China rejoices – the country's lunar program has taken a new height. Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulated the entire Chinese people on the successful return of the lunar soil capsule to Earth. However, this huge success is only the first step towards the implementation of China's much more ambitious plans in space. When and with what missiles will China be able to send a man to the moon and even to Mars?
Beijing's far-reaching plans to explore the Moon were announced four years ago, after the first successful launch of the Changzheng-5 rocket, which delivered the Chinese "moon scooper" – "Chang'e-5"to the Moon. The same one that ensured today's triumph of China – the collection of soil on the Moon and its successful delivery to Earth, the first such operation in many decades, since the successful missions of the USSR and the United States.
However, the lunar soil is only the beginning. At a festive press conference after the launch of Changzheng-5, the chief engineer of the Chinese State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry of the Defense Complex officially announced that work on the project of the super-heavy rocket Changzheng–9 (CZ – 9, in Russian translation-"Great Campaign-9") is already actively underway. And the first flight of this huge carrier is scheduled to take place before 2030. What does all this mean for China's prospects for space exploration?
Chinese Heavyweight
Changzheng-9 will be a super-heavy rocket capable of launching up to 140 tons into low Earth orbit (LEO) and up to 50 tons on a flight path to the Moon. It is on its capabilities that the future Chinese manned lunar program should be based.
After all, the main aspect of the current mission was not even the fence of the lunar soil or landing on the Moon, but the development of the technology of returning to Earth with a second cosmic speed. The Chang'e-5 landing capsule is a smaller Soyuz launch bay (faru), which was just planned for returning lunar missions. During its return, Chang'e-5 performed a classic double entry into the Earth's atmosphere, using it to extinguish its high speed, which is about 11 km/s when returning from lunar orbit.
Returning to the "Changzheng-9", it becomes clear why it has already been called "Chinese Saturn-V" behind its back: its exceptional capabilities are based on China's main ambitions in the development of the Moon and planets of the Solar system. It has already been announced that one of the test, unmanned missions of Changzheng-9 will be the delivery of Martian soil to Earth. This rocket will allow China to easily put at least 44 tons of payload on the flight path to the Red Planet,which is enough for the most ambitious tasks.
However, with the creation of the Changzheng-9, there are engineering problems that shift its first launches somewhere in the area of the early 2030s. According to the plan, the central block "Changzheng-9" will be nine meters in diameter (photos of the support ring made for this block of the corresponding sizes leaked to the press). More recently, the current diameter of the already mastered in the production of "Changzheng-5" was unattainable for the Chinese industry: the previous generation of Chinese missiles had a diameter of a single block with a limit of 3.35 meters (railway dimension).
But for Changzheng-5, the Chinese mastered the production of five-meter elements and completely rebuilt the logistics of ground transportation of missiles, moving away from the railway to sea transport and transferring rocket launches from the continental Jiuquan cosmodrome to the island Wenchang cosmodrome, located on the tropical coast of Hainan Island. This question, by the way, will be fundamental for future lunar projects of Russia – after all, all our rockets are also connected with the maximum railway size, which largely limits their maximum size.
Why the "nine" will not fly tomorrow
The Chinese "nine" will make the most of the existing industrial and technological reserve in the upper stages, but for the lower, most powerful and heavy stages, it will be necessary to do something unique and super-powerful. Therefore, the already solved task of making a solid nine-meter support ring in the future will be only one of the small steps on China's path to a solid and reliable super-heavy rocket.
So far, several layout options are being worked out for the Changzheng-9: a central hydrogen or kerosene unit, accelerators on kerosene or solid fuel. From the" childhood disease " of Chinese missiles, inherited from the Soviet ICBMs-high-boiling components of NDMG+AT, apparently, the Chinese are already finally leaving. Still, launching rockets, and in the future definitely manned, on a highly toxic "stinky" is still a pleasure.
China already has its own rocket engines. The initial groundwork that the Chinese received from Russian and Ukrainian engineers, they were able to rethink and redo more than once, reaching new frontiers in creating their own products. in particular, china has already mastered the production of kerosene-oxygen lre with a thrust of more than 500 tons and 150-ton solid-fuel accelerators. So there are several worthy solutions for the first stage of Changzheng-9.
For the Chinese "nine" it is necessary to develop a new hydrogen engine, which so far has been conditionally called YF-220 and should have a thrust of around 200 tons. In case of successful creation, this engine will quite stand on a par with the best examples of the American (J-2, 104 tons of thrust; RS-25, 220 tons of thrust) and Soviet (RD-0120, 200 tons of thrust) hydrogen propulsion program. However, for this, the PRC will still need at least five years of hard work, which clearly shifts the real launches of the Changzheng-9 somewhere beyond the 2030 mark. but competitors do not sit idly by!
the "cut" option for china
In its program of exploration of the moon and deep space, China is taking a classic, "gradual" approach. For this, the Chinese space program has already been dubbed the "inevitable turtle", giving a reference to the famous fable of Aesop and the Disney cartoon about the competition of the Turtle and the Hare, in which the slow but purposeful Turtle overtook the fast but boastful Hare.
In the current "lunar", and in the future, the "Martian race" so far, the United States and, in particular, Elon Musk's SpaceX company are the hare. So even in China, they thought – and decided to "lay the straw" until the creation of their"Changzheng-9". And then, who knows-what if the Hare really comes to the finish line first?
Of course, with Changzheng-9, the lunar manned program looks perfect in general: with one launch of this rocket, you can throw the entire manned mission, with orbital and landing blocks, onto the flight path to the Moon. But with the existing "Changzheng-5", on the contrary, the mission looks "at the limit of probability": for its assembly in low-Earth orbit, at least four consecutive successful launches of "fives"are required.
Taking this into account, at the National Space Conference in 2020, an intermediate version was announced, which received the conditional name "Rocket 921". Like the Changzheng-5, the proposed 921 Rocket will use blocks five meters in diameter. The growth of the capabilities of the" 921 " is planned to be provided by increasing the thrust of the side launch boosters. They will also be five-meter, and each of them will put seven kerosene engines YF-100K, instead of the two that are now on each of the side blocks "Changzheng-5".
at the same time, the launch weight of the "rocket 921 "will increase to 2,200 tons against 867 tons of the"changzheng-5". this is much less than the planned launch weight of 4,100 tons for the "nine", but still allows you to ensure each lunar launch due to two consecutive launches of the "921", and not four, as in the existing chinese "five". well, the advantageous difference from the "nine" is that the "rocket 921" will be 100% built on the already existing and well-developed industrial technological reserve, and the launch infrastructure of the spaceports will need minimal alteration.
Therefore, the first launch of "921" is planned to be carried out by 2025-2026.
the proposed chinese crewed lunar mission will use two "921" rockets: one will launch a crewed spacecraft, and the second will launch a lunar lander. both components themselves launch to the moon, and the approach takes place already in lunar orbit. So it is not for nothing that Chang'e-5 also looked like a "smaller copy" of the manned lander when landing on the moon. It, again, worked out the elements of the future Chinese manned lunar program.
well, the chinese turtle brought the lunar soil to earth as a nice bonus. Just like that, in his slow but inevitable race to the moon.
alexey anpilogov