The world's first liquid oxygen methane rocket Suzaku-2 was successfully launched, and China's commercial aerospace entered the 2.0 era

The world's first liquid oxygen methane carrier rocket was successfully launched into orbit today, an achievement achieved by the Chinese private rocket company Blue Arrow Aerospace.

At 9 o'clock on July 12, 2023, the Suzaku-2 Yao-2 liquid oxygen methane carrier rocket independently developed by Blue Arrow Aerospace was launched from the mainland Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, and then the rocket entered the scheduled orbit flight, and the test mission was a complete success. The success of Suzaku-2 is another milestone in China's commercial spaceflight, and also marks a major breakthrough in the application of new low-cost liquid propellants for Chinese launch vehicles.

The Suzaku-2 Yao-2 carrier rocket has a total arrow height of 49.5 meters, an arrow body diameter of 3.35 meters, a take-off weight of 219 tons, and a take-off thrust of 268 tons, which is a two-stage configuration. The rocket first stage adopts four Tianque 80-ton liquid oxygen methane engines in parallel, and the second stage adopts a combination of one Tianque 80-ton liquid oxygen methane engine and one Tianque 10-ton swimming liquid oxygen methane engine.

This capacity scale is basically the same as the Long March 2D or even the Long March 4C carrier rocket of the space national team, and the use of liquid oxygen methane as a propellant can greatly reduce the cost of the rocket, and the product after combustion is carbon dioxide and water, which is green and environmentally friendly.

The success of this mission verified the system scheme of the Suzaku-2 rocket, allowing Blue Arrow Aerospace to cross the technical threshold of orbit, and the Suzaku-2 rocket is about to start the mass launch process, laying the foundation for the next stage of reusable rocket development. Zhang Changwu, CEO of Blue Arrow Aerospace, said that Blue Arrow Aerospace will continue to take the Suzaku series of carrier rockets as its core products to provide low-cost, high-performance and high-capacity rocket launch services for the market.

Belated "first"

In 2015, the mainland issued the "National Civil Space Infrastructure Medium and Long-term Development Plan (2015-2025)", which is generally regarded as the starting point of the germination of China's commercial space, and like many well-known domestic commercial space companies, Blue Arrow Aerospace was officially established in 2015, the first year of China's commercial space. Since then, Blue Arrow Aerospace has won a number of "firsts" in the commercial aerospace field.

In December 2016, Blue Arrow Aerospace signed a launch service contract with Denmark's GomSpace Satellite Company, which is the first contract signed by a domestic private commercial aerospace enterprise to provide commercial rocket launch services to the international market.

In October 2018, Blue Arrow Aerospace's small solid rocket Suzaku-1 became the first domestic space company to launch a civilian carrier rocket, but unfortunately the rocket failed to enter orbit. After that, Blue Arrow Aerospace no longer insisted on the integrated development of small solid rockets, but turned to the independent research and development of liquid oxygen methane rockets.

In May 2019, the first domestic 80-ton liquid oxygen methane engine independently developed by Blue Arrow Aerospace was successfully tested in 20 seconds, becoming the world's third large-thrust liquid oxygen methane rocket engine to complete the full-system test assessment after SpaceX's Raptor engine and Blue Origin's BE-4 engine, which also marked a "zero breakthrough" in domestic high-thrust liquid oxygen methane engines.

Although it has won a number of "firsts" in technology and performed well in the capital market, compared with the industry's interstellar glory to win the first successful private fixed launch vehicle into orbit, Galaxy Power's five successful launches, and Tianbing-1 to win the first domestic private liquid launch vehicle, Blue Arrow Aerospace seems to have lacked a true "total victory" record for a long time.

So in December 2022, the Suzaku-2 rocket independently developed by Blue Arrow Aerospace was launched for the first time at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, trying to become the world's first liquid oxygen methane rocket successfully entered orbit. However, due to the abnormal shutdown failure of the secondary game, the mission failed.

Just when people thought that Blue Arrow would regret missing out on the first place in the global competition for liquid oxygen methane rockets, competitors on the other side of the ocean were also not progressing well, and SpaceX's first starship flight failed in April 2023; The launch of the Vulcan rocket with BE-4 engines developed by the United Launch Alliance (ULA) has been delayed. After a round of PK, it is time for Blue Arrow Aerospace to appear.

After the failure of the first flight of Suzaku-2, Blue Arrow Aerospace set up a special working group to quickly find out the cause and mechanism of the failure, and took a number of improvement measures for the fault, and successfully passed the expert review of fault zeroing on March 18, 2023. And today ushered in the return flight after the failure of the first flight. In the end, this "first" came belatedly, but it also lived up to expectations.

The successful entry of the Suzaku-2 Yao-2 rocket into orbit has allowed China's private rocket company to obtain a "first" record in the global aerospace history, which not only allowed Blue Arrow Aerospace to finally achieve a breakthrough in technology from 0 to 1, but also boosted confidence for domestic commercial aerospace. From the era when the national team was completely dominant, to the private enterprise entrusting the development and integration of the institute within the system, to the independent positive development and successful launch of a private enterprise, these scales are different. Zhang Changwu believes that the success of the Suzaku-2 rocket means that China's commercial rockets have since entered the 2.0 era.

Why liquid oxygen methane?

In addition to the above-mentioned Blue Arrow Aerospace's Suzaku II rocket, SpaceX's Starship and ULA's Vulcan rocket, there are also Relativity Space Corporation's TerranR rocket, Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket, Rocket Lab's Neutron rocket, etc. all use liquid oxygen methane as a propellant. There are also many liquid oxygen methane rockets under research and planning in China, such as Hyperbola II, Darwin I and so on.

Why do so many rockets use liquid oxygen methane as a propellant? It is mainly for future rocket launch needs with lower cost and higher frequency reuse. Compared with the common rocket propellants, liquid oxygen methane has certain advantages in economy, easy availability and convenience and reuse.

Compared with the boiling point of liquid hydrogen - 253 degrees Celsius, the boiling point of liquid methane is -162 degrees Celsius, which means that the conditions and costs of storing and transporting liquid oxygen methane are more friendly, and methane, which is natural gas, is also widely used, and its production cost is much lower than liquid hydrogen. Compared with liquid oxygen kerosene, liquid oxygen methane has a higher specific impulse.

At present, the new generation of mainland Long March series rockets mostly use liquid hydrogen liquid oxygen and liquid oxygen methane as propellants, and the aerospace national team has done a lot of development work around liquid oxygen kerosene and hydrogen and oxygen engines, and the products are very mature. In this context, for Blue Arrow Aerospace, if there is a new breakthrough in the liquid oxygen methane rocket, it can fill a gap in the domestic aerospace field and have its own place in the market.

Zhang Changwu said that in the process of developing liquid oxygen methane rockets, Blue Arrow Aerospace found that the benefits of methane are stronger than pre-thought, especially rockets such as Starship have further verified that liquid oxygen methane propellants can be applied to reusable rockets, and even larger scale reusable rockets, which brings significant economic benefits.

rockets, you must practice long-termism

Commercial launch vehicles, as a typical high-input, high-risk, high-yield field, must adhere to long-term principles, in order to survive in technology and market competition must build core competitiveness, core competitiveness must be based on the existence of core technology, and core technology cannot be bought.

So far, although the development path of domestic commercial rocket companies is different, some use external research and development for integrated development, and some have developed the whole chain independently, but in the end, as a rocket company, it is impossible to always purchase core supporting facilities from another rocket company or a company with rockets, so it is ultimately necessary to develop independently.

Taking the research and development of the liquid oxygen methane engine used by Suzaku II as an example, technically speaking, the application of liquid oxygen methane propellant in rocket engines must first solve the problem of combustion instability. This requires a lot of engineering adaptability design and verification. In the process of developing liquid oxygen methane rocket engines, the first difficulty to solve is to establish relatively complete facilities to provide verification conditions, because rockets and engines need to achieve product success through a large number of ground experiments. In the past few years, Blue Arrow has invested a lot of energy, including the construction of test benches, cold test systems, and some modal test systems, all for liquid oxygen methane products.

Zhang Changwu said that the liquid oxygen methane engine is also the first time to develop to this stage in China, so the process has also experienced a lot of similar engine vibration, insufficient combustion, and unstable combustion problems in China, which are the precious wealth of Blue Arrow Aerospace. There is no shortcut to overcoming these problems, they all rely on time and multiple verifications, so it also helps Blue Arrow Aerospace build a moat in this field.

Commercial closed loop from 0 to 1, with long road obstruction

"After the successful launch of Suzaku-2, starting next year, Blue Arrow Aerospace will deliver small batches to the market, and it is expected to launch 3 to 4 rockets in 2024, and then double the number in 2025, and then double the number of rockets every year for three consecutive years." If delivered to the market at such a growth rate, Blue Arrow is expected to become the first commercial rocket company in the industry to complete the 0 to 1 through liquid rockets. Zhang Changwu said.

Today, Blue Arrow has become the only commercial rocket company in China that integrates the strategic capabilities of design, process, manufacturing, testing and launch.

Zhang Changwu said that we ourselves must do everything possible to create conditions so that our strategy can go to the end, which means to go from 0 to 1, because for the aerospace industry, if Blue Arrow can go from 0 to 1 in commercial rocket companies, it will once again systematically change the pattern and rules of the entire industry, and will further strengthen the development path of this industry. But if we can't go down ourselves, it will be very regrettable, for the entire industry will be very regrettable, maybe this model will not be for a long time no one dares or has the ability to go this way, maybe China will not exist for a long time to exist an independent rocket company with such a large development ability.

The market on which China's commercial rockets are based is an incremental market, which does not involve the country's original deep space exploration, space exploration or space station, mainly the new low-orbit market, which mainly has the construction of some communication constellations and remote sensing constellations of satellite Internet. The second is that from our own capacity range, Suzaku II will continue to optimize the capacity range in the future, and it can basically achieve the ability of twenty to thirty stars with one arrow. The overall capacity scale is benchmarked to the Long March series, and it is also in a medium capacity scale, so we believe that this type of rocket will be the largest capacity range in the market demand until 2028, and it is also a relatively economic capacity range.

Zhang Changwu said that the development cycle of reusable rockets will be longer, and the period of long losses that can be accepted in China is very short. For us we have to have a model that will support the company to the next stage of commercialization, so Suzaku II is very meaningful to the company, although it is not a heavy reusable rocket, it can keep the company alive before we take out a reusable rocket. (End)

This article is the original of Shenxian Science Journey, first published on Tencent News Platform, please indicate the source for reprinting.