Chinese smallsat rocket company completes suborbital launch
iSpace, a Chinese smallsat rocket company, completed a suborbital test rocket launch today, releasing three cubesats.
The article at the link is very short and poorly written. It implies that two cubesats reached orbit, with a third returning to Earth using a parachute. This was clearly a suborbital flight
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iSpace, a Chinese smallsat rocket company, completed a suborbital test rocket launch today, releasing three cubesats.
The article at the link is very short and poorly written. It implies that two cubesats reached orbit, with a third returning to Earth using a parachute. This was clearly a suborbital flight
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the 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. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
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
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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.
“sub-orbital” ? Way too grandiose. Any shot that doesn’t put something into orbit is “sub-orbital”. We used call such beasts a “sounding rocket” and there’s been thousands of ’em launched since the late Forties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sounding_rocket
And no disrespect to the Chinese, there’s several companies around the world that have made their living building sounding rockets, welcome to the club, but lets call a “spade” a “god da@# shovel”
Just how does a sub orbital rocket launch place two cube sats into orbit and at the same time drops one into re-entry with a parachute?
Did the dang thing fall apart and they only found one cube sat so they came up with this poor cover story like the old Soviet union?
I suspect that it was poor writing or poor translation by this Chinese news organization. From the article: “After entering its preset orbit, the rocket will release two satellites for testing” from a (Chinese language) statement from the company.
A suborbital flight is an orbit that intersects the Earth, so the preset orbit would have been suborbital, and the two test CubeSats, released into that preset suborbital orbit, may have merely fallen back to Earth without parachutes.
It would have been nice for the article to have said more about the flight, such as altitude, and the tests that the CubeSats did.