Chinese pseudo-private company buys engines for its reusable rocket
The pseudo-private Chinese rocket company, Rocket Pi, has signed a deal with another pseudo-private Chinese company, Jiuzhou Yunjian, to build the engines the former will use in its proposed reusable Darwin-1 rocket.
I call these pseudo-private because — while they both have raised independent Chinese investment capital and are structured and appear to operate as private companies, they remain entirely under the supervision of the Chinese communist government, most especially its military wing. Nothing they do is done without that government’s permission, even if they are launching entirely private payloads.
Nonetheless, both companies are real, and have been proceeding aggressively towards the first launch of Darwin-1 in ’23. There is every reason to expect them to succeed.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The pseudo-private Chinese rocket company, Rocket Pi, has signed a deal with another pseudo-private Chinese company, Jiuzhou Yunjian, to build the engines the former will use in its proposed reusable Darwin-1 rocket.
I call these pseudo-private because — while they both have raised independent Chinese investment capital and are structured and appear to operate as private companies, they remain entirely under the supervision of the Chinese communist government, most especially its military wing. Nothing they do is done without that government’s permission, even if they are launching entirely private payloads.
Nonetheless, both companies are real, and have been proceeding aggressively towards the first launch of Darwin-1 in ’23. There is every reason to expect them to succeed.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Is this the technical challenge to building a reusable booster? Having rocket engines that can fire, shut off and then fire again to safely land the booster?
Currently, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are the only boosters that have launched an actual payload into orbit and then safely landed, to be reused in a later flight?
Steve Richter asked: “Is this the technical challenge to building a reusable booster? Having rocket engines that can fire, shut off and then fire again to safely land the booster?”
Relightable rocket engines have been around for a long time. This is not the limiting factor. Major problems that engineers considered limiting were the stresses on the engines during reentry from the vacuume of space. An orbital booster has a horizontal velocity of around a mile per second, and must fall from above the Karman line, so it will have a large velocity as it reaches the denser parts of the atmosphere.
Reusing a first stage had seemed impractical for most rocket engineers, although there was an idea to redesign the Saturn V first stage with wings to return for a runway landing and later reuse. This would have been used for the Space Shuttle, and it would have protected the engines in a similar way as the Shuttle. Some engineers thought there was another possibility: propulsive reentry.
Some engineers with this second opinion went to work at SpaceX and applied a reentry burn that slows the Falcon booster stage to a more acceptable speed through the thicker atmosphere. Blue Origin’s booster did not have as much velocity to bleed off during reentry, so they don’t need the reetry burn, but I have noticed that the maximum speed of the New Shepard booster is similar to the speed that Falcon slows to during reentry.
By building reusable boosters, both Blue Origin and SpaceX have reduced the performance of their overall rocket systems, but the reduced costs of the launches have more than made up for the difference.