This Week In Spaceflight covers China’s successful first landing of an orbital-class booster on the debut flight of the Chang Zheng 10B rocket, Blue Origin’s ongoing work at Launch Complex 36 and fit-
the change to hypergolic thrusters over hydrogen is probably mainly due to the fact that they are incredibly reliable, while hydrogen is a bitch to work with, especially on long duration missions which will see continuous dramatic temperature shifts. The chance of valves locking is much higher in this case as amply demonstrated by the recent performance of starliner, so they probably thought better be safe and stick with proven solution even if it means adding those extra fuel tanks which after all are rather tiny.
What is going to kill European launchers is their inability to hit a steady cadence because of restrictive regulations around how and when they can launch.
Saxavord, you can launch Mon/Wed/Fri during office hours ... so you can't do sun-synchronous orbits which is the main reason you would want a polar only launch facility!!!! I believe 11 times a year? This is why it will never be commercially viable, even being as far away as physically possible in the middle of the North Sea NIMBYs destroy everything in the UK.
Orbex goes bust and Skyrora has done nothing in 14 years.
Don't immediately jump in to blame China for the Australian beach balls, they have already been claimed by India from its PSLV launcher.
China caught up earlier than expected. Not just that, domestic competition is heating up, and you can expect a few more companies with reusable first stages popping up in the near future.
25:24 Notice all the black smoke coming from the top of the rocket? My guess is that their upper stage caught some electronics equipment on fire when it lit up and separated?
I'd love to see Isar finally get their 2nd launch off the ground but I'm pretty sure that Das, Max, and Dee don't mind the repeated vacations to Norway that Isar keeps giving them
I would have loved to see a better view of the Chinese wire-based booster capturing system in action. I am curious how it compares to the SpaceX Starship approach.
Aircraft carrier arresting cables have a breaking strength of roughly 150 to 250 tonnes-force and routinely stop 20 to 30-tonne aircraft landing at around 240 to 280 km/h. A reusable rocket capture is a different problem. The booster is not in free fall during the final capture. Its engines reduce the descent speed to near zero, so the cables only need to absorb the remaining kinetic energy and stabilize the vehicle. The reported Chinese system also uses about 8 cables with electromagnetic damping, allowing the load to be distributed and reducing peak forces. With high-strength cables and multiple load paths, the system should have a significant safety margin if the design specifications are correct. Whether it proves reliable in repeated real-world operations remains to be seen, but the underlying engineering principles and physics are sound.
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Orbex goes bust and Skyrora has done nothing in 14 years.
Don't immediately jump in to blame China for the Australian beach balls, they have already been claimed by India from its PSLV launcher.