Speaking of private space companies in the United States, everyone may know Musk's SpaceX, in 2021, this company has carried out a total of 32 orbital-stage rocket launches, ranking only after China and the United States, a total of 1217 satellites, 6 spacecraft and 1 planetary interceptor into space, ranking first in the world, really can be described as "rich and invincible".
The Twilight Effect of the Falcon 9 launch
People who know a little more about space may know Blue Origin in the United States, whose boss, Bezos, is the former world's richest man and chairman of Amazon. Blue Origin's Blue Moon and SpaceX's Starship bid on a U.S. lunar spacecraft to return to the moon, while Bezos himself flew into suborbital orbit in July 2021 on his own company's New Shepard rocket and spacecraft for a space tour that experienced a few minutes of weightlessness, known as "faster than going to the toilet."
New Shepard Rockets
However, today we want to talk about Musk's SpaceX, nor Bezos's "Blue Origin", but our private space company in China. What the? Do we also have private space companies in China? Many people may ask such questions. Yes, we not only have in China, but also had 176 at the peak, and now after elimination, there are more than a dozen private aerospace companies, commercial aerospace companies are more, many of them have also launched satellites with their own rockets, such as Interstellar Glory Company, Galaxy Power, Blue Arrow Aerospace, Skywalk, Changsha Tianyi Research Institute, etc.
Domestic private hypersonic aircraft
Hypersonic space tour aircraft
In terms of space tourism, China's private aerospace companies are also developing their own products, such as the high-frequency supersonic tourism sightseeing aircraft of The Skywalk, the suborbital tourism rocket and spacecraft of the Aerospace Flight Science and Technology Center of the Institute of Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This suborbital tourist rocket and spacecraft, in particular, is very interesting, and its design resembles Blue Origin's "New Shepard" rocket and spacecraft. The rocket uses three 20-ton thrust "Genji" engines to send 1.5 tons of payload, that is, about 7 passengers, to an altitude of 88 kilometers, and the separated spacecraft will rely on inertia to rush to more than 100 kilometers and break through the Carmen line, so that each visitor will feel about 5 minutes of weightlessness experience, and both the rocket and the spacecraft can be recycled and reused.
That's it
What's more interesting is that the shape of our suborbital spacecraft, similar to SpaceX's "Dragon" spacecraft, the black bulge outside the capsule is also an escape engine? In addition, the rocket's launch method and orbit height are similar to those of Blue Origin's "New Shepard", while the recovery method borrows from the "starship" booster, accurately falls back to the launch tower, and holds it with a capture arm. At this moment, it seems that blue origin and SpaceX two old enemies are combined, I don't know what Bezos and Musk think?
Landing with a catch arm like a starship?
The starship's recovery tower and capture arm
It is said that this domestic suborbital rocket and spacecraft, which can be put into service in 2025, is already experimenting with some key technologies. In fact, for China's aerospace technology, it is not difficult to turn it into reality. But there will be at least two dilemmas, first, when the commercial giants are buried in the vegetable market, is there enough customer resources to ensure that there is enough profit space for these few minutes of sub-orbit weightlessness experience? Blue Origin has made a total of 4 similar launches in 2021, and it is said that there will be more in 2022, but its revenue and expenditure has always been a mystery.
Three-umbrella system recycling
Secondly, at this stage, our imitation traces are too serious, especially private space companies, and even direct plagiarism of SpaceX and Blue Origin. For example, rockets under development such as Hyperbola-2, Homo sapiens-1, and Shinkansen-1 are very similar in appearance to Musk's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.
Imagination of the Homo sapiens-1 rocket
Hyperbolic III rocket image
Of course, at this stage, if China's private space companies can successfully copy the "Falcon" 9 and SpaceX, it is not a bad thing, after all, Russia, Europe and South Korea are plagiarizing, but the process is not easy, you need to accumulate a good foundation step by step, rather than putting too much energy on stocks, rootless wood, passive water, it is difficult to succeed after all.
The recovery leg of Hyperbolic II