Chinese Tusheng Rocket - 130 tonnes to LEO

[MKSheppard]

Tusheng is their name for SATURN. No name has yet been given as they're still in preliminary studies.

Link

BEIJING, March 3 (Xinhua) -- China is studying the feasibility of designing a powerful carrier rocket for making a manned moon landing and exploring deep space, Liang Xiaohong, vice head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, told Xinhua Thursday.

The rocket is envisaged to have a payload of 130 tonnes, five times larger than that of China's current largest rocket, said Liang, who is attending the annual session of National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China's top political advisory body.

The diameter of the planned heavy-lifting rocket is expected to be two times that of the current largest one, said Liang, whose academy is responsible for the development.

He did not provide a timetable for the development, but said Chinese scientists had to acquire a number of advanced technologies to develop it.

According to him, the rocket would be an advanced model of China's next-generation carrier rockets, and the development of the first next-generation model, the Long March V, was going in accordance with plan.

With a maximum low Earth-orbit payload capacity of 25 tonnes and high Earth-orbit payload capacity of 14 tonnes, the Long March V rockets were expected to catch up with the U.S. Delta-4H rockets in payload capacity, he added.

China launched its first lunar probe, Chang'e-1, named after the country's mythical moon goddess, on Oct. 24, 2007. The probe ended its 16-month mission on March 1, 2009, when it was crashed into the moon's surface.

The second lunar probe, Chang'e-2, was launched on Oct. 1 last year. It entered its long-term lunar orbit on Nov. 3, beginning a six-month mission to take high-resolution images of the moon's Sinus Iridum, or Bay of Rainbows.

According to China's three-phase moon exploration plan, the first phase was the launch of Chang'e-2. The second will be when Chang'e-3 lands on the moon in 2013. Then, in 2017, a moon rock sample will be returned to Earth.

Space experts said the country would conduct more than 20 space missions this year as it accelerated efforts to improve space technologies.

Last year China conducted 15 space missions.

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So who's going to be at Hainan when this monster lights off?

[MKSheppard]

Actual name for SATURN is Tuxing. Edit window closed before I could change it.

[Pelranius]

At this rate, the Chinese will be building Sea Dragon and NEXUS sized rockets in twenty years' time.

At least someone is dreaming big when it comes to space.

[hongi]

If the goal is to get humans into space, does it matter which country does it? We're past the nationalist space races aren't we? I'd be quite happy to see China or the European Union do it if America can't.

[Sarevok]

Indeed.

China now represents the best hope for revival of manned spaceflight.

[PeZook]

If the goal is to get humans into space, does it matter which country does it? We're past the nationalist space races aren't we? I'd be quite happy to see China or the European Union do it if America can't.

Hopefully nationalist space races will rekindle, and thus we'll get several times the launch capacity for superheavy lifters

[someone_else]

Bah, at the end we will have chinese flag on the moon and what else?

Lunar prospecting and exploiting are what is needed to make a real step in space. And for that human physical presence in space isn't particularly critical.
As long as china mimics Apollo it's all a waste of money.

Although having bigger rockets (that don't cost too much) is always a good thing.

[Sarevok]

^^

While that is true any new HLV would be extremely useful in the kind of space exploitation you talk about. The Tusheng may be originally designed for a nationalistic moonshot purpose. Yet it could see a new life later as a bulk lifter should space mining and industrialization begin in earnest.

[PeZook]

Not to mention any meaningful mining effort will still require people to assemble and run at least some of the equipment.

[Sarevok]

Given the lack of serious HLV efforts on part of NASA, who knows perhaps China would become the only game in town when lifting payloads over 100 tons.

[K. A. Pital]

China can create a rocket with payloads similar to Energia? Awesome. We were just talking about this recently. This is excellent news. It might mean that the Mars mission is not a complete pipe dream, after all.

[Broomstick]

If the goal is to get humans into space, does it matter which country does it? We're past the nationalist space races aren't we? I'd be quite happy to see China or the European Union do it if America can't.

It's not that America can't, it's that America does not want to do it. There are some people such as Shep and myself who are definite supporters of the US going into space but the vast majority of the citizens don't give a fuck beyond their GPS units and satellite TV - if they are even aware that those two require space technology.

Maybe, if other countries start exploiting space, the US will get off its collective ass and become interested again. If not, fuck 'em, let someone else do it.

[Sarevok]

Well to be fair the US remains a pioneer in scientific exploration of spaces. Even in these gloomy days of Nasa they are sending probes to as far as Pluto and spearheading efforts to discover extrasolar planets. As a pure science organisation Nasa looks set to remain the finest of it's kind for a long time to come. It will be a long day before the first Indian Hubble equivalent enters orbit or a Chineese lander descends on Titan.

The problem of course is that space is being relegated to same status as the deep sea. A lot interesting science happens, people look at the pictures and read the articles. But ultimately it does not touch their lives. The vision of space as the final frontier is gone from America.

[Jeremy]

Any chance they will go for the Orbital Transfer Station approach to the Moon?

[KlavoHunter]

Here's to seeing China humiliate us until we can no longer ignore the space race again!

[PeZook]

Well to be fair the US remains a pioneer in scientific exploration of spaces. Even in these gloomy days of Nasa they are sending probes to as far as Pluto and spearheading efforts to discover extrasolar planets. As a pure science organisation Nasa looks set to remain the finest of it's kind for a long time to come. It will be a long day before the first Indian Hubble equivalent enters orbit or a Chineese lander descends on Titan.

Better: even the countries that now launch their own probes cooperate with NASA, and their robots carry instrumentation designed and built by NASA engineers (yes, even Chinese ones). Then there's the sheer amount of science NASA is doing.

Check out the list of current missions.

[someone_else]

While that is true any new HLV would be extremely useful in the kind of space exploitation you talk about.

While I certainly hope so, I think it's unlikely. HLV are costly affairs to both design and run, and developing one for a nationalistic purpose (i.e. not exactly with cost and commercial use in mind) isn't going to result in a particulary competitive way to reach orbit imho.
Saturns were retired due to their supposedly high cost (although with hindsight ended up as being far cheaper than Shuttle program).

Something that I'd love they gave a try instead of HLV would be orbital fuel depots, or Momentum-exchange tethers.

Just to give a hint, Apollo Spacecraft fully loaded weighted 4 tons and the Earth Orbit departure stage weighted 14 tons unloaded plus some 105 tons of fuel. The fuel can be brought up with cheap not-so-reliable rockets (theorically one million $ per ton and 1/3 launches ending in failures, so let's say 160 launches and a total cost of around 200 millions) in a few months, while both vehicles can be brought to LEO with the launch of a single Proton (115 millions a pop) when the fuel is all in orbit.

Designing Saturn V costed around 37 billion modern dollars, while building one costed just a little above 2 billions. And add to that the cost of mantaining the infrastructure needed to prepare and launch HLVs, that is measured in billions anyway.
Saturn's LEO payload was 127 tons, and an eyeballed cost would be somewhat more than 20'000 bucks per kg, up to 30'000 per kg or even more (depending on how much "sunken costs" you have, so to speak). This is on the higher end of the launch costs.

The catch for the other way is that noone has yet refuelled anything in orbit, but that's something that could very well prove cheaper (albeit maybe a little more tricky) than designing (and operating) a new HLV for any extended period of time.
The bigger benefit is that it would be very useful for commercial use (like placing stuff in GEO) due to its low costs.
HLVs tend to be complex and expensive to operate, their size limits the number of launches per year and the number of (more expensive) pads that can handle them is limited (= more fuel-intensive to place stuff in the right orbit). Not that attractive for commercial use.

To sum it up, boldly go where others went 4 decades before, carefully following their steps, doesn't earn them any cookie from me.

Not to mention any meaningful mining effort will still require people to assemble and run at least some of the equipment.

In a spacesuit?
The Moon-Earth lag is around 1 second (although works both ways so it's more like 2 seconds), and shipping humans around is incredibly annoying, both for life support and food weight and far superior reliability needed by the vehicles to not end in disaster too often (and when failure isn't an option, success gets very expensive).
The vast majority of things on the moon can be done by teleoperated robots. They will go slow, but there is no reason to hurry.

[PeZook]

To sum it up, boldly go where others went 4 decades before, carefully following their steps, doesn't earn them any cookie from me.

Actually, it's "boldly go where only one very advanced nation has gone before". If they manage to develop a HLV, it's an important technological milestone that proves their industry's capability to build advanced rockets. You can ridicule the fact they're catching up all you want, but some things you just can't go around.

In a spacesuit?

Yes. Our capability to remotely conduct industrial projects is nonexistent, even in the easily accessible environment of our own damn planet and with very small projects.

Remote operations (at our current level) are great when you use disposable probes, but not when you want to construct buildings and operate industrial machinery continuously for years, which will inevitably require maintenance and repairs that will exceed the capability of one of your robots or another, not to mention raise issues with signalling, radio pollution...

Remotely troubleshooting and fixing problems is incredibly difficult, as was shown with the whole BP fiasco. It would've been vastly simpler if we could've just sent a bunch of people to walk around on the bottom of the ocean. And with commercial enterprises, a two month production delay when you send up new specialized robots is not very desireable.

The Moon-Earth lag is around 1 second (although works both ways so it's more like 2 seconds), and shipping humans around is incredibly annoying, both for life support and food weight and far superior reliability needed by the vehicles to not end in disaster too often (and when failure isn't an option, success gets very expensive).
The vast majority of things on the moon can be done by teleoperated robots. They will go slow, but there is no reason to hurry.

What do you mean, there's no reason to hurry? If we want to exploit lunar resources, then there is very good reason to hurry, namely that we'd like to utilize these resources some time within a century from initating the project

[MKSheppard]

Link

World's largest rocket production base takes shape in China
Xinhua, March 3, 2011

The world's largest design, production and testing base for rockets is being built in north China's Tianjin Municipality, Liang Xiaohong, deputy head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, told Xinhua Thursday.

The first phase of the rocket industrial base in Tianjin's Binhai New Area will be completed within the year. Rocket parts will be designed, manufactured, assembled and tested at the base, Liang said.

Twenty of the 22 plants have been completed, and some of them are ready for operation. The base is designed to meet China's growing demand in space technology research and development for the next 30 to 50 years, he added.

By integrating the industrial chain, the base will be able to produce a whole spectrum of rockets of different sizes and types for China's moon probe project, space station and other projects, he said.

China's new rockets, including Long March IV, will be designed and manufactured in the 200-hectare base, he said.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Sometimes I'm sad that the Russians never got around to build a Vulkan rocket which would be as close as one could get to the Saturn.

[MKSheppard]

While that is true any new HLV would be extremely useful in the kind of space exploitation you talk about.

While I certainly hope so, I think it's unlikely. HLV are costly affairs to both design and run, and developing one for a nationalistic purpose (i.e. not exactly with cost and commercial use in mind) isn't going to result in a particulary competitive way to reach orbit imho.

Something that I'd love they gave a try instead of HLV would be orbital fuel depots, or Momentum-exchange tethers.

You know, this is the same stupid crap I keep seeing on so called "neuSpace" supporting blogs and forums -- that we don't need 33 foot diameter HLVs with 100+ tonne capacities; that we'll put everything into orbit in penny packets.

They usually then point to the ISS as proof that something like this can be done and point out that ISS was assembled in orbit from 15 modules, each with about 25~ metric tons mass.

The average cost for a Delta IV Heavy capable of putting 25.8 metric tonnes into LEO is about $300m per launch. This is actually $150m less than a Shuttle flight.
It took 27 shuttle flights to deliver the modules into orbit, perform logistics resupply missions and carry crew into orbit to give ISS the manpower in orbit to assemble things.

That's a cost of $8.1 billion dollars with Delta IV Heavies over 27 launches to assemble a 35,000 ft3 station weighing 400 metric tons.

By contrast, Skylab took only one launch on a two-stage Saturn V to place into orbit a 10,000 ft3 station weighing 74 metric tons. No resupply flights were needed during the three Skylab missions because Skylab carried all the food, water, and oxygen needed to support 171 days of occupancy into orbit by itself.

So let's assume that our notational HLV costs a billion dollars each launch and can place 100 metric tons into LEO. This capacity is used during each launch to place a 75 ton station module comparable in size to Skylab, along with a 25 ton orbital manouvering/docking module that we use to manouver it into an orbit and then dock with other station modules.

Three HLV launches at $1 billion each = $3 billion to place a 300 ton station with 30,000 ft3 of inhabitable volume into space.

Of course; you will need a couple of manned flights during assembly. So lets say we need a crew on each 100 ton station/manouvering module when we dock it to the overall station complex.

That's two Delta IV Heavy launches -- or about $600 million; so total assembly cost rises to about $3.6 billion.

That's just for space stations.

Interplanetary robotic probes make the case even more for HLVs.



Data is extracted from a whole bunch of sources.

The largest interplanetary probe so far was Cassini-Huygens, a 5,560 lb probe exploring Saturn and it's moons. It required 20 km^2s-2 to leave Earth orbit and begin its mission.

As you can see from the graph above; the best we can do with current launch vehicles for this mission is about 10,000 to 16,000 pounds. (Cassini was launched by a Titan IVB in 1997).

If we had something comparable to Saturn V or Ares V (both without Centaur); we could then send 75,000 to 87,000 lbs to Saturn.

We could even launch THREE 20,000 lb probes so we would have assurance of the mission not being aborted if one probe fails -- and if all three survive, we can get more coverage from more locations with a lot more sensors.

Sending multiple probes on a single launcher was also used in the original proposal for the Voyager Mars Lander Program -- the name was recycled later by NASA for the Grand Tour.

Under Voyager(Mars) a Saturn V would have been used to land one of the following on Mars:

1 x 5,000 lb science payload inside a 26,200 lb lander
or
2 x 3,100 lb science payloads -- each inside a 13,100 lb lander
or
3 x 1,760 lb science payloads -- each inside a 6,200 lb lander
or
6 x 370 lb science payloads -- each inside a 2,000 lb lander
or
12 x 150 lb science payloads -- each inside a 1,400 lb lander

By contrast, the Viking landers which landed in OTL had a 200~ pound scientific payload inside a 1,261 pound lander.

But remember, we don't need heavy lift for unmanned robots!

[MKSheppard]

Just to give a hint, Apollo Spacecraft fully loaded weighted 4 tons

Teh Apollo CSM weighed 66,900 lbs fully loaded (30.3 tonnes) and the Apollo LEM weighed 32,400 lbs fully loaded (14.7~ tonnes).

The fuel can be brought up with cheap not-so-reliable rockets

First we need to put the 15~ tonne S-IVB up into orbit. That's gonna cost at least $300m with a Delta IVH.

No, you are not allowed to use Proton. Hypergolic fuel cleanup costs are bad PR.

Then we need to move up about 133 tonnes of fuel (105 for S-IVB, 18 for CSM and 10 for the LEM).

So lets look at your options for super cheap rockets that aren't bullshit SSTO like Aquarius and have at least a reasonable chance of succeeding -- the majority of orbital debris around the Earth is from exploding upper stages and the world will hate you if you cause a cascade debris impact event that blocks off certain LEO bands for decades.

Falcon 1e: 1 metric ton into LEO at $11 million. Total Cost of $1.4 billion for 133 launches.

Falcon 9: 10 metric tons into LEO at $56 million. Total Cost of $784 million for 14 launches.

Then on top of all that, you need to launch the LEM and and CSM. The LEM can be launched unfuelled. But you need to launch the CSM partially fuelled at around 20.8 metric tons to provide an abort to orbit capability.

So that's 23~ metric tons you need to put into orbit to finish all this off. That's another $300m.

So, the total sum of your launch costs will be $1.3 billion if you use two Delta IVHs to place the S-IVB, CSM+LEM into orbit, and 14 Falcon 9s to place the fuel into orbit.

PS -- we haven't even done fuel transfer between two orbiting spacecraft on a large scale yet, and you want to make it central to your entire scheme? Bad Someone_else!

Even more fun -- now you have to make sixteen rocket launches go off perfectly -- with the timely success of the mission riding on each launch.

In 2010, the world had 4 failures in 74 launches. In 2009 it was 5 failures in 78 launches.

That's a rough failure rate of 5 to 6 percent; meaning that your moon trip has about a 75% chance of an exploding rocket over 16 launches. That means delays.

Delays mean more cryogenic boil-off of propellant in orbit, meaning more fuel has to be shipped up to LEO.

A much better idea is to use the first two or three flight tests of your heavy launch vehicle to send inflatable habitats, food, water, oxygen, lunar rovers; etc to the moon. I'm sure you can get about 30-40 tonnes onto the moon each launch.

Later, when you finally launch your first manned moon mission, your astronauts already have the makings of a moon base on the surface -- essentially Lunar Surface Rendevous (LSR).

[Sarevok]

What about building large NERVA type spacecraft in space and maintaining orbital fuel depots to service them ? Is that uneconomical too ?

[K. A. Pital]

Sometimes I'm sad that the Russians never got around to build a Vulkan rocket which would be as close as one could get to the Saturn.

It also would be much more modern than the Saturn, making it a better rocket. Alas, alas. Fingers crossed for the PRC project.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Sometimes I'm sad that the Russians never got around to build a Vulkan rocket which would be as close as one could get to the Saturn.

It also would be much more modern than the Saturn, making it a better rocket. Alas, alas. Fingers crossed for the PRC project.

Are there any plans to scale up the Angara project?