I ask you to build tractors, but you build rockets?

"Asian Star? The Asian Ace Pigeon is just about the same. JAXA and these red deer, they jointly develop moon landing rockets with India? Do they want our astronauts to go to the moon in a cow shit spacecraft?!"

When the "Asia Star" moon landing plan was announced, and the two countries had many exchanges and formal consultations in the following week, the whole world was a little stunned.

The first thing worth complaining about is the name, Asia Star? Even though such a big guy from China doesn’t say he is the Star of Asia, why are you two sleeping dragons and phoenixes called the Stars of Asia?

Xiao Okada directly tweeted angrily at JAXA, what level do you dare to call Asia Star? It's more like an Asian orangutan.

Moreover, another disadvantage of the H-X (JAXA codename of Asia Star Rocket) rocket is its configuration. It cannot be said to be exactly the same as SLS. It can only be said that they have the same origin.

The core stages of four LE-9 hydrogen-oxygen engines and two five-stage SRBs can be placed there to form a scaled-down version of SLS.

Moreover, the rocket body and engine technology of the island country are derived from the "Delta-1" rocket technology purchased by Aramco after Aramco deregulated in the 1970s. India's S200 thrust technology obviously also comes from Aramco.

So...is this a monkey version of SLS created by Ami Technologies?

But what is interesting is that the low-month transfer orbit transportation capacity of the H-X rocket with a take-off thrust of 2,200 tons and the SLS rocket with a take-off thrust of 3,900 tons seem to be about the same. The former is 23 tons and the latter is 27 tons.

This is of course not how powerful the two LE-5B gas generator cycle 10-ton hydrogen and oxygen engines that the island country plans to use for the H-X second stage are, but the second stage of SLS Block 1 only uses one RL-10B engine with a thrust of only 11.2 tons, significantly reducing the carrying capacity.

Of course, the latter is not only limited to two units, but even the SLS Block2 using two RL-10B engines cannot defeat the "Blue Moon" lander and spacecraft that Blue Origin spent US$3.4 billion to develop.

SLS Block2 is a cargo rocket, mainly used to transport a large number of payloads to low-Earth orbit. This configuration will not be used for the early moon landings of the Artemis plan.

So if the SLS Rockets could speak, they would definitely point at H-X and say: There are no heroes, so Zhuzi became famous.

But the Asia Star project... How should I put it? Looking at the H-X rocket alone, it seems to be pretty similar. Like the SLS, all engines are off-the-shelf and the rocket body is all mature technology, so there are no difficulties.

The island nation of manned spacecraft does not seem to lack technology. India's Gaganyan project also obtained a lot of information from Lucia, and the theoretical feasibility is quite good.

But in reality...

The third brother + an island country, two countries that are not very reliable in the field of aerospace, engage in an operation of the level of manned moon landing. It is scary to think about it.

Of course, not all countries are unfavorable.

Yuri, director of the Lucia Space Agency, expressed his support for the independent space program of Indian friends, and Lucia can provide all help for the Asia Star project.

The third brother was extremely moved. The director of the space agency said that he would visit Moscow in the near future for detailed consultations.

The Aviation Development Committee said nothing, knowing that Lao Maozi was about to wield the dragon-slaying knife to kill the white elephant again, so he just watched the excitement quietly.

…

On October 15, Steadfast ushered in its fifth manned launch mission, once again sending eight tourists and two professional astronauts into space.

The day before, the Long March 7A rocket arrived in Qiongzhou.

Its chief engineer Feng Ruixing also went to the Qiongzhou launch site with the R\u0026D team.

The basic Long March 7 is a first-stage and a half configuration. The first flight this time is the Long March-7A, a three-stage and a half configuration, with an additional third stage of a hydrogen and oxygen machine.

The original Long March 7 of the world line used seven YF100 liquid oxygen kerosene engines with a take-off thrust of 727 tons. It was originally launched in June this year.

The current improved version of the new Long March 7 has major changes in the recovery mode and configuration.

First of all, in the development process of the New Changqi, in order to reduce the workload of the recovery control system, only one YF100K was used for the 3.35-meter-diameter rocket body at the core level, while the four boosters with the same 3.35-meter diameter were each equipped with two YF100Ks. .

This leads to a question. If the overall recovery booster is not separated, then the booster's fuel will be consumed in just over 100 seconds, and more than half of the core-stage fuel that stores the same amount of fuel will be left?

If the core-stage YF100K continues to fly with its four heavy boosters, it will be over. How heavy it is, and the load coefficient must be terrible.

So after careful consideration, Feng Ruixing made the decision. Anyway, it was a total recovery, so the booster and the fuel tank of the core stage were connected. The first stage and the booster actually shared the fuel tank as a whole.

This ensures that the nine engines consume the same amount of fuel, and then shut down as a whole during separation until the core-stage engine starts for recovery.

This is very similar to Lucia's "Proton" series of rockets. You think it's a booster bundled outside, but it's not.

The other is the secondary engine. It was originally planned to use four YF-115 oxygen-rich staged combustion cycle liquid oxygen kerosene engines, with a vacuum thrust of 18.75 tons and a total thrust of 75 tons.

The YF115 has small thrust, low specific impulse, and low thrust-to-weight ratio. It can be said that its performance is terrible. Four YF115s can actually be replaced by one YF77. What's more, the YF77 is a hydrogen-oxygen machine with a specific impulse of more than 400 seconds, far exceeding the kerosene machine. If it is used As a secondary engine, the performance of YF77 will increase significantly.

But the problem is YF77, it is unreliable!

The Long March 7 is meant to carry people, and it will be the main force for the future space agency to carry a new generation of manned spacecraft. You must not take the risk of using the YF77 that was blown up not long ago.

But Feng Ruixing really didn't want to reduce the poor carrying coefficient of Long March 7, so in the last two months, he used the H80 hydrogen-oxygen engine purchased by the space agency from Xinyuan.

The H80 has a sea level thrust of 80 tons and a vacuum thrust of 112 tons, which is a bit larger, but the thrust is adjustable in a wide range and is very stable, directly replacing four YF115s.

In this way, the carrying capacity of the basic two-stage and a half Long March 7 has increased from the originally set 20 tons to 25 tons. If it is not recycled, it can even reach a carrying capacity of 32 tons, which is similar to the old Long March 5.

Now the data of Long March 7 is much better, and the launch cost has not increased. The average cost of ten launches is only 155 million yuan per time, which is so cheap that the space agency sheds tears.

The model that flew this time was the Long March 7A. A three-stage rocket using a YF75 hydrogen-oxygen engine was added to the second stage. Each rocket has a vacuum thrust of 8 tons. It carries a single rocket with a mass of 2.8 tons. There are three rockets in total. The two lunar orbiting resource exploration satellites are "Laoyue" 1 to 3.

These three satellites are jointly manufactured by Xinyuan and the National Space Administration for exploring the distribution of resources in the south pole of the moon and other places. Each of them is equipped with a 1.5N high-thrust Hall thruster provided by Xinyuan, which can support multiple missions. Orbital change operation for flexible survey tasks.

Compared with the part-time "Magpie Bridge", "Yuegui" is much more professional.

Xinyuan originally planned to use the Xinyuan 5B rocket to launch, but the Space Administration guaranteed it for free.

They also believe in the quality of the space agency's rocket. At least the launch will be no problem. The hydrogen and oxygen machine in the second stage is made by Xinyuan. The YF100K is also a cousin of the K120, so there is no big problem.