Chang'e 5 may use engine for manned lunar orbiting shenzhou

[xenomorph555]

Okay so a while ago I talked about China's experimental space propulsion system being created for the Chang'e 5 mission, it is an incredibly high power, high efficiency hypergolic space engine, over 6 times more powerful then anything currently used by the Chinese in space. It will be used in Chang'e 5 on the orbiting craft for entering lunar orbit burn, various orbit tweaks, rendezvous and exiting orbit.

Why am I talking about this now you ask, well something coincidental I noticed was that both Chang'e 5 and the Shenzhou spacecraft weigh 8 tonnes, both are in the throwing range of the LM-5 to circumlunar, infact it has been discussed many times the possibility of a Zond-esqe Shenzhou mission. But if they both weigh 8 tonnes then assuming the Shezhou had this engine and the fuel... the shenzhou could be put into lunar orbit and return to earth.

Personally I'm calling it, 1st July 2021, why that date? It's the 100th anniversary of the CCP, what is more prestigious, grandiose for such a massive occasion then a manned lunar orbiting mission (well maybe the landing but that will take time ).

[xenomorph555]

Okay lets look at feasibility:

Here we have Chang'e 5, as you can see the propulsion system (in the orbiter module) is basically 4 large spherical fuel tanks and the large center engine. The fuel will likely be UDMH+N2O4. Moving on...

Here we have the service module of a Soyuz (due to secrecy there are no images of what a Shenzhou service module looks like so we can only assume it is similar to the Soyuz). In the service module at the back behind life support we can again see 4 spherical tanks of about the same size with a very small engine in the middle (it should be noted the Shenzhou has 4 engines instead of one but they are all incredibly low power). Although quite vague it is believed the Soyuz runs on H2O2 however these 4 tanks should be suitable for UDMH and N2O2. I believe assuming the Shenzhou also uses a similar quad sphere tank system, they could be converted to UDMH+N2O2 and the regular engines could be replaced with the Chang'e 5 engine. More fuel may need to be added but overall this would be a minor change.

With a fuel swap, engine swap, heat shield reinforcement and added high gain antennas for deep space communication I believe the Shenzhou could be modified to fly in lunar orbit aboard a LM-5 in 2021!