China Unveils Smaller Copy of Starship and Superheavy

I have to start this by saying I wish I had more than one source for this, the weekly Teslarati email I get contains some information on the Chinese developing a copy of SpaceX's Starship for Low Earth Orbit flights.   They quote China's Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) but don't include any references I can link to.  They do include, though, a graphic showing the vehicle and a flight outline.  

If you're familiar with Starship from their test flights last year, the flight profile will look very familiar.  This graphic apparently originated at a February '22 meeting in which it was presented as a fully-reusable human-rated rocket that would replace the country's existing crew launch vehicles - at least for LEO.  Fueled, like SpaceX's next-generation rocket, by methane and oxygen (methalox), it's hard to look at the vehicle's upper stage and not think of it as a Starship copy.

We've known since 2019 that the Chinese have been experimenting with grid fins similar to the ones SpaceX uses on both Falcon 9 and the Superheavy booster.  There are many reports of other aerospace agencies attempting to build off the Falcon 9 concepts and achieve reusability.  While there are many claims that others are copying SpaceX, this Starship concept looks to remove all doubt.  

Note the similarity in the flight path, especially the right half of that graphic. The Second Stage clone would use the same profile SpaceX has developed, with two flaps on each side of the second stage at the front and back of the lander.  The lander will descend while decelerating in a horizontal position, and then flip to vertical at the very end of descent to perform a propulsive landing. 

The system seems to be smaller than Starship and that seems like it has to help them.  I think some of the difficulties SpaceX has with the system is partly from how big it is.  

Three main differences between Starship follow. First, China wants the rocket to be able to launch about 20 tons to LEO, while Starship is aiming for 100-150+ tons to the same orbit. Second, the booster appears to be a visually identical copy not of SpaceX's Super Heavy - but of Blue Origin's New Glenn first stage. Finally, instead of an ultra-high-performance engine like SpaceX's Raptor, China's next-gen crew launch vehicle would use a simpler gas generator engine cycle - less efficient but much easier to design, build, and make reliable.

The author of the email piece, Eric Ralph, had a positive take on the Chinese copying SpaceX.  I have to admit I'd never thought of it this way.  He talks about how ULA, Arianespace and Roscosmos have just puttered around paying lip service to reuse but doing essentially nothing to develop it, and while China has been slow, they seem to be actually doing something.

[...]The half-hearted stumbling about of formerly great launch providers makes China's strategy of observing what has worked and copying successful designs (or at least copying a company with a strong record of success) look like a stroke of brilliance. While the speed of the country's efforts to develop reusable rockets has left plenty to be desired, at least its space agencies, design bureaus, and startups are actually trying to seriously respond to and learn from SpaceX's successes.

I've long thought that the way SpaceX developed the technology was brilliant.  I could see from the way ULA CEO Tory Bruno talked that he thought it would cost way too much money to develop and he just saw the costs entirely differently.  SpaceX seemed to think that they sent up a Falcon 9 for hire and when the booster separated, it had just been thrown out.  It's now "free" as if they picked it out of a trash pile to experiment on.  They can tell the engines to turn on for a very minimal amount of extra cost, and guide it to where it could land.  As long as the primary mission of launching a customer's satellite was accomplished, and every launch coverage has stressed that was their crucial part, everything after MECO was teaching them more than if they dropped the booster in the ocean.  True, the recovery drones were an expense and I'm sure there were others, but those costs get amortized out over many recoveries - well over 100 at this time.

Chinese Long March 2 grid fins in 2019.  CASC Photo.