For the past several years, there has been talk about a race to put the first methane/oxygen - fueled rocket payload into orbit. The talk has largely been about SpaceX's Starship, ULA's Vulcan, Blue Origin's New Glenn and the outlier, Relativity Space's Terran-1. None of those companies has made orbit although Relativity's contender came the closest. It had to; it was the only one that launched and staged.
No matter. The race is over. China's Zhuque-2 rocket successfully achieved orbit after launching from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert on Tuesday (July 11) at 9 p.m. EDT (0100 GMT or 9 a.m. local time on July 12). The Zhugue-2 was developed by a company as "commercial" as a Chinese company can get, called Landspace. The US Space Force confirmed Chinese reports that the methane-fueled rocket made it to orbit, according to a Twitter report by astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell.
It was a milestone effort for Zhuque-2, which suffered an anomaly during its debut flight on Dec. 14, 2022. Beijing-based Landspace issued a statement [note: it's in Chinese - SiG] shortly thereafter confirming that the second stage of the rocket was lost (along with a clutch of satellites) and that an investigation would ensue to find the cause, which has not yet been released.
There are different reasons for pushing toward methane/LOX fueling. As is always the case in engineering, there are tradeoffs of methane vs other fuels, all of them using liquid oxygen (LOX) as the oxidizer. In terms of specific impulse, methane isn't as high (good) as hydrogen, but it's easier to handle because it's liquid at much warmer temperatures ("warmer" here is relative - the boiling point is -260 F, hydrogen's is -423 F). The difference is enormous in practice; methane can be passively cooled while hydrogen requires active cooling and still tends to get out of the tank. In addition, hydrogen can embrittle many metals and cause cracks to form. It also leaves less residue than kerosene (rocket propellant 1, or RP-1) that the Falcon 9 uses. While methane is considered a "greenhouse gas" (see the hubbub over cattle farts), it's cleaner than RP-1, which is what turns flight proven Falcon 9s look black.
Finally, methane is easier to produce on Mars than the other common fuels, and the purpose of Starship is first and foremost to allow flights to Mars making it the slam dunk choice for the Raptor engines.
Zhuque-2 lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. CNSA Watchers on Twitter
Maybe. But SpaceX gives a better bang for the buck!
ReplyDeleteTo put things in perspective, the Soviets were the first in orbit. Need I say more?
ReplyDeleteYeah, maybe SpaceX screwed the pooch by going with a 33 engined methylox, probably could have used a Falcon sized booster with 1-3 Raptor engines as a test and to reach orbit first with a methane engine system and to work out the kinks in the Raptors.
ReplyDeleteBut... 10-1 the Chinese appropriated methane engine design details from both SpaceX and Blue Origin.
Damned, it hurts me to acknowledge that the Communist Chinese got there firstest.
But SpaceX will get there with the mostest.
I think the methalox race thing was a distraction. The thing that will make Starship historic is the reusability and historically low price per pound to orbit. What will keep it historic is the first cargo shipment to Mars - that contains parts for the first settlement.
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DeleteTry number 2:
DeleteYou are correct, SiG. it's "The firstest with the mostest!" - emphasis mine.
(PIMF - Preview Is My Friend)
The TQ-12 engine they used is open cycle, not closed like Raptor and the BE-4 and its specific impulse is barely better than the Merlin engine, according to Wikipedia. Using methane as the fuel for a lower tech engine is a marginal accomplishment. Any of the current major Western aerospace companies could have done that. SpaceX and the others are targeting re-use and and major changes in the mass of cargo-to-fuel ratios, plus the opportunity to re-fuel on Mars or elsewhere. Otherwise we'd keep using what we've already got.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that! Valuable information.
DeleteThat paints a whole different picture. You can run practically anything through an open cycle engine with only some variations (oversimplification of a complex issue, but, still, geeze, open cycle?)
DeleteSaying it's the first Methaloxe engine to achieve orbit in this case is very disingenuous to comparing it to SpaceX or even those losers at Blue Origins.
And that also explains why the rocket plum looks just like 'regular rocket engines'. It's a low power engine. Whodathunk?
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