Good at 'copying technology', Vietnam's neighbor is accelerating: About to surpass the US?
In the 21st century race, who will cross the finish line first?
America worries about its leadership position
"SpaceX has signed a contract with NASA to deliver the Starship rocket-spacecraft system to take American astronauts to the Moon before China, but delays in licensing the Starship rocket for a test flight could derail that plan," Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX's vice president of construction and flight reliability, warned a few days ago at a hearing on Capitol Hill.
Currently, the 121-meter-tall, 5,000-ton Starship heavy-lift launch system is still "standing still" on the launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas, USA, completely ready for the second test launch attempt from early September 2023.
It is worth noting that SpaceX is still waiting for launch approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Space.com reported.
The Starship system (including the Starship spacecraft stacked on the Super Heavy rocket) is fully ready on the launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas, US. (Photo: SpaceX/PA)
Before this development, SCMP published an article titled "US rockets cannot take off, China has a leap forward in the race to the Moon " to talk about the possibility that China can land people on the Moon before the US in the 21st century, coinciding with Bill Gerstenmaier's concern when he said: " We will lose our dominant position in space and will have to witness China landing on the Moon before the US".
"There is no doubt. China will go to the moon before 2023," Wu Weiren, chief designer of China's Lunar Exploration Program, said in a social media post.
How do NASA and space analysts see this?
Even as Starship faces regulatory hurdles — and technical hurdles that have NASA officials publicly worried about its readiness by 2025 — the U.S. is well ahead of China in preparing for a crewed moon landing, space observers say.
China's lunar landing mission has a similar architecture to the Artemis III Program, which was approved by the Chinese government in early 2023 and is aiming for a launch date before 2030.
That's the claim. So how did China prepare its "hardware" before going to the Moon?
NASA said that China is actively developing heavy-lift rockets to serve this ambition. These include the Long March 9 and 10 rockets.
The main stepping stone to the Moon
In an article published in April 2023, NASA said that China has been very agile in "copying technology" to develop the Chang Zheng 9 (CZ-9; also known as the Long March 9 rocket).
The Long March 9 was originally designed to be similar to NASA's SLS rocket (the "backbone" of the Artemis Program), but over the years the rocket has been developed to be partially reusable.
Recently, as SpaceX's Starship system became more realistic, China changed the design to make the Long March 9 rocket a fully reusable launch system.
China hopes to land an astronaut on the surface of the Moon by 2030. (Source: Nasaspaceflight).
In 2021 — coinciding with SpaceX being selected by NASA to develop a lunar lander version of Starship as part of its planned Artemis III mission in late 2025 — China is heavily focused on developing the Long March 9.
In June 2021, the concept of a rocket without side boosters was first mentioned. Power for the first stage of the rocket is provided by 16 YF-135 RP-1 engines, each generating about 360 tons of thrust. Although reusability was not mentioned in this design, it appeared in the next step.
In April 2022, at a presentation at the Beijing Institute of Technology (China), Chinese scientists mentioned again that the Long March 9 rocket can be reused at least partially.
Around this time, China was focusing on upgrading the Long March 5 rocket to the Long March 10 - making it the main stepping stone to the Moon for China's space program.
The Long March 10 rocket is a three-core version of the Long March 5. Each core is 5 meters in diameter with the number of engines under each core increased to 7 YF-100K engines. Thanks to that, the Long March 10 can send up to 70 tons into low Earth orbit (LEO) and up to 27 tons to the Moon.
According to Chinese officials, the fifth and sixth launches of the Long March 10 will be the flights that involve the first Chinese crewed landing on the Moon. One flight will carry the lander, while the other will carry the launch and return modules.
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket with 27 super-massive engines can lift nearly 64 tons to LEO. (Photo: SpaceX).
NASA said the Long March 10 rocket followed the design of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket and appeared to be the "final step" in the design for the Long March 9 rocket.
The Falcon Heavy — one of the world's most powerful operational rockets — is comprised of three cores with a total of 27 reusable engines, generating the equivalent thrust of about 18 747 jets taking off at the same time. The Falcon Heavy can lift nearly 64 tons to LEO, SpaceX.com reported.
In the last update the public received on April 21, 2023, one day after SpaceX's Starship system first launched, the design of the multi-stage Long March 9 rocket was also solidified.
The first stage of the 9th Circuit will have 30 engines in a 3-9-18 configuration, with three engines being the center engines and 18 engines on the outer ring.
The rocket's third stage, powered by a YF-79 engine, provides extra speed to propel the spacecraft into its designated orbit. The design is very similar to Starship.
China plans to launch the Long March 9 in 2033. Meanwhile, the super-heavy rocket Long March 10 is expected to launch in 2027.
NASA says there's a lot of copycatting going on here, and China isn't even trying to hide it. But that could eventually open up an opportunity for them to catch up to the US, accomplishing the goal they want and have stated.
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