China tested its new Long March 5 heavy lift rocket this past weekend. It’s an impressive machine that the mega-nation has been quietly developing for several years in hopes of opening up manned space exploration:
The new launcher family would meet the needs in the future launch service market, would be used to launch the modules for a large-scale space station, would help to maintain the development trend of China’s launch vehicle technology, and drive the development of economy and related high-techs in China with the development of new rocket engines, new welding techniques, upgrade the fight control systems, etc. The new development program would design a series of launch vehicles rather than one launcher made for a specific mission.
This is to enhance China’s capability of accessing space; would apply advanced technologies, such as the large diameter core and the powerful thrust engine to increase the launch capacity dramatically ...
That would have been a hell of a sight to witness in person.
Heavy lift is a big deal in space exploration because it takes a lot of power, what rocket engineers call specific impulse, to get out of the Earth’s tight gravitational grasp. It’s still amazing to think that 50 years ago, we had already developed a gigantic rocket that did exactly that. The mighty Saturn V that lofted man and machine to the moon and back. That bird could shoot over 100,000 lbs. clear into lunar orbit; enough that a three-man-command module and lunar descent spacecraft could make a roundtrip journey of more than half a million miles.
By comparison, China’s new heavy-lift vehicle is designed to lift only a fraction of that same payload to GTO or TLI. Sadly, the Long March 5 launch failed shortly after liftoff. At this time engineers aren’t sure why and no one was injured. But it goes to show that even after 50 years after Apollo and Saturn V, heavy lift beyond low Earth orbit still remains a difficult challenge.
from Daily Kos http://ift.tt/2tKNJH8
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