Author Topic: China's manned Moon plans  (Read 140123 times)

Offline aquanaut99

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #160 on: 01/23/2012 01:06 pm »
This idea seems to suggest that the Chinese would do a simple "token" manned landing on the Moon, but I do not believe this to be the case.

The Chinese always seem to be thinking in the long-term for its space programme: for example, Project 921 produced not "a man in a can" but a modern space station ferry from the outset: of course, the Chinese have been able to draw upon the experiences of the Russians and Americans when planning their programme.

When the Chinese go to the Moon I don't believe we will see a token mission.   Maybe the first one or two will be like Apollos 11-14, but I feel sure that the Chinese are seriously eyeing a lunar base, in which case the programme's infrastructure will have this built-in from the beginning.

Maybe. Understand, however, that what the Chinese space establishment wishes for is different from what the Politbureau is willing to fund.

All the talk about moon bases is stuff from the Chinese space program's wish list. Kinda like what NASA wished for (with AAP) during the Apollo program.

From what I've observed, the Chinese leadership is, at best, lukewarm about manned space exploration (which was Jiang Zemin's pet project and he was more or less ousted some years ago). Their primary goal is to show that China is a great power, equal to the USA. In the domain of spaceflight, that would best be accomplished by equaling the USA's greatest space achievment. With the advantage of doing it cheaper, by profiting from past knowledge and avoiding some major mistakes.

A permanent lunar base would be a whole different ball game. Assuming the USA doesn't go first, the Chinese would have to go it alone and do all the trial-and-error themselves. There would be no possibility to copy. And somehow I doubt that a lukewarm Politbureau would be willing to fund such an ambitious and expensive project with no real tangible geopolitical or financial benefits on Earth.

To sum it up, I don't think Chinese politicians are all that much different from their US counterparts...
« Last Edit: 01/23/2012 01:07 pm by aquanaut99 »

Offline incantado2012

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #161 on: 01/23/2012 04:13 pm »
From my understanding, I believe this is not PR stuff. It is very rare for a Chinese high-level scientist to write PR stuff.  Several points need to make:

1) Former Chinese President Jiang Zeming was not ousted. He could only run at most two terms and he ran two full terms (10-year). He resumed a lot of programs suspended earlier by previous presidents mainly because of priority issue(funding  issue).

2) Chinese presidents have welcomed the space exploration since Chairman Mao. This is the dream lies in Chinese history, especially if you understand the Chinese literature and poems. It will be a legacy to be remembered if any president could send human to the moon.

3) Chinese presidents are quite different from US presidents. Most Chinese presidents now are from engineering background and most US presidents are lawyers. I believe people know the difference between engineers and lawyers.

Just my three cents.


Offline Danderman

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #162 on: 01/23/2012 04:38 pm »
To repeat, the Chinese have no plans to land anyone on the Moon. Debating about the nature of a program that does not exist is rather pointless, because if the Chinese ever do decide to have a lunar landing program, the context of that decision will be much more important than anything else.


Offline Robotbeat

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #163 on: 01/23/2012 06:03 pm »
To repeat, the Chinese have no plans to land anyone on the Moon. Debating about the nature of a program that does not exist is rather pointless, because if the Chinese ever do decide to have a lunar landing program, the context of that decision will be much more important than anything else.
If we see a picture of a ground-test article of a lunar lander, then we know they are serious. Or if they start building a launch vehicle that can serve no other realistic purpose other than exploration. Another powerpoint isn't proving anything.

I would love for China to make a Moon landing attempt. It would most likely help NASA's chances for an ambitious mission like one to Mars to actually be funded. Or I suppose we could settle for a Moon landing. Either way, it would have a good chance of breaking the status quo of a flat budget for NASA. But I'm not going to get my hopes up unless there's something more than powerpoints for a Chinese Moon landing.

BTW, the article ( http://www.sinodefence.com/lunarexploration/manned-lunar-landing.asp ) does do a good job in saying that the approach for the first Chinese Moon landing hasn't been decided between a 100+ton launch vehicle and a multiple-launch approach using EELV-class launch vehicles.
« Last Edit: 01/23/2012 06:07 pm by Robotbeat »
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Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #164 on: 01/23/2012 07:55 pm »
To repeat, the Chinese have no plans to land anyone on the Moon.

It sure seemed to me that they do, based on the handful of translated articles I've read. 

From my understanding, I believe this is not PR stuff. ...

1) Former Chinese President Jiang Zeming was not ousted. ...

2) Chinese presidents have welcomed the space exploration since Chairman Mao. ... It will be a legacy to be remembered if any president could send human to the moon.

3) Chinese presidents are quite different from US presidents. Most Chinese presidents now are from engineering background and most US presidents are lawyers. I believe people know the difference between engineers and lawyers.

Just my three cents.

Not a bad post at all.

With my two cents, you'll have a nickle.  But remember, don't take any wooden nickles!

I'll stick with my prediction:  The Chinese will do what they can do in space.  If they want to put someone on the Moon, like they've said they want to, they have a lotta work to do.  So do we.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #165 on: 01/23/2012 08:03 pm »
If the Chinese have a Moon program, then we have a Mars program, an asteroid program, and a Moon program at the same time. Heck, throw in a Jupiter program while you're at it.

China is funding preliminary (paper) studies on going to the Moon. That is all. I'd love for them to step up their Moon plans. FAR from being a "threat" to NASA, it'd be an enormous boon.
« Last Edit: 01/23/2012 08:06 pm by Robotbeat »
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Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #166 on: 01/23/2012 11:31 pm »
If the Chinese have a Moon program, then we have a Mars program, an asteroid program, and a Moon program at the same time. Heck, throw in a Jupiter program while you're at it.

Throw in V-ger, and we also have an interstellar program.
« Last Edit: 01/23/2012 11:32 pm by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline sdsds

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #167 on: 01/24/2012 05:17 am »
If we see a picture of a ground-test article of a lunar lander, then we know they are serious. Or if they start building a launch vehicle that can serve no other realistic purpose other than exploration.

I'm not certain we can use those as measures of whether a program is serious.  We saw no ground test article of the CxP LSAM.  NASA did not start building Ares V.  Yet CxP was a serious attempt at human lunar exploration, albeit a failed one.

(This isn't a claim that China is as far along in their effort as CxP was.  They're obviously not.)
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Offline Robotbeat

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #168 on: 01/24/2012 03:46 pm »
If we see a picture of a ground-test article of a lunar lander, then we know they are serious. Or if they start building a launch vehicle that can serve no other realistic purpose other than exploration.

I'm not certain we can use those as measures of whether a program is serious.  We saw no ground test article of the CxP LSAM.  NASA did not start building Ares V.  Yet CxP was a serious attempt at human lunar exploration, albeit a failed one.

(This isn't a claim that China is as far along in their effort as CxP was.  They're obviously not.)
CxP wasn't a serious mission to the Moon, it was a serious attempt to get into LEO. They spent an inordinate amount of time, effort, and funding on Ares I and Orion. From the final show of things, Constellation never did develop a lander for there never was the budget for it. It stayed in the powerpoint stage, and still is and may remain there for at least another decade.

But at least for CxP, a serious attempt WAS made to develop the specialized lander engine (highly throttleable RL-10, also made to run on methane). We have no evidence of a similarly significant effort in that direction from the Chinese. And developing a very highly throttleable lander engine (thrust levels able to go down to 20% are necessary, but Apollo's lander engine could go down to even 10%) is not trivial.

I stand by my statement. CxP never made it to a manned Moon landing, did it?
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Offline Steven Pietrobon

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #169 on: 04/09/2013 04:13 am »
Some information from AW&ST

http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/AW_03_25_2013_p30-561101.xml&p=2

"The state space industry is scheduled during the current five-year planning period, 2011-15, to request government approval to develop a launcher for manned Moon missions, China Daily says in the same report. Since that planning period is already well underway, the industry must hope to launch full-scale development no earlier than 2016. The Moon rocket, with an 8-meter diameter, would loft 100 tons to low Earth orbit, making it smaller than the U.S. Saturn V used in the 1960s and 1970s. The Tianjin space manufacturing base has been sized for diameters up to 10 meters."

Previous reports has the CZ-9 at 130 t payload into LEO.
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Offline Steven Pietrobon

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #170 on: 11/07/2016 07:42 am »
Latest update on CZ-9 from China Space News, which is called Long March Heavy here. Performance is about 125 t. The vehicle is about 100 m high and is 10 m in diameter (the same as Saturn V). They say performance will be greater than SLS, but perhaps that is referring to Block IB which is claimed to put 105 t to LEO. The article says the vehicle is currently in development with critical technologies to be ready by 2020 (if my interpretation was correct).

"After the successful launch of Long March 5, the next members in Long March series will be Long March 8 and Long March Heavy. Mr. Lei expressed that China will keep increasing the investment in launch vehicle development. In the future, Long March family will add new commercial launchers. Heavy launch vehicle with over hundred ton capability is now in the critical development stage.

Mr. Lei said, "Our target is to complete the new generation launch vehicle system, perform maiden flight of Long March 8, and breakthrough the key technology in heavy launch vehicle by 2020."

According to the plan, heavy launch will have 10 m diameter and approximately 100 m length, and it will have 5 times launch capacity as the current launcher, and will have more launch capacity than SLS. The heavy launcher will fulfill Human Moon Exploration, Mars Sample Return, Solar system planet exploration and many other deep space exploration missions."
« Last Edit: 11/07/2016 07:43 am by Steven Pietrobon »
Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design #1:  Engineering is done with numbers.  Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.

Offline redliox

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #171 on: 11/07/2016 08:28 am »
According to the plan, heavy launch will have 10 m diameter and approximately 100 m length, and it will have 5 times launch capacity as the current launcher, and will have more launch capacity than SLS. The heavy launcher will fulfill Human Moon Exploration, Mars Sample Return, Solar system planet exploration and many other deep space exploration missions."

Sounds like, especially with a goal of 2020 (which beats SLS' manned deadline), they're passive-aggressively challenging NASA.
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Offline MATTBLAK

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #172 on: 11/07/2016 09:37 am »
What a pity the U.S, China, Japan and Europe can't all work together in building an International Lunar Outpost. With Long March 9, SLS, U.S. Commercial heavy lift and enhanced Ariane 6; there would be more than enough lifting capacity to go round! :(  And if that venture worked out - they could push on to Mars :)

Nice dream, eh...? :(
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Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #173 on: 11/07/2016 12:58 pm »
What a pity indeed.  We would have to stop waging elective war, in order to afford it.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline savuporo

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #174 on: 11/07/2016 02:16 pm »
I seriously hope they get over the heavier lift fixation, and just do an Apollo 8 with LM-5
Slim chance tho
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Offline notsorandom

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #175 on: 11/07/2016 03:59 pm »
According to the plan, heavy launch will have 10 m diameter and approximately 100 m length, and it will have 5 times launch capacity as the current launcher, and will have more launch capacity than SLS. The heavy launcher will fulfill Human Moon Exploration, Mars Sample Return, Solar system planet exploration and many other deep space exploration missions."

Sounds like, especially with a goal of 2020 (which beats SLS' manned deadline), they're passive-aggressively challenging NASA.
I read that as saying that the key technologies needed for the Heavy will be developed by 2020. The rocket itself will not be ready by then. I could be wrong in how I read that though.

Offline Phillip Clark

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #176 on: 11/07/2016 04:10 pm »
The Chinese have consistently predicted that the CZ-9 will start flying around 2030.
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Offline cjx007

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #177 on: 11/08/2016 05:22 am »
The Chinese have consistently predicted that the CZ-9 will start flying around 2030.

In the media conference after CZ-5, Secretary-general of CNSA specified it'll before 2030, the exact quote is "...around 2030, actually before 2030" IIRC. Design details of CZ-9 should finalised by 2020, informations are pointing maiden at 27-28(unconfirmed ofc).
« Last Edit: 11/08/2016 05:24 am by cjx007 »

Offline plutogno

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #178 on: 01/16/2017 11:42 am »
a Chinese paper on research for a manned lunar lander:

Design and Development of Landing Gear Technology for Manned Lunar Landing
http://jdse.bit.edu.cn/sktcxben/ch/reader/view_abstract.aspx?file_no=20160310&flag=1

Quote
A landing gear for manned lunar landing was designed base on the dynamic analysis of landing impact. System simulation analysis and calculation for lunar landing gear was done including the dynamics analysis, vibration response analysis and impact analysis of landing. The full-scale principle prototype of landing gear for manned lunar landing was established with the designing and simulation results, experimental verification was done base on the analysis and optimization result. The development laid the technical foundation for the large gathering ratio, large size, heavy weight, low overload of manned lunar landing gear.

the paper includes some nice pictures of the actual hardware being tested

Offline savuporo

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Re: China's manned Moon plans
« Reply #179 on: 01/16/2017 06:33 pm »
Nice find, attaching the paper and picture pages. note its from 2015
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