Posted on 07/09/2018 8:34:22 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Long March 9 will be capable of lifting 140 metric tons to low Earth orbit, 50 tons to Earth-Moon transfer orbit, and 44 tons to Earth-Mars transfer orbit.
The 93-meter-high Long March 9 is expected to have a launch mass of over 4,000 metric tons, producing close to 6,000 tons of thrust.
The core stage will have a diameter of 10 meters while four boosters will each have a diameter of up to 5 meters. This would make the boosters comparable to the Long March 5, China's largest rocket so far, which debuted in 2016 and last July suffered a first stage engine issue that prompted a redesign....
The Long March 9 is slated to be ready for a test flight around 2030, with Long adding that progress on the project includes successful forging of 10-meter-diameter alloy rings and breakthroughs related to 500-ton-thrust kerosene-liquid oxygen and 220-ton-thrust hydrolox engines.
The first major mission of the Long March 9 is expected to be a single-launch Mars sample return mission, while the rocket is also being designed to facilitate lunar missions, including crewed landings.
CALT has previously said that it is studying a mission profile which would see the Long March 5B—a variant of the Long March 5 to be used for low-Earth orbit launches, including lofting modules for the country's space station—be used to launch the crewed spacecraft which would then rendezvous in LEO with the lunar spacecraft stack launched by the Long March 9 ahead of trans-lunar injection.
[T]wo versions of a new generation crewed spacecraft are being developed, with a scale return-capsule test having been carried out in 2016. The debut of the Long March 5B, expected to follow a successful return-to-flight of the Long March 5, will include a new test related to the spacecraft in summer 2019.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Who did they steal this from? Us or the Russians?
Pretty sure our super stay in space for 5000 years spaceplane thing got that covered.
Yeah....it’s got hamsters in it.
Sure it does.
Us, I heard they were able to steal the Titan rocket designs.
Us, I heard they were able to steal the Titan rocket designs.
SpaceX and now the Chinese is further proof of it.
The Chinese target date is 2030. They need more time to steal the technology.
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