SunlitZelkova

Nice. It’s pretty cool how they are directly challenging SpaceX in more areas. They are basically low key claiming Terran R will get a commercial payload to Mars prior to Starship.

One is for the Moon and one is for Mars, each respectively named Luna Glass and Mars Glass. They want to land “something” related to the project on the Moon by 2050, perhaps a subscale demonstrator? It has a height of 400 meters and a diameter of 100 meters. Lunar Beagle is the name of the monorail that runs around it (although Gizmodo claims it is called the Hexatrack), while the hexagonal Earth-Moon transport is called the Space Express. They want to avoid using nuclear power for it. In the past, a Japanese construction company proposed building a space elevator by 2050, and many apparently got hyped until they realized it was just a concept for promotional purposes. It is different this time, they actually intend to do this although in kerbiloid’s video one of the guys states they recognize there are many problems to be solved. They think putting the idea out there is an important thing.

I think all LM-3 and LM-4 launches now use the parafoil recovery system, which significantly reduces the area in which the boosters fall. Unlike, say, the early 2000s, it is also possible CNSA is now putting beacons on their boosters, so they can be found and secured faster. LM-2 for Shenzhou doesn’t use the parafoil recovery system but it’s boosters may drop in a different area, out of view of most civilians.

@Spacescifi I recommend following @sevenperforce’s advice regarding design. If your story is not intended for public consumption, I suppose it wouldn’t matter, but in general it is better to say “I just want it this way for the story” or “I just want it this way because it looks cool” than coming up with some sort of detailed engineering reason. I haven’t looked into the details, but from what I can tell Christopher Nolan claimed that Interstellar was going to be a hyper realistic movie. Despite being a great work of art in its own right, IIRC it is/was the bane of this forum because of that claim. The same thing happens with me with alternate histories. There are people out there who write great alt-hist stories but then they claim it is “historically accurate [as to what would have happened]” and they destroy themselves and their work because there is always a hole that someone will find, and the work will be thrown into jeopardy by it.

Usually Lagrange points have a name identifier before the number. Example: Earth-Sun L2 and Earth-Moon L2. I have only seen that drop when it is obvious, like an Artemis focused presentation or something.

In April 1978, a Tu-95KM of the 1226th Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment was tasked with reconning the weather along a route the entire regiment would fly later during an exercise. It proved worse than expected, so the aerial refueling tanker the Tu-95 needed to meet was unable to take off. Airfields along the route were shut down for the same reason. The aircraft would not be able to make it to its destination. Even that air base was covered in a bad thunderstorm. So the crew lowered their Kh-20 cruise missile into the firing position, and started up the engine without releasing it. Miraculously, it worked, and the thunderstorm dissipated just as the aircraft arrived. The aircraft landed with just 2% fuel remaining. The recoil was presumably Kerbal too. It entered mass production just three months from when the order calling for the design was given, making it purportedly one of the fastest designed vehicles ever, although it is more of a modification than a proper new vehicle.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences will be selecting new missions soon as part of the Strategic Priority Program III (SPP III)- https://spacenews.com/venus-orbiter-lunar-constellation-and-exoplanets-telescopes-among-candidates-as-china-selects-new-space-science-missions/ The proposals (with a comment after where it isn't so obvious what it is)- Enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry (eXTP) Dark Matter Particle Explorer-2 (DAMPE-2) Discovering the Sky at the Longest Wavelength (DSL), is a constellation of 10 small satellites in lunar orbit "using the moon as a shield from Earth interference to study faint signals from the early universe" Closeby Habitable Exoplanet Survey Earth 2.0 (ET), is a mission to find Earth-like exoplanets with similar orbits around Sun-like stars. I'll also note that both the name and acronym feel meme-able Solar Ring (SOR), three spacecraft at 1 AU studying the Sun and inner heliosphere Solar Polar-orbit Observatory (SPO) Earth-occulted Solar Eclipse Observatory (ESEO) Chinese Heliospheric Interstellar Medium Explorer (CHIME) (Unnamed?) "E-type Asteroid Sample Return"(?), would bring back samples from 1989 ML Venus Volcano Imaging and Climate Explorer (VOICE), a Venus orbiter low-Earth orbit Climate and Atmospheric Components Exploring Satellites (CACES) Ocean Surface Current multiscale Observation Mission (OSCOM) Of these, only 5-7 will be picked. SPP I and SPP II yielded mostly Earth orbiting missions, with one of them, the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE), featuring collaboration with ESA. SPP III also awards funding for studies of future missions. Interestingly, one of the proposals is a Ceres exploration program. ------ Planetary Society thread and article on China's Neptune orbiter project- ------ Some news on China's crewed lunar program- To be clear, the booster under the parafoil and the rocket stage on the tether in the two separate images are unrelated. A 2030 crewed lunar landing would challenging but not impossible. Currently the LM-5DY is set to have its first launch in 2026. In contrast, SLS will have its first launch in 2022 and is expected to send astronauts to the surface of the Moon in 2025. Another way of looking at it is that the US selected its mission mode for Apollo in 1962 and landed on the Moon in 1969. China is known for doing development slowly and at its own pace, but that could change. China has already decided to do a Mars sample return mission ahead of NASA, perhaps Chinese space goals may become more aware of the international spaceflight situation instead of being based around China's internal conditions. The engine for the third stage of the LM-5DY has entered testing! ------ Also from the above presentation about the lunar program, more info on China's future reusable launch vehicles- Image comes from this tweet- https://twitter.com/CNSpaceflight/status/1546671716415418370 but I am just going to write the info here because the format in the tweet is a little crude. The first one is likely a cargo variant of the LEO version of the LM-5DY, basically a single core variant of the triple core rocket for lunar missions. Diameter is 5 meters. It looks like it has a payload to LEO of 5 tons, 4 tons to SS, 7 tons to GTO, but I can't say for sure, that looks a little odd. Regardless of the numbers, considering the single core version is intended to also launch the Next-Generation Crewed Spacecraft for space station missions, it looks like it will provide China with the capabilities of the Falcon 9. The second and third are the Long March 9 (!), which has changed remarkably since its first inception as a conventional, non-reusable rocket with strap on boosters. Diameter of the LM-9 is 10.6 meters, height is 110 meters. Mass is 4122 tons. First stage has 26x 200 ton thrust methalox engines, second stage has 4x 120 ton thrust LOX/LH2 engines, third stage has 1x of the same 120 ton thrust engine. Payload to LEO is 150 tons and payload to LTO is 50 tons. All three of these are intended to be flying by 2035. The bottom line says something to the effect of "these rockets will close the gap with SLS and Starship", or "there is no gap [in the performance of the Long March 9] when compared with SLS and Starship". [-snip-] ------ And finally, launch of Wentian has been tentatively set for July 24th, with the core stage re-entering uncontrolled shortly after I will be making a specific thread for the core stage's re-entry, to avoid cluttering this one. The core stage attracted a lot of discussion last time, but compared to before when Tianhe was "one and done", we will be following Wentian's approach, docking, and then fixture into it's final position this time around.

Not to turn this into a KSP2 thread, but I could see them being simple science returns occurring at very high altitude from the Sun/Kerbol. Which requires specific instruments to detect, of course.

There are certainly risks with 33 engines but I don’t think this is a good example of them. Isn’t he referencing an issue with Raptor itself, not the number?

I am not familiar enough with Chinese poetry/literature?/whatever goes into naming to know. Do most such names/terms/phrases have only two characters (in poetry or whatever it is derived from)? The names used for most Japanese ships (space and sea) often end up having only two Kanji, not because of a stylistic choice but that’s how most of the words simply are. Nowadays it doesn’t matter too much per se because the names are written in Hiragana anyways, though. So it may not have much to do with naming choices as much as it is the nature of the “source material” itself.

Compound eyes are like what flies and other organisms have, not too odd considering it will be made up of multiple radars to generate one return/picture.

I don’t think this will really be the case. R-7/Soyuz also probably has a low number of accidents compared to successful flights but we still don’t consider it to have airliner reliability. But just having regular missions with an SHLV in the form of Starship, instead of treating each launch like an experiment (Saturn V/Energia) will be impressive in its own right, regardless of reliability.

I have seen the V-131-R prototype at the nearby Evergreen Air & Space Museum (Spruce Goose). The one in this picture is V-132. At one time you could get quite up close and personal with V-131-R, as there were no ropes or barriers around it. Even today a lot of their stuff is rather… unguarded. This project is especially sad because the orbital prototype was 90% complete when it got canceled. On another note related to canceled projects, the Evergreen Space Museum was built in the late 2000s, but the founder died shortly afterward and unfortunately, the museum got taken over by something of a con man. So to this day, there is a huge panel describing the Constellation Program as “America’s return to the Moon”, as the museum has not had the money to change it. It’s still a really cool museum though. As far as canceled projects go, they also have a M-1 engine injector intended for the Nova rocket. EDIT- The museum has since been transferred to proper ownership. I want to make that clear

During WWII the Japanese built the A6M2-N and N1K1 floatplane fighters, both of which had great performance. Even the F1M observation floatplane was used to great effect as a fighter and bomber. These had no issues operating from atolls and small sounds in the Southeast Pacific. Unlike the dinky OS2U, it’s Japanese counterpart, the E13A, flew quite a few combat missions or missions extremely close to combat, including flying at low altitude over the US fleet during an engagement at Guadalcanal to drop flares over them. Like the above mentioned PBY, the H6K4 and H8K2 had stellar performance as patrol aircraft during the war. They also had no issues operating from their water bases. I mention floatplanes as there is likely a misperception about their performance too.

The stars aligned in a tragic manner in the summer of 1961, during a rehearsal of the Soviet Air Force aerobatic team for the Tushino air parade. A four-ship formation of MiG-19s had flown past the airfield when one of the aircraft suddenly went into a spin. The aircraft crashed, killing Yuri Fitin, the pilot. Upon the landing of the remaining aircraft, Artem Mikoyan himself arrived on the scene, and his team discovered the problem (a flaw in the aileron trim tabs) and had it fixed in time for the aircraft to participate in the event. But the aircraft had not just crashed anywhere- out of all of the places to have such an event, it occurred on the grounds of the I.V. Kurchatov Nuclear Energy Institute, which contained multiple research reactors. No major damage is described as having occurred however, while the aircraft did not catch fire after impacting.

I would assume the answer is yes, but does SLS still have the same "going or exploding" danger at liftoff with its SRBs as the Shuttle did?

The X-37B is no longer the "world's only reusable spaceplane", because China has successfully flown its reusable spaceplane. At the same time, the X-37B is still the "world's only reusable spaceplane", because China hasn't reflown its reusable spaceplane yet

1. Depends on the nature of the military and the history of its traditions. All air forces today have pressure suits for their pilots in case they need to bail out at high altitude. But if a space force branched out from a navy, maybe the thinking is different and they don’t do that, like in submarines. 2. Depends on the reason why they would do that. People will go to great lengths and costs if they feel something is important enough (the R-7 ballistic missile development, intended to create sure-fire nuclear deterrence for the USSR, took up an absurd portion of the defence budget in the 50s, despite being a poor weapon system, they needed anything and went for it). 3. Well, both are hard. In real life, direct ascent ASAT has been around since the 70s-80s. Hitting a precise point from orbit hasn’t seen nearly as much focus because orbital bombardment isn’t a thing (yet) and with crewed spacecraft and sample return probes you don’t need to be that accurate. BUT, China has recently changed their minds and ended up landing with a few hundred meters of their predicted landing sites. So it probably isn’t too hard. 4. Probably no “shockwave” because there is no air, but regardless of kinetic damage, the EMP would fry the electronics of the missiles and prevent them from detonating or guiding themselves. 5. Well, based on Earth based shenanigans, apart from the obvious basic materials for the hull, rare metals would be vital for electronics. I am not knowledgeable enough about that topic to go into detail further.

Although not exactly the OP’s proposal, I wonder if using an airship for air-launching a rocket has ever been considered (Virgin Orbit style). Pros: It would look and be cool, maybe larger payload? Cons: Won’t fly as high, can’t do the pitch up maneuver an aircraft can, and the rocket will start much slower.

Looking at these images, I find it amazing how much stuff they are doing in such a compact space. Both of these will be static fired from where they are now, right?

Your question appears to have been answered by the tweet above this post, but I still want to reply. I would think not. If there was an issue with the booster, they would want to take control and try to accommodate whatever error occurred, but without having to do a race to stop the automated sat from doing its burn. Preprogramming it would mean the booster would have to be near 100% accurate and have zero chance of failure.

The silly thing about such comments regarding the Moon is that it legitimizes Rogozin’s statements about Artemis being for “militarization of the Moon”/attempting to build an international coalition to occupy the Moon, because no one has cited any evidence regarding these things. If Bill Nelson wants to be taken seriously without evidence, does that mean we can take Rogozin seriously too? The comments about Tiangong are even worse, although I suppose Roscosmos passively accused American astronauts of drilling a hole in a Soyuz. Another reason I think this is very… silly, to put it lightly… is that if nefarious activities were happening aboard Tiangong and with the ILRS, the intelligence community would be all over it. Instead, we mainly get vague “China is challenging the US and poses a threat in space”, which mainly has to do with dual use capabilities and actual ASAT development, but rarely mentions the crewed space program, nor the deep space exploration program.

Okay, but BVR combat is not dogfighting. During dogfighting over Vietnam, F-4s would go supersonic to disengage, but apparently most dogfights took place at Korean War (subsonic/transonic) speeds. This was against MiG-19s and MiG-21s for the most part. I’ve been reading around and find some conflicting testimonies surrounding this though. Some claim they did it all the time, some claim practically never. It can change depending on the definition of “heyday” though. Dogfighting, as part of achieving air superiority, was vital in winning WWII, so if “strategic usefulness” is the definition of “heyday”, WWII was it’s heyday. Air-to-air missiles weren’t operational during the Korean War, so dogfighting remained the main form of air combat. If the definition of “heyday” is “was it the primary form of air combat regardless of its impact on the war/if there was a war at all” then the early 60s would be “the heyday”, because the majority of Soviet fighters lacked missile armament and would have ended up dogfighting with guns if WWIII had broken out. This would only apply to the original six movies, because in The Clone Wars animated series (which became canon during the Lucas era prior to Disney), there are some moments where gravity gets turned on and off. EU/Legends content could be affected as well. That’s a neat thought though. One idea I had was that their engines are so powerful they don’t actually enter orbit, just move to random points in space. This is why the Invisible Hand immediately starts falling to Coruscant instead of just drifting upon losing its engines as seen in Episode III, and why they happened to be exactly above the airfield near the Senate- because they were hovering above it the whole time. That idea still probably has a lot of holes though, and isn’t intended to be a realistic explanation/analyzation of physics, just trying to make some sense of how the craft move.

I find it very silly to fret over the realism of Star Wars when people can move objects with their minds in it. In comparison to other sci-fi though, Star Wars always had very fluid physics (and decision making for that matter) to move the plot in a certain way. I think Scott Manley’s categorization of it is best- it isn’t sci-fi, it’s fantasy with science elements.

My reactions to this- 1. It will be neat to see SLS and Starship up at the same time, which could happen in 2024. 2. Someone should make a meme using that template of Jason Momoa and Henry Cavill with the Starship program sneaking up on SLS.