program is designed to enable ISRU (in-situ research utilisation), first with a fully automated (robotic) lunar base, followed by manned missions in the 2030s. India's Chandrayaan program is similar, also aiming to establish ISRU. Theoretically Russia has a similar program as China, but as we saw with Luna 25, they're mostly coasting along on fading Soviet glory.
I'd argue that NASA is hopelessly behind on lunar exploration, as the focus on manned missions and getting human boots on the lunar regolith makes for very poor science. You could argue that the Lunar Gateway is convenient as a lunar space station, but for that to make sense, it'd need be both constantly staffed and perform science & engineering duties. As things stand, China will have established a fully automated robotic lunar base on the lunar South Pole by 2030, followed by India's robots, while NASA may have gotten Artemis III off the pad.
I'd argue that NASA is hopelessly behind on lunar exploration, as the focus on manned missions and getting human boots on the lunar regolith makes for very poor science. You could argue that the Lunar Gateway is convenient as a lunar space station, but for that to make sense, it'd need be both constantly staffed and perform science & engineering duties. As things stand, China will have established a fully automated robotic lunar base on the lunar South Pole by 2030, followed by India's robots, while NASA may have gotten Artemis III off the pad.
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You do know that a Starship landing on the moon in 2026 is the Artemis III plan?
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Dear Moon will not include a surface visit. I'm pretty sure it's not even going into orbit that it's just a flyby on a free-return trajectory. I don't think SpaceX has plans to put people on the lunar surface if it's not for NASA - at least I don't recall Musk or Shotwell ever talking of aspirations in that direction. Their attention has always been Mars.
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Consider that if we did live in such a cooperative paradise moon exploration might not have happened at all. Records of the JFK administration show that he did not care particularly about space at all - he just didn't want to lose to the Russians. I don't think that much has changed in sixty years. Human fear, envy, and greed has pushed us for millennia and will continue to do so.
In other words, I think there's an efficient frontier between cooperation and competition that results in the greatest progression for humanity as a whole. While I too would much prefer for astronauts and taikonauts to land together on the moon, I'd rather them land separately than not at all.
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China is achieving some envied space accomplishments. Launching, landing and returning hardware. It is unfortunate space faring nations cannot work together.
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Not always, the biggest space progress is not from NASA but private SpaceX with the goal: to make humanity a multiplanetary species, in case disaster befalls earth... never mind appears you are right
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Perhaps the Chinese government would show any willingness for doing anything 'for the betterment of all' Start there and maybe we'll talk.
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It's worth noting that Queqiao-2's primary goal is to support the future lunar missions (Chang'e-7 and 8) in the lunar south pole region. Relay for Chang'e-6 on the far side of the Moon is just its secondary goal. That's why it was launched to a frozen orbit optimized for the lunar south pole, not the Earth-Moon L2 halo orbit which Queqiao-1 is using.
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The Long March 8 was designed to be an economical launcher for commercial launches. It even used to have a plan of recovery and reuse (which has been abandoned).
On the contrary, the Long March 7 series' primary feature is high reliability. They are designed to support flagship projects like China Manned Space Program and high-value geostationary satellites. I don't think they'll be used in commercial launches ever in the future.
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RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRacha
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Friendly competition is good. But this is about resource and strategic dominance.
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According to Eric Berger's anonymous source it is highly likely, that after few launches NASA will drop SLS and Orion and switch to Dragon + Starship.
1. HLS launched to LEO
2. refueled
3. astronauts launched to LEO on a Dragon
4. dock HLS
5. Earth-Moon-Earh roundtrip on HLS
6. Dragon launched to LEO
7. dock HLS
8. astronauts splash down on a Dragon
Even if Blue Origin enters the game they'll go a similar route (maybe with Starliner, hopefully being flight approved till then).
There is no rational reason to keep SLS on the long run, even if costs are not considered, one launch per year is obviously not enough to mainain continous present on the Moon.
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Better relations with China are neither possible or desirable without regime change.
Fuck the Chinese government.
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This is exactly why I’ve not liked the SLS. It’s too expensive and not able to maintain the firing rate needed to establish and maintain a lunar base. It’s just an Apollo retread and doesn’t take advantage of a lot of the things we have developed since then, reusability being one of the big ones. One launch every month or two is what’s needed, not once a year or two. SLS is just so the Americans can say “We got back there first”. To be honest though, that might not happen. They are a year or more from man rating the Starship. The version that is supposed to land hasn’t even been built yet, or been man rated. The SLS has flown once, but has not been man rated. The program is still on the 2028 track they said years ago, and if there’s any accident or setback, 2030 wouldn’t surprise me. That puts the Chinese within striking distance of getting there first.
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If you want a realistic chance of supporting a lunar base, it seems to me that a launch per week might well be needed, at least early on. Bootstrapping a working economy from scratch will take an enormous amount of stuff. And people.
On Earth, the environment is so friendly that you can build an economy from literally nothing, you can just hang out in the trees and survive, but one on Luna will need so much equipment to be even minimally viable, and will teeter on the brink of extinction for years and years, if it survives at all. Survival requirements will need ridiculous amounts of redundancy to be safe, and all that redundant gear will take a ton of maintenance, which means even more stuff launched from Earth.
I think it's likely to take at least a decade of weekly launches, and very possibly a lot more or a lot longer, before any lunar colony becomes self-sufficient. The investment required will seem like lunacy.
edit: and it's very possible our entire safety regime will have to change. If a Starship is lost, there's a good chance they won't be able to stand down for six months or a year to figure out what went wrong and fix it. They may have to keep launching to keep the people on the Moon alive while they figure it out.
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Given the dismal track record of regime change brought about by Western intervention, pretty sure the Chinese people have similar sentiments towards the US regime.
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Maybe China is willing to play nice, maybe not. But if you treat China as the enemy, they will act like the enemy.
It's the oldest political ploy in the world. Need to distract the population from all the unsolved domestic issues? "Hey, but what about those fuckers in China/USA/Russia?"
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Well, that's the point. Regime change can come about by the people themselves doing the changing. if the Chinese people back what their government is doing, then that's even more reason for the west to not have a desire for better relations with them. China, North Korea and Iran (as well as tacit approval by some African regimes) are directly helping Russia in it's genocidal and criminal assault on the Ukrainian people. With their continued poor record on respecting human rights, China as well as Russia don't merit our cooperation with them in space and other areas.
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I come from country where we have some nice good scientific achievements. I think that our past governments, during time of scientific growth, did genocide and bad things. We thought government was doing correct things. And our people did not change the government and we were glad of achieving and politicians made money and made our country rich. Countries either worked with us, or we ignore them. Or invade them. We don't have a space program now. Was just a small rocket.
I come from the UK
...
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How do you do an Earth-Moon-Earth roundtrip on HLS? It just lacks the delta v to return to Earth from the Moon surface and brake into LEO to dock with a Dragon there. Maybe you could use aerobraking with HLS on the return leg instead of propulsively braking into LEO, even without much of a heat shield, but this would mean to expose the crews to quite a lot of radiation (and time and risk) by flying them repeatedly through the Van Allen belts, and still would be more than marginal.
I mean, yes: SLS plus Orion is incredibly wasteful for just getting a crew to a Moon orbit, but it's not THAT simple.
Of course even having to use several Starships (even expendable ships with a third stage or propulsion module for the return leg) would be so much cheaper than one SLS/Orion launch... Like replacing SLS/Orion with an expendable Starship that carries a third stage consisting of a propulsion module and a Dragon capsule for the round trip to and from lunar orbit and with a direct reentry on the return leg.
But you can't just launch even a fully refueled HLS from LEO to the Moon surface and back from there into LEO. OK, maybe later (bigger) Starship iterations may improve on that, but this is pure speculation.
OK, whatever the solution is I'm fairly sure that SLS won't appear in it for very long... And the writing really is on the wall, even with all the "Musk's rocket fails again!" bullshit headlines everyone with even half a working brain meanwhile should have understood that SH/SS is viable, and that at a fraction of the costs of SLS.
WRT China: I like that they accept the challenge. I think they know very well that space is the high ground in every way and that they just can't afford to fall back like a dropped booster like Russia or the EU do. And honestly I have very little political qualms about all that. Our democracies aren't exactly unblemished, China has managed to do a whole lot of good for most of its population in the last 100 years and who knows how all of this looks 100 or 300 years into the future. I rather take the long view on all that. And competition is a good thing to have. Without China pressing forward here the US just may never have bothered with the Moon again, much less anything else in space (apart from keeping the pork trains running).
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If we're flying to the moon every week, it's not going to be a Starship doing it. You're looking 100+ tonnes of metal that are flying to (and presumably from) the moon for each trip. That's a ton of refill missions. One doesn't need 100 tonnes of structure to hold 100 tonnes of payload + the requisite propellant to land and lift off the moon. Something 1/5 that mass could suffice potentially.
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If the tankers are routinely reused the dry mass shouldn't matter much. Propellants are cheap. But yes, an expendable Starship with a light third stage and some smallish engines instead of the payload section would be a rational way to deal with this. HLS being based straight on Starship is pretty much just a cost-cutting approach for SpaceX as far as development efforts are concerned with Artemis as planned by NASA. They bid with what they were meaning to build anyway.
Also to land and to lift off from the Moon isn't all, you also need to get there in the first place from LEO. A fully fueled Starship (without heat shield, flaps etc.) fits the bill nicely, even if it may have too much thrust and with this too many engines.
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