I know this is old, but it talks about Long March (Saturn V)
China Studies Moon Rocket
Mar 5, 2010
By Bradley Perrett
perrett@aviationweek.com
BEIJING
China is studying the design of a Moon rocket in the class of the Saturn V, as the Obama administration proposes canceling the U.S. successor to the Apollo launcher, Ares V.
The country also is developing another new rocket, the “medium thrust” Long March 7, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology says. This new launcher joins the Long March 5 heavy rocket and the Long March 6, which was mentioned last year and is now defined as a “small-thrust” launcher. Long March 5, 6 and 7 will form a family of rockets, it says.
Chinese space officials have said that the Long March 6 was based on the side boosters of the Long March 5. Those side boosters come in two sizes, which could be arranged variously as first or second core stages or as boosters. Long March 7 is therefore likely to be a more powerful combination of the same collection of equipment.
China said last year that development of Long March 6 had begun and that it would appear in 2013, a year before Long March 5.
The Long March 5 has a core diameter of 5 meters (16 feet) with boosters of either 3.35 meters or 2.25 meters, officials say. The 3.35 meter diameter, the same as that of the original Long March series (Long March 1, 2, 3 and 4) was chosen as the largest that would fit within the loading gauge of the Chinese railways, one program executive told Aviation Week last year. Established tooling could also be used with the 3.35 diameter booster, even though the materials and structural design would be different, that executive said.
But the facilities of the space industry base under construction at Tianjin will be adaptable to handle rocket diameters of 8 or even 10 meters, an official there said last year, hinting that the plant was prepared to build an equivalent of the Saturn V, whose first-stage diameter was 10.1 meters.
Confirming that such a Chinese Moon rocket is at the study stage, the vice-president of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, Liang Xiaohong, says it will have a thrust at lift off of 3,000 tons. The Saturn V’s S-1C first stage generated 7,648,000 lb. (3,470 metric tons) of thrust at sea level.
Liang says the payload of the Moon rocket has not been defined, which seems to suggest that the achievable launcher technology will determine the scope of the mission, rather than the desired mission determining the performance of the rocket.
The Chinese government has not authorized a manned Moon mission, but it is clear the country’s space sector is at least being allowed to prepare for one.
The latest announcements have been reported by Xinhua news agency and the China Daily, an English-language newspaper whose content is intended for foreign consumption.
Liang says Long March 5 launchers will be used in the preparatory stage of a Moon landing.
Potentially, there will be a lot of them. The Tianjin base will be able to build two a year when its first stage is completed in 2011 but its capacity will eventually rise to one Long March 5 per month.
About 100,000 square meters of workshops have been completed so far at Tianjin, with an initial investment of 1.5 billion yuan ($220 million). The final investment will be 10 billion yuan.
“A moon landing program is very necessary, because it could drive the country’s scientific and technological development,” the China Daily quotes Bao Weimin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as saying.
The Long March 5 will be needed for China’s plans for a full space station due to follow an unknown number of Tiangong laboratories before 2020. The station’s core module will have a mass of 20 tons. But Qi Faren, who designed the Shenzhou manned spacecraft, says the Long March 5 will first be used to launch the 8-9 ton Fengyun weather satellite to geostationary orbit. The current Long March series could not perform that mission.
Long March 5 will serve for 30 to 50 years, Liang says.
A modified Long March 2F will launch Tiangong 1 next year. Liang says that rocket has needed 170 modifications, including 38 major changes, to launch Tiangong 1, which will be initially unmanned but eventually able to accommodate astronauts performing experiments.
Photo credit: NASA
