Plan A Plan B Plan C Plan D---------------------------------------------Development 9,592 11,833 13,418 12,562Production 7,834 8,090 8,658 7,449---------------------------------------------Total 17,426 19,923 22,076 20,011Unit Cost 522 539 577 497---------------------------------------------
Quote from: Danderman on 02/05/2010 03:51 pmThe Chinese plan seems to be: launch someone every three or four years, do that indefinitely, make big noises about vague future plans, and then a miracle happens and Chinese are walking on the Moon.Yes, that looks essentially correct. A less pejorative way to phrase it would be, "The Chinese plan is to systematically retire risk on a sustainable schedule, take pride in doing so, and rely on future technology developments to meet overall program objectives."Doesn't it sound better phrased that way? Wouldn't it be neat if the U.S. had a plan like that?
The Chinese plan seems to be: launch someone every three or four years, do that indefinitely, make big noises about vague future plans, and then a miracle happens and Chinese are walking on the Moon.
I don't know of anybody--maybe you do--who claims that it is not "possible" to send humans to the Moon using only EELV-class rockets. The question is what is the "best" method of doing that.
The presentation was made by Scott Pace after he left NASA, but it was clearly something that NASA had done. I never asked for the NASA study, but presumably an enterprising researcher could try to get hold of it.Several years ago NASA was directed by Congress to perform a review of the Chinese space program. Apparently all they did was to collect up a bunch of news articles and present them to Congress, rather than to do an actual assessment themselves. I therefore found this chart to be somewhat surprising, because it implied that NASA had indeed done some kind of assessment.
Quote from: Dmitry_V_home on 09/17/2011 06:53 pmFigure 5 shows the plan pretty clearly. It's a three launch architecture, with two launches providing Earth departure stages and the third providing the payload that gets pushed through TLI. After LEO assembly the TLI burn takes place on day 7, and on day 10 a dedicated stage is expended to insert into lunar orbit. The lander returns to LLO on day 12 and is jettisoned; the Shenzhou-like spacecraft performs TEI and the capsule reenters.
Chinese lunar ship
"The rocket is envisaged to have a payload of 130 tonnes"
Quote from: Phillip Clark on 09/25/2011 01:17 pmI think that while Chineses are at a stage of conceptual researches, no more. Therefore to perceive seriously these pictures while it is premature.
I am taking the heavy lift launch vehicle data as simply being indicative of what the Chinese are thinking, rather than being a hard and fast design.I have managed a good mass model for the CZ-X with liquid strap-ons (I call it CZ-X-L) but the data I get for the solid strap-ons version (CZ-X-S) seems to come out too heavy. Still playing with the numbers.
Quote from: Phillip Clark on 09/26/2011 03:51 pmI am taking the heavy lift launch vehicle data as simply being indicative of what the Chinese are thinking, rather than being a hard and fast design.I have managed a good mass model for the CZ-X with liquid strap-ons (I call it CZ-X-L) but the data I get for the solid strap-ons version (CZ-X-S) seems to come out too heavy. Still playing with the numbers.If they do decide to build a heavy lift launcher, I predict they will go for the liquid strap-on version. The Chinese have no experience whatsoever with large segmented solids. Plus, they seem, in general, to follow the Soviet/Russian path, which favors liquid boosters.A Chinese heavy lift launch vehicle will more likely be a Chinese Energia than a Chinese SLS.And that is not a bad choice, IMO.