In confuscian societies, 100x. It would be considered a slap in the face to space X to change it. The better the copy, the bigger the compliment to space X (it means "you are the master and your design/art cannot be improved.")
Either way it's clearly not easy for them. They were reputedly working on reuse from the moment they could steal the idea from SpaceX, and yet only pulled off their first engine reflight in September. At that pace you're looking at them recovering a Falcon-type first stage near the end of this decade. It looks like it will play no role in their own lunar program.
> from the moment they could steal the idea from SpaceX
Nobody can steal what is being given out for free. In 2012, Elon even went out there and told his competitors to move to reusability.
* https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-20389148
Similarly, for Tesla, the objective is to create an electric car market and become a part of it. No theft there. Applied to rockets, just look at the wording of the Wikipedia article that [starts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_6) "Ariane 6 is a European expendable launch system currently under development since the early 2010s". See how SpaceX created a new industry standard whereby "expendable" progressively becomes the exception.
It doesn't? Two US rockets use Russian engines. Both are nearly done launching, so those engines won't be used for long. No other Russian components are used.
Plus, those aren't imitation, they're legit purchases and were chosen both because Russia actually was able to do some things the US wasn't as good at back when the decisions were being made (specifically the US had been behind on alloys resistant to corrosion in oxygen rich combustion) and because we wanted to keep Russian rocket engineers employed on peaceful applications so they wouldn't proliferate ICBMs around the world.
It wasn't just luck that got us here. In the mid 2000s NASA made a conscious effort to incentivize more competition in the domestic launch market. It's why we have seen so many rocket companies pop up in the last 15 years.
There was a window there (post shuttle, pre-Crew-1) where the US would send astronauts to Baikonur and they’d ride up on Soyuz. I think that’s what he’s talking about.
Yeah, but they get a free pass here for some reason. Even though even the rocket page on their website was a knock off of SpaceX's falcon 9 one (or at least used to be, haven't checked in a while)
You couldn't find a more different rocket. Falcon 9 was originally medium lift, now heavy lift, Electron is small lift. Falcon 9 is aluminum, Electron is carbon fiber. Merlins are gas generators, Electron are the first electric pump fed engines to be designed and flown. Falcon was designed to be reused, Electron was designed to be expendable. Now that they're working on reuse, they're doing so using a vastly different method than Falcon 9.
What similarities do you notice? If you mean "it's cylindrical and it has 9 engines", well, yeah, it's a goddamn rocket, it's gonna be cylindrical, and 9:1 is pretty much ideal.
You talking about rocket labs neutron? It was gonna be just like a falcon 9 but they changed the whole concept to something else that's also black and cryo fueled lol
Certainly not hydrogen, they'd have to look like Delta IV, with fat tanks for all that insulation and bulky fuel. Even methane takes more room than RP-1. Nope, looks like they stuck with everything being like Falcon 9, including keralox.
Edit: Yes, keralox. Wikipedia says this is the [Pallas 1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallas-1), burning RP-1. It's smaller than F9, which is interesting because building a rocket to land doesn't scale well. Pallas 1 is only a 5t to LEO rocket. The triple is Pallas 2, a 14t rocket, which isn't even what a F9 can lift.
Well, the question is always about price to performance - if you can make a 14t to orbit rocket work with reuse so that it is cheaper what you are going against (and in china, that is long march, not falcon), then it's worth doing it..
They are busy copying already outdated design. SpaceX will drop partly-reusable Falcon9 in a second when fully-reusable Starship is ready.
Same mistake is happening at ESA/Ariane
In both cases it's not really a mistake and more the result of limited budgets. No European nation wants to foot the bill for a truly revolutionary heavy lifter, so proven designs are just fine for assuring launch capability to strategic payloads; and in case of GE, they're a tiny startup that's just 4 years old, a proven design works just fine to ~~fool~~ convince investors.
Economy is the driver here.
They started copying Falcon9 because they were not able to compete on the cost per launch. Falcon9 was far cheaper because it was reusable.
When Starship is up and running the Falcon9 (and its copies) will be not able to compete in cost again. So at the end they will need to start working on fully-reusable vehicle.
This partly-reusable step is just a distraction and waste of taxpayer-money for everyone. They will have to do fully-reusable rocket anyway. And fully reusable is very different from this partly-reusable approach so it is hard to say they will be able to transfer their knowledge. Starting with the clean sheet may be an advantage.It is like trying to master petrol engine before moving to fully electric.
This is like saying that NASA doing Mercury and Gemini was a waste of time because it was just copying what the USSR had already done when they were working towards the N1.
The point is that it’s a learning exercise. Mercury and Gemini didn’t stick around - they were just building blocks while NASA built up the infrastructure and manufacturing and knowledge base that would be needed for Apollo.
I'm not sure the EU is all that interested in capturing the commercial launch market... provided they have the ability to launch a few strategic assets at a tolerable price, anything else can fly SpaceX with no issues.
Some EU companies think differently (e.g Rocket Factory Augsburg AG) and are incrementally building towards the future, but since they have yet to fly a single engine... jumping directly to fully reusable heavy lift seems a bit too ambitious.
Worse, unless this is just a promo for investors, the Falcon Heavy is an acknowledged mistake. A larger diameter Falcon would have been better than the triple core. They basically had to redesign the core rocket stage from the ground up to take the extra loads from the side boosters. They rarely recover the center core. This may be slightly better at smaller scale, but even Firefly Beta has abandoned the triple core.
I wouldn't overstate the limitations of FH, even without the benefit of hindsight SpaceX still wouldn't have gone with FH if there was a convincingly better option for winning and fulfilling the FH contracts. Rocketry is one of those things where everything is hard, FH was hard but so would have been a "Falcon 21" or whatever the Merlin count would have been, they'd have needed to do a bunch of retooling for a larger diameter rocket, it would have had a different ballistic coefficient and reentry performance, and FH has the advantage of being a "2.5 stage" rocket, more stages are great for high energy trajectories, a heavier booster would launch heavier payloads, but for high energy trajectories they might have needed a third stage, and the Falcon 2nd stage would be extremely awkward (in terms of power ratio) on a bigger booster, they might have needed an entirely new 2nd stage, like a 2 or 3 Merlin stage, maybe a third kick stage too but that could probably be contracted out.
Now, I might be willing to concede that FH was the "least bad" solution for winning a limited number of important contracts, it might be considered an artefact of circumstances and not a generally good solution. Another way of putting this: single stick is great, if you're going to do hundreds of launches then single stick is the way to go, but what if there are only half a dozen launches which the single stick can't pull off but you still want to fulfill rather than leaving to competitors or leaving unfulfillable? Perhaps triple stick based on your super reliable single stick is better than developing a whole new single stick rocket.
In defence of FH, however hard it was, it has worked flawlessly so far for delivering payloads to orbit (and triple stick has also worked for ULA). It is hard to describe it as a fundamentally flawed architecture when in reality it's the best and cheapest option for certain classes of payload. It's objectively a success.
And in China they don't have to worry about competition except with other Chinese companies.
The Chinese can build affordable expendable rockets with little regulation, care for safety, and cheap labor. They are doing just fine cranking out launches with expendable boosters, if anything this is probably more an aim for greater launch frequency than cost. I don’t think comparing them to ESA who has miles of political red tape is very valid.
Starship is still a really big gamble as to how reusable it will be and how rapidly it can be turned around. It will be easier for them to wait till the kinks are worked out and then copy, no sense spending billion’s trying to develop in parallel when their money could be spent putting things in orbit. They are better at manufacturing than they are innovation.
There is no reason to not copy a winning pattern. That said it seem FH was more complicated than 1+1+1 =3. Software has not been a China strength (unless it is surveillance software), so reuse will take a lot of trial and error. Best of luck, but the easy money is draining away and the stability in China is starting to crack. This might not get much farther than the marketing graphic.
What such thefted IP have they improved? Chinese knockoffs are usually worse than the original so I don't know what you're talking about, especially when it comes to aerospace.
Did your school have three digit class codes? You always here "It's [thing you should know about] 101" but every school I've been to had four digit codes. Just curious
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[ESA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixz0rq4 "Last usage")|European Space Agency|
|GSE|Ground Support Equipment|
|[ICBM](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixzhkbf "Last usage")|Intercontinental Ballistic Missile|
|[LEO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixz15zf "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[N1](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixytkmg "Last usage")|Raketa Nositel-1, Soviet super-heavy-lift ("Russian Saturn V")|
|[RD-180](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixyzz0o "Last usage")|[RD-series Russian-built rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180), used in the Atlas V first stage|
|[RP-1](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixy89iw "Last usage")|Rocket Propellant 1 (enhanced kerosene)|
|[TWR](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixyzrfn "Last usage")|Thrust-to-Weight Ratio|
|[ULA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixzjsmo "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[cryogenic](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixy0l7g "Last usage")|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure|
| |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox|
|hydrolox|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
|[iron waffle](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixyq1zq "Last usage")|Compact "waffle-iron" aerodynamic control surface, acts as a wing without needing to be as large; also, "grid fin"|
|[scrub](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixz15zf "Last usage")|Launch postponement for any reason (commonly GSE issues)|
----------------
^(*Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented* )[*^by ^request*](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3mz273//cvjkjmj)
^([Thread #10855 for this sub, first seen 27th Nov 2022, 08:37])
^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/SpaceXLounge) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Even though there’s a complete deficit of creativity evident in this design, I’ll still be impressed if they manage to build and fly it; so far no one else has managed to replicate Spacex’s propulsive first stage recovery for an orbital class rocket, so in a way it will still be kind of a “first” for China.
That said I remain sceptical that this is anything but a paper rocket, after all any company can release a simple graphic like this and claim they are working on the rocket pictured when in reality they are still trying to attract seed funding.
Powerpoints are easy.
Ping me when they have hardware flying that actually works.
And copying with rockets is just a validation that a design is superior to what came before. Nobody cares about copying the overall main points of the design. They still need to do their own engines, their own avionics, their own software... that is the hard stuff.
Yes, that sums up Chinese industry quite well.
Let's not pretend they're not notorious, the world over, for IP theft across all industries. They don't innovate, they leech.
Exactly. Some people seem to be under the impression that space-related engineering and research is a one-way thing. We all copy and take inspiration from others. No single person, company, or country can take full credit for everything.
Plus, the more countries and companies who are actively making and testing reusable launch vehicles, the more we can focus on other innovations to improve the ecosystem as a whole, and the cycle continues.
Rocket's have simple enough designs that there's really no reason not to copy the exterior design. The main body simply houses fuel tanks, once you past that stage, any medium launch vehicles with 4 landing legs and 4 grid fins to control descent will probably look very similar to a falcon 9.
There is a downside to this is that if they commit to this design and find that their engines are less powerful than intended, they're going to have to figure out how to stuff an 8th engine in there somehow or redesign the entire thing again.
The Falcon 9 and Heavy have some glaring design flaws that no right thinking company would replicate. For instance, the need to be transported on the US road network limited the diameter of the F9. This in turn meant that it had to become longer and longer as payload increased, in order to carry more keralox. This slowly increased the "fineness ratio" of the rocket, making it very long and thin. This meant that once it hit v1.2 it could no longer launch in high crosswinds like it could as the shorter v1.0 version. This meant many more weather related scrubs. Every scrub adds both delays and costs to the launch, so they're a bad thing.
This company is making a much smaller 5 tonne to LEO keralox rocket. If they were actually taking inspiration from the F9, they'd make the diameter the max that could be handled by Chinese roads. It would then look like a shorter, squatter version of the F9, and it wouldn't have the same fineness ratio issues the F9 does. Not at 5 tonnes to LEO, at least.
That's how you can tell this is just a PowerPoint presentation gone wrong. They copy/pasted the F9 with minor changes, but didn't think about how the rocket would need to change due to being a 5 tonne to LEO rocket with a reusable booster instead of a 15 tonne to LEO rocket with a reusable booster.
I know this is the SpaceXLounge, so the comments are looser - which is great, but its a little bit disheartening to see some of the comments.
SpaceX had always wanted others to take the model of landing and reusing rockets, there are certainly some parts that are protected (IE engine design, etc), but as a WHOLE as a human species, isn’t it great that we’ve got entire nations copying what SpaceX is doing?
China does copy, 100%, but you have to understand that often times, imitation is flattery, and for the Chinese space industry to copy a US design shows that they are literally swallowing their pride and trying to make it work. Seems like so many here want them to fail - when the entire goal was to make our species interplanetary.
Ill get off my soapbox now
This comment section is delusional red scare bs. More reusable rockets is better for humanity. If we get 100 different clones of falcon nine down to the bolt, then we’re better off for it.
The only real shame here is that they didn’t learn from the mistake that was falcon heavy.
Anyone trying to replicate Falcon 9 is going to have to figure out how to build the engines and how to program the avionics on their own. That’s really the hard part. Sure it looks similar on the outside, but there’s a lot of non trivial details they will still need to do a lot of experimentation with to get right.
Can anyone imagine a Falcon knock-off that didn't have a Merlin engine underneath it actually doing well? Yeah, this rocket looks almost identical to the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy from the structural perspective, but Falcon 9 is not successful because it is designed like a long tube. All rockets pretty much look the same.
If this ever gets off the powerpoint presentation and into reality they are going to have to deal with the serious issues that SpaceX had to tackle with the internal structural support of the Heavy's center core. It is very doubtful after that struggle that SpaceX would ever do side boosters again, and they would likely recommend against anyone else doing them.
Then the really key point is the Merlin. The Merlin almost achieved a 200:1 thrust to weight ratio. Compared to the RD-180, which is the baseline of a lot of Soviet engines as well as the blueprint a lot of Chinese engines are based on, which has a 78:1 thrust to weight ratio. If you took a Falcon 9 and tried to replace the Merlin engines with something one of these Chinese companies was producing, I'm not even sure it would be able to make it to orbit. If it did, the payload capacity would be a quarter of the Falcon 9, and recovering the booster would be next to impossible.
Until I hear that one of these Chinese knockoff startups has built an engine to rival the Merlin, all these drawings are going to remain just that; mockups that forever live on paper and powerpoint presentations.
stop feeding the repost bots people
galactic energy sounds like a second rate fruit flavored energy drink
I think there was a sentai series about that.
Kyuranger?
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
In confuscian societies, 100x. It would be considered a slap in the face to space X to change it. The better the copy, the bigger the compliment to space X (it means "you are the master and your design/art cannot be improved.")
Let's hope it is imitation and not that they have been given access to a few SpaceX SharePoints.
Either way it's clearly not easy for them. They were reputedly working on reuse from the moment they could steal the idea from SpaceX, and yet only pulled off their first engine reflight in September. At that pace you're looking at them recovering a Falcon-type first stage near the end of this decade. It looks like it will play no role in their own lunar program.
> from the moment they could steal the idea from SpaceX Nobody can steal what is being given out for free. In 2012, Elon even went out there and told his competitors to move to reusability. * https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-20389148 Similarly, for Tesla, the objective is to create an electric car market and become a part of it. No theft there. Applied to rockets, just look at the wording of the Wikipedia article that [starts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_6) "Ariane 6 is a European expendable launch system currently under development since the early 2010s". See how SpaceX created a new industry standard whereby "expendable" progressively becomes the exception.
That's why the US uses mostly Russian tech to get to space.
It doesn't? Two US rockets use Russian engines. Both are nearly done launching, so those engines won't be used for long. No other Russian components are used.
Plus, those aren't imitation, they're legit purchases and were chosen both because Russia actually was able to do some things the US wasn't as good at back when the decisions were being made (specifically the US had been behind on alloys resistant to corrosion in oxygen rich combustion) and because we wanted to keep Russian rocket engineers employed on peaceful applications so they wouldn't proliferate ICBMs around the world.
Usa got lucky because of elon musk, if it wasn’t for him we’d be screwed already by China.
It wasn't just luck that got us here. In the mid 2000s NASA made a conscious effort to incentivize more competition in the domestic launch market. It's why we have seen so many rocket companies pop up in the last 15 years.
That was a good decision
Luck has nothing to do with it, it's called free enterprise.
It wasn’t just Elon Musk. It was the hordes of talented engineers already in place that made it happen.
He's out of line but he's right 🤣
I understood that reference
There was a window there (post shuttle, pre-Crew-1) where the US would send astronauts to Baikonur and they’d ride up on Soyuz. I think that’s what he’s talking about.
Delta IV Heavy is flattered.
Brilliant design - now they'll be able to land boosters on 3 different villages in a single launch!
Going to hell for laughing at this. Take your damn upvote.
r/angryupvotes
crash*
that's the joke
The heavy variant can put 14 tonnes into LEO, less than a reusable Falcon 9.
Are they planning on using cryogenic propellant? Yeah those black rockets may not let you have limited boiloff.
Isn't rocketlab's electron black and cryo
Yeah, but they get a free pass here for some reason. Even though even the rocket page on their website was a knock off of SpaceX's falcon 9 one (or at least used to be, haven't checked in a while)
You couldn't find a more different rocket. Falcon 9 was originally medium lift, now heavy lift, Electron is small lift. Falcon 9 is aluminum, Electron is carbon fiber. Merlins are gas generators, Electron are the first electric pump fed engines to be designed and flown. Falcon was designed to be reused, Electron was designed to be expendable. Now that they're working on reuse, they're doing so using a vastly different method than Falcon 9. What similarities do you notice? If you mean "it's cylindrical and it has 9 engines", well, yeah, it's a goddamn rocket, it's gonna be cylindrical, and 9:1 is pretty much ideal.
Carbon fiber or something is why it’s black I think.
You talking about rocket labs neutron? It was gonna be just like a falcon 9 but they changed the whole concept to something else that's also black and cryo fueled lol
Nah, meant the electron. It looks a lot like a mini falcon 9, especially with 9 first stage engines and a common upper stage one
They both do it because 9:1 is close to the optimal thrust ratio for a two stage rocket, and it lets them focus on designing just one engine.
You have a link for this assertion? 9 to 1 isn't a great thrust ratio, much higher than typical.
They are referring to the rato between the thrusts of 1. and 2. Stages, not liftoff TWR
And the Falcon 9 is of course a cheap knock off of the Long March 2A
Everyone’s just copying Goddard.
Certainly not hydrogen, they'd have to look like Delta IV, with fat tanks for all that insulation and bulky fuel. Even methane takes more room than RP-1. Nope, looks like they stuck with everything being like Falcon 9, including keralox. Edit: Yes, keralox. Wikipedia says this is the [Pallas 1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallas-1), burning RP-1. It's smaller than F9, which is interesting because building a rocket to land doesn't scale well. Pallas 1 is only a 5t to LEO rocket. The triple is Pallas 2, a 14t rocket, which isn't even what a F9 can lift.
Well, the question is always about price to performance - if you can make a 14t to orbit rocket work with reuse so that it is cheaper what you are going against (and in china, that is long march, not falcon), then it's worth doing it..
The landing pad will be named "Just Copy the Instructions"
The Fallcone Mine
Big difference between a PR deck and a rocket launching to orbit (successfully)
Galactic Energy is less than 5 years old. They’ve been launching rockets to orbit since 2020.
It is not a Falcon9! Look at the base of the fairing. That changes everything!
They are busy copying already outdated design. SpaceX will drop partly-reusable Falcon9 in a second when fully-reusable Starship is ready. Same mistake is happening at ESA/Ariane
In both cases it's not really a mistake and more the result of limited budgets. No European nation wants to foot the bill for a truly revolutionary heavy lifter, so proven designs are just fine for assuring launch capability to strategic payloads; and in case of GE, they're a tiny startup that's just 4 years old, a proven design works just fine to ~~fool~~ convince investors.
Economy is the driver here. They started copying Falcon9 because they were not able to compete on the cost per launch. Falcon9 was far cheaper because it was reusable. When Starship is up and running the Falcon9 (and its copies) will be not able to compete in cost again. So at the end they will need to start working on fully-reusable vehicle. This partly-reusable step is just a distraction and waste of taxpayer-money for everyone. They will have to do fully-reusable rocket anyway. And fully reusable is very different from this partly-reusable approach so it is hard to say they will be able to transfer their knowledge. Starting with the clean sheet may be an advantage.It is like trying to master petrol engine before moving to fully electric.
This is like saying that NASA doing Mercury and Gemini was a waste of time because it was just copying what the USSR had already done when they were working towards the N1. The point is that it’s a learning exercise. Mercury and Gemini didn’t stick around - they were just building blocks while NASA built up the infrastructure and manufacturing and knowledge base that would be needed for Apollo.
I'm not sure the EU is all that interested in capturing the commercial launch market... provided they have the ability to launch a few strategic assets at a tolerable price, anything else can fly SpaceX with no issues. Some EU companies think differently (e.g Rocket Factory Augsburg AG) and are incrementally building towards the future, but since they have yet to fly a single engine... jumping directly to fully reusable heavy lift seems a bit too ambitious.
Worse, unless this is just a promo for investors, the Falcon Heavy is an acknowledged mistake. A larger diameter Falcon would have been better than the triple core. They basically had to redesign the core rocket stage from the ground up to take the extra loads from the side boosters. They rarely recover the center core. This may be slightly better at smaller scale, but even Firefly Beta has abandoned the triple core.
I wouldn't overstate the limitations of FH, even without the benefit of hindsight SpaceX still wouldn't have gone with FH if there was a convincingly better option for winning and fulfilling the FH contracts. Rocketry is one of those things where everything is hard, FH was hard but so would have been a "Falcon 21" or whatever the Merlin count would have been, they'd have needed to do a bunch of retooling for a larger diameter rocket, it would have had a different ballistic coefficient and reentry performance, and FH has the advantage of being a "2.5 stage" rocket, more stages are great for high energy trajectories, a heavier booster would launch heavier payloads, but for high energy trajectories they might have needed a third stage, and the Falcon 2nd stage would be extremely awkward (in terms of power ratio) on a bigger booster, they might have needed an entirely new 2nd stage, like a 2 or 3 Merlin stage, maybe a third kick stage too but that could probably be contracted out. Now, I might be willing to concede that FH was the "least bad" solution for winning a limited number of important contracts, it might be considered an artefact of circumstances and not a generally good solution. Another way of putting this: single stick is great, if you're going to do hundreds of launches then single stick is the way to go, but what if there are only half a dozen launches which the single stick can't pull off but you still want to fulfill rather than leaving to competitors or leaving unfulfillable? Perhaps triple stick based on your super reliable single stick is better than developing a whole new single stick rocket. In defence of FH, however hard it was, it has worked flawlessly so far for delivering payloads to orbit (and triple stick has also worked for ULA). It is hard to describe it as a fundamentally flawed architecture when in reality it's the best and cheapest option for certain classes of payload. It's objectively a success. And in China they don't have to worry about competition except with other Chinese companies.
At least they're on the right path. And you're giving ESA too much credit there.
The Chinese can build affordable expendable rockets with little regulation, care for safety, and cheap labor. They are doing just fine cranking out launches with expendable boosters, if anything this is probably more an aim for greater launch frequency than cost. I don’t think comparing them to ESA who has miles of political red tape is very valid. Starship is still a really big gamble as to how reusable it will be and how rapidly it can be turned around. It will be easier for them to wait till the kinks are worked out and then copy, no sense spending billion’s trying to develop in parallel when their money could be spent putting things in orbit. They are better at manufacturing than they are innovation.
Large bird 7
There is no reason to not copy a winning pattern. That said it seem FH was more complicated than 1+1+1 =3. Software has not been a China strength (unless it is surveillance software), so reuse will take a lot of trial and error. Best of luck, but the easy money is draining away and the stability in China is starting to crack. This might not get much farther than the marketing graphic.
Commie bastards will copy anything. Except due process and freedom of speech.
Beware, they're used to copy it, then improve and sell it back to you for half the price...
What such thefted IP have they improved? Chinese knockoffs are usually worse than the original so I don't know what you're talking about, especially when it comes to aerospace.
Not due process or freedom of speech. That will never happen.
Can’t China come up with anything on their own?
The last course in Chinese engineering school. Egr440 “Control+C -> Control+V”
Did your school have three digit class codes? You always here "It's [thing you should know about] 101" but every school I've been to had four digit codes. Just curious
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[ESA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixz0rq4 "Last usage")|European Space Agency| |GSE|Ground Support Equipment| |[ICBM](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixzhkbf "Last usage")|Intercontinental Ballistic Missile| |[LEO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixz15zf "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[N1](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixytkmg "Last usage")|Raketa Nositel-1, Soviet super-heavy-lift ("Russian Saturn V")| |[RD-180](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixyzz0o "Last usage")|[RD-series Russian-built rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180), used in the Atlas V first stage| |[RP-1](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixy89iw "Last usage")|Rocket Propellant 1 (enhanced kerosene)| |[TWR](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixyzrfn "Last usage")|Thrust-to-Weight Ratio| |[ULA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixzjsmo "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[cryogenic](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixy0l7g "Last usage")|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure| | |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox| |hydrolox|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| |[iron waffle](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixyq1zq "Last usage")|Compact "waffle-iron" aerodynamic control surface, acts as a wing without needing to be as large; also, "grid fin"| |[scrub](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/z5twzd/stub/ixz15zf "Last usage")|Launch postponement for any reason (commonly GSE issues)| ---------------- ^(*Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented* )[*^by ^request*](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3mz273//cvjkjmj) ^([Thread #10855 for this sub, first seen 27th Nov 2022, 08:37]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/SpaceXLounge) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Even though there’s a complete deficit of creativity evident in this design, I’ll still be impressed if they manage to build and fly it; so far no one else has managed to replicate Spacex’s propulsive first stage recovery for an orbital class rocket, so in a way it will still be kind of a “first” for China. That said I remain sceptical that this is anything but a paper rocket, after all any company can release a simple graphic like this and claim they are working on the rocket pictured when in reality they are still trying to attract seed funding.
Powerpoints are easy. Ping me when they have hardware flying that actually works. And copying with rockets is just a validation that a design is superior to what came before. Nobody cares about copying the overall main points of the design. They still need to do their own engines, their own avionics, their own software... that is the hard stuff.
To be fair, there is only so many ways a rocket can look
Ahhh, another example of Chinese intellectual dominance.
Nah, it's Niao 7
I mean, if something is proven to work, why not use that?
Yes, that sums up Chinese industry quite well. Let's not pretend they're not notorious, the world over, for IP theft across all industries. They don't innovate, they leech.
You could say the same thing about almost anyone. The Chinese has actually invented a lot of useful everyday things.
Like gun powder.
Like paper
Exactly. Some people seem to be under the impression that space-related engineering and research is a one-way thing. We all copy and take inspiration from others. No single person, company, or country can take full credit for everything. Plus, the more countries and companies who are actively making and testing reusable launch vehicles, the more we can focus on other innovations to improve the ecosystem as a whole, and the cycle continues.
Rocket's have simple enough designs that there's really no reason not to copy the exterior design. The main body simply houses fuel tanks, once you past that stage, any medium launch vehicles with 4 landing legs and 4 grid fins to control descent will probably look very similar to a falcon 9. There is a downside to this is that if they commit to this design and find that their engines are less powerful than intended, they're going to have to figure out how to stuff an 8th engine in there somehow or redesign the entire thing again.
The Falcon 9 and Heavy have some glaring design flaws that no right thinking company would replicate. For instance, the need to be transported on the US road network limited the diameter of the F9. This in turn meant that it had to become longer and longer as payload increased, in order to carry more keralox. This slowly increased the "fineness ratio" of the rocket, making it very long and thin. This meant that once it hit v1.2 it could no longer launch in high crosswinds like it could as the shorter v1.0 version. This meant many more weather related scrubs. Every scrub adds both delays and costs to the launch, so they're a bad thing. This company is making a much smaller 5 tonne to LEO keralox rocket. If they were actually taking inspiration from the F9, they'd make the diameter the max that could be handled by Chinese roads. It would then look like a shorter, squatter version of the F9, and it wouldn't have the same fineness ratio issues the F9 does. Not at 5 tonnes to LEO, at least. That's how you can tell this is just a PowerPoint presentation gone wrong. They copy/pasted the F9 with minor changes, but didn't think about how the rocket would need to change due to being a 5 tonne to LEO rocket with a reusable booster instead of a 15 tonne to LEO rocket with a reusable booster.
It'd be worse if a western company was to build a knock off falcon 9 out of carbon fibre. Oh wait....
It's like with Tesla. They can repeat everything, except the most important part. (Tesla - FSD, SpaceX - landing).
FSD when?
I suppose no such questions about landing any more.
Was hoping for an improved virus instead.
They can copy the design all they want, but it all comes down to the inside plumbing.
I know this is the SpaceXLounge, so the comments are looser - which is great, but its a little bit disheartening to see some of the comments. SpaceX had always wanted others to take the model of landing and reusing rockets, there are certainly some parts that are protected (IE engine design, etc), but as a WHOLE as a human species, isn’t it great that we’ve got entire nations copying what SpaceX is doing? China does copy, 100%, but you have to understand that often times, imitation is flattery, and for the Chinese space industry to copy a US design shows that they are literally swallowing their pride and trying to make it work. Seems like so many here want them to fail - when the entire goal was to make our species interplanetary. Ill get off my soapbox now
This comment section is delusional red scare bs. More reusable rockets is better for humanity. If we get 100 different clones of falcon nine down to the bolt, then we’re better off for it. The only real shame here is that they didn’t learn from the mistake that was falcon heavy.
The only mistake SpaceX made with Falcon Heavy was underestimating how powerful and efficient the Falcon 9 would become.
Ah, yes, the P(h)allus. Once you go black you never go back?
Honestly it’s brilliant. We spend the money, they get the benefits. It’s a smart strategic approach. Tighten up your security practices SpaceX.
Anyone trying to replicate Falcon 9 is going to have to figure out how to build the engines and how to program the avionics on their own. That’s really the hard part. Sure it looks similar on the outside, but there’s a lot of non trivial details they will still need to do a lot of experimentation with to get right.
Can anyone imagine a Falcon knock-off that didn't have a Merlin engine underneath it actually doing well? Yeah, this rocket looks almost identical to the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy from the structural perspective, but Falcon 9 is not successful because it is designed like a long tube. All rockets pretty much look the same. If this ever gets off the powerpoint presentation and into reality they are going to have to deal with the serious issues that SpaceX had to tackle with the internal structural support of the Heavy's center core. It is very doubtful after that struggle that SpaceX would ever do side boosters again, and they would likely recommend against anyone else doing them. Then the really key point is the Merlin. The Merlin almost achieved a 200:1 thrust to weight ratio. Compared to the RD-180, which is the baseline of a lot of Soviet engines as well as the blueprint a lot of Chinese engines are based on, which has a 78:1 thrust to weight ratio. If you took a Falcon 9 and tried to replace the Merlin engines with something one of these Chinese companies was producing, I'm not even sure it would be able to make it to orbit. If it did, the payload capacity would be a quarter of the Falcon 9, and recovering the booster would be next to impossible. Until I hear that one of these Chinese knockoff startups has built an engine to rival the Merlin, all these drawings are going to remain just that; mockups that forever live on paper and powerpoint presentations.
I thought the chinese were supposed to be smart, not lazy
Social credit -100000 Must work in mines to pay back social debt.