China completes first launch of Long March 8 rocket
The new colonial movement: China today successfully launched for the first time its new Long March 8 rocket, designed at some point to mimic the Falcon 9 by vertically landing its first stage and reusing it. (Note: link fixed!)
On this launch the rocket had no such recovery capability.
The leaders in the 2020 launch race:
34 China
25 SpaceX
15 Russia
6 ULA
6 Rocket Lab
The U.S. still leads China 40 to 34 in the national rankings.
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The new colonial movement: China today successfully launched for the first time its new Long March 8 rocket, designed at some point to mimic the Falcon 9 by vertically landing its first stage and reusing it. (Note: link fixed!)
On this launch the rocket had no such recovery capability.
The leaders in the 2020 launch race:
34 China
25 SpaceX
15 Russia
6 ULA
6 Rocket Lab
The U.S. still leads China 40 to 34 in the national rankings.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
What is interesting is that the reusable mode seems to be, launch with the center core (2 engines) and 4 strapons (1 engine each) and then land as a cluster of 5 cores, since now one engine has sufficient throttle/thrust control to actually land.
That is going to be interesting to debug and see! But it means single core, and three core models may not be recoverable, only the 5 core version. Eventually. One day. in the future.
Errata- the link under “today successfully launched” has a spike in it in the very first character.
So I wonder, recovering the booster in the coming years and decades will seem like a natural thing to do. The anomaly being the rush in the 50s and 60s to get anything up before the other side did as much, so accept the cost of disposable use-once rockets. And maybe the control systems were not up to the task, but I imagine they could have worked out something – they got them off the pads forgoshsakes.
David Telford: Thank you! Link fixed.