Image source @ Visual China
Text | Flying view
On December 3, 2021, the CCTV news once again appeared in the Chinese min's old friend Musk and his company.
However, this time it is not Tesla, which is sweetly holding hands with Shanghai, but the commercial space company Space X. The origin of the news is also different from the good news of the land grant in Shanghai, this time the Chinese Permanent Mission to the United Nations and other international organizations in Vienna has sued SpaceX, and the reason for the complaint is somewhat unexpected:
Unexpectedly, we thought that such a vast space would become so crowded one day. Although the incident did not cause any personal injury and property damage, the space encounter incident also gave China Aerospace a wake-up call, and China's aerospace will usher in more and more in the future, bringing new challenges to commercial space companies like SpaceX.
Before the Spring Festival, the white paper "China's Aerospace in 2021" was released, in which it was mentioned bluntly that "exploring the vast universe, developing the space industry, and building a space power are the space dreams we unremittingly pursue." "It also mentioned our goal of building a space power in an all-round way in the future."
In 2021, China's aerospace achievements are quite fruitful, with data from 55 launches throughout the year, as well as the successful launch of the Tianhe core module, the successful fire of the Zhurong Mars rover, and the Yutu 2 cruise on the far side of the moon.
But Space X's 2021 was equally brilliant, with SpaceX successfully completing 31 launch missions throughout the year, including Starlink satellites, small satellite single launch services, the record recovery of Falcon 9, and the continuous advancement of starship super heavy rocket tests.
At the end of the year, Space X, which has not yet been listed, received a new financing of $337 million, which is the third time Space X has received equity financing in 2021. Space X has completed 18 rounds of funding so far, and after a second $755 million sale of shares in October this year, its post-investment valuation exceeded $100 billion, becoming one of the world's most valuable private companies.
Entering the new century, the development of the world's aerospace industry has gradually changed from the traditional government-led to a new stage of opening to the market, including Space X, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, etc., a number of European and American commercial space companies have successively promoted the progress of human space industry from the dimensions of technological innovation and commercial operation.
So, that clichéd question ensues: Where is our own SpaceX?
As a model for commercial space companies around the world, Space X is unique in its ability to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and Space X, known as the "price butcher", has a three-plate axe that other commercial space companies envy: repeatable recyclable rockets, one-arrow multi-satellite technology, and the ability to mass-produce satellites.
This article will cut from Space X's three axes and explore the following questions: How much cost can repeatable recovery rocket technology reduce? How is China's commercial space company progressing? How does one-arrow multi-satellite technology work and what does it mean for commercial space companies? How to achieve mass production of satellites? What does it mean?
1. Dormancy: The rocket's path to repeatable recycling
At 14:42 on May 5, 2021, a Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched the 27th batch of 1.0 Starlink satellites into orbit. Subsequently, its first stage sub-rocket slowly landed on the offshore recovery platform.
Starting today, the freshly landed first-stage sub-rocket has a new name: B1051.10.
In the name, B1 indicates that it is a first-stage sub-rocket, 051 means the 51st Falcon 9 rocket produced, and 10 indicates that it has completed ten flights and recoveries.
According to the data, this outstanding ten-hand rocket has undertaken 10 payload launches such as DM-1, RADARSAT, Starlink-3, Starlink-6, Starlink-9, Starlink-13, SXM-7, Starlink-16, Starlink-21, Starlink-27, etc., including 7 own Starlink missions, 2 commercial missions and 1 dragon spacecraft mission.
As Bolt in the field of repeatable recyclable rockets, SpaceX once again broke the record it held for the largest successful recovery of a stage rocket.
But for Iron Man, the biggest significance of the existence of the record may be to break it.
Sure enough, on December 18, 2021, the first stage rocket, numbered B1051.10, once again successfully launched 52 Starlink satellites and achieved recovery.
At this point, the strongest hit of the rocket industry, B1051.11, was born.
Some media congratulated SpaceX after the successful recovery, "They completed the previously planned feat of reusing 10 times per Falcon 9 rocket." But for "Iron Rooster" Musk, reusing 10 times is certainly not the end. Charging for 5 minutes and using it for a lifetime is his ultimate goal.
After the successful recovery, Musk took the opportunity to state, "One arrow 10 flight is not the upper limit, as long as the rocket conditions permit, it will continue to fly until it is scrapped." ”
Commercially reusable rockets, both from a business model and engineering perspective, point to the core issues of rocket launch: high cost and extremely low efficiency.
At the current level of human technology, the launch vehicle is the most efficient way for humans to enter space at present, but it can only send 2% of its own weight into space. Compared to rockets weighing hundreds of tons, there is no doubt that the waste is huge.
In terms of price, the launch price of the Delta-4 rocket in the United States is 140 million US dollars, and the Price of the Arian-6 rocket in Europe is also about 100 million US dollars, even if the Launch Price of the Chinese Long March series rockets, which are known for their high quality and low price, the launch price of the Long March 3 B rocket is about 70 million US dollars.
Figure/Rocket Unit Mass Launch Cost, Figure Source/Essence Securities
But the problem of high prices and low efficiency seems to have never received real attention since the birth of the space industry.
When Musk stepped into the space field, some of the old cannons of the space circle once said, "Here, if you don't have a hundred million, you can't wake Boeing up." ”
But reality quickly punched in the face.
On December 21, 2015, SpaceX's Falcon 9 launched 11 satellites into low-Earth orbit and successfully landed its first stage in the LZ-1 landing zone at Cape Canaveral. The first rocket recovery in orbital stage vertical launch vertical return (VTVL) mode in the history of human spaceflight was declared a success.
Currently, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket has reduced the launch price to $62 million per round and to less than $0.5 million per kilogram of payload launch. According to FAA data, SpaceX's Falcon series rockets have a 52% share of the global launch market, becoming the hegemon of the launch field in one fell swoop.
At first, reusable rockets, which were questioned by aerospace veterans, are now standard for official and commercial space companies.
Blue Origin, which once took the lead in developing sub-orbital stage reuse rockets, plans to develop a new generation of reusable rockets "New Glenn"; the ULA of Boeing and Loma, the two major munitions giants, will create a reusable "Vulcan" rocket; the Russian Space Agency is preparing to develop an "Amur" reusable recovery rocket; the mainland's "Long March 8", its upgraded version of the CZ-8R as the first target recovery rocket of the national team is also under development, and it is planned to fly around 2025.
Countries have followed the reusable model of the rocket, and in the end it is its powerful low-cost launch capability.
Here we take the Falcon 9 rocket to calculate an account, according to the summary of public information from various channels, a Falcon 9 rocket is quoted at $62 million, of which the first stage rocket accounts for about 48% of the total cost, about $30 million. The secondary rocket accounts for about 16% of the total cost, which is about $10 million. Fairings account for about 9 percent of the total cost, or about $5.5 million. Fuel, launch site and other expenses are about $5 million, or 8 percent, and gross profit from commercial launches is $11.5 million, or 19 percent.
That's the price of a single launch, what if the Falcon 9 rocket is launched repeatedly and recycled?
Musk has said that a recovered first-stage rocket would cost an additional $250,000 for the necessary refurbishment and maintenance.
Since the Falcon 9 fairing is now recyclable (although it is unclear whether it can be reused indefinitely), the cost of a Falcon 9 rocket has become $32.25 million, and the gross profit margin has reached a staggering 37%.
This means that the Falcon 9 rocket is free from the third to fifth launch of its own Starlink mission after performing 2 launch missions, which is free from the perspective of launch cost.
SpaceX did indeed do this, and the B1051.11 rocket mentioned above, although it only completed 3 external commercial order launches, but the profit obtained could fully support the cost of the remaining 8 Starlink launch missions.
Seeing this, as a countryman with an excellent chicken baby tradition, he will definitely come up with a sentence:
Look at xx kids, can our own commercial space company do it?
Among the several technology gaps between China Commercial Space and SpaceX, reusable rockets may be the largest.
After all, as the only black technology in the world, there is no semicolon, which is also the capital that makes Musk a hit in the space industry.
Photo/ Falcon 9 rocket launch recovery process, source/WIKI
At present, although we do not have a reusable rocket that cannot be compared with the Falcon 9, according to public reports, the aforementioned national team player Long March 8R rocket has successfully developed the engine variable thrust adjustment technology, which is the key to engine throttling.
In addition, the Long March team has also tested the landing buffer mechanism, low-altitude and low-speed return section guidance, autonomous control and other technical directions, and is expected to achieve commercial flight around 2030, and can achieve vertical landing recovery in the same way as Falcon 9 unmanned ships at sea.
But the national team's emphasis on risk and success rates makes us naturally expect a little faster for the birth of China's first repeatable recyclable rocket.
In addition to the national team players, does not one of China's commercial space companies have anything to play?
In July 2021, in the fog-shrouded valley of Tongchuan, Shaanxi Province, a small rocket ignited and took off, then descended about 10 meters above the ground before landing steadily on the ground.
The fog cleared, and the engineers of the deep blue aerospace at the scene cheered and celebrated: the Nebula-M1 test arrow successfully achieved the "grasshopper jump".
This low-key experiment is a milestone for China's commercial aerospace industry.
Earlier, after Musk made the decision to recycle the rocket, the first thing to use was vertical launch, parachute recovery.
But two failures in 2010 convinced him that the way parachutes were recovered wouldn't work because rockets and parachutes could easily be destroyed or run out of control when they re-entered the atmosphere.
As a result, Musk adjusted the technical route, determined to adopt the vertical take-off and landing (VTVL) model, using only the power of the liquid rocket engine itself to achieve the launch and recovery of the rocket.
Before saturn 5 was about to be retired in the last century, NASA engineers designed a reusable, inexpensive and efficient space launch vehicle at the request of the White House and the Pentagon. At the technical level at that time, the harsh demand indicators made NASA engineers frame the idea that "rocket landing requires aerodynamic lift", so the space shuttle was born.
But it turns out that the wings of the space shuttle are huge and heavy, extremely inefficient, dead weight is also very large, and the maneuvering is also very inconvenient.
So the shuttle was eventually designed as a tough compromise — with a huge fuel tank attached to the outside and only once. The space shuttle's gliding ability after landing is extremely limited, making the landing difficult.
Therefore, Musk did not use the shuttle-style vertical launch horizontal return (VTHL) model at the beginning, and NASA also opened up the project data of the DC-X single-stage orbital multiplexing launch vehicle developed in the 1990s, which also allowed SpaceX to obtain many technical achievements in the project.
Now, the recovery of the Falcon 9 rocket looks like it can almost do a hundred shots. But in fact, the vertical take-off and landing and recovery of rockets are quite difficult.
Some aerospace experts once described the difficulty of recovering the Falcon 9 rocket as follows: "It is equivalent to flying a pencil over the head of the Empire State Building and then landing at a landing site that is only the size of a shoebox!" ”
During the landing of the Falcon stage rocket, the steel giant with a mass of 27 tons and a height of 40 meters gradually landed from an altitude of 80 kilometers above the ground. Speed from 5 times the speed of sound, gradually reduced to subsonic speed, to the speed of high-speed rail, and then to the speed of adult walking, precision and speed control must be every second.
Deep Blue Aerospace did not have the convenience of SpaceX to rely on NASA, but just three months later, Deep Blue Aerospace successfully completed the "Nebula-M" 1 test arrow 100-meter vertical take-off and landing (VTVL) flight test at the same venue, with a maximum flight altitude of 103.2 meters.
Photo / Deep Blue Aerospace "Nebula-M" 1 test arrow, source / Deep Blue Aerospace
Huo Liang, CEO of Deep Blue Aerospace, said in an interview, "There are two major difficulties in achieving vertical recovery of rockets, one is that the engine thrust is adjustable and reusable, and the other is that the control system is accurate. Since the establishment of Deep Blue Aerospace, it has begun to continue to cultivate in these two directions. ”
Needle bolt injection technology is an important means to achieve rocket engine thrust change, Falcon 9 rocket "Merlin engine" also uses this technology, the use of this technology of the rocket engine can achieve dynamic changes in thrust between 30% and 110%, and can inhibit unstable combustion, reduce shock, to achieve a smooth adjustment of rocket thrust.
As the power source of the deep blue aerospace "Nebula" rocket, its "Thunder" -5 engine can achieve 50%-100% thrust adjustment after using needle bolt injection technology, and successfully applied to the "Nebula-M" rocket meter-level and 100-meter-class VTVL test.
But the 100-meter grasshopper jump experiment of Deep Blue Aerospace is still about 10 years away from Space X. As a highly engineering industry, aerospace has its own system processes and laws of design, research and development, testing and production.
SpaceX's Grasshopper rocket flight tests were conducted eight times, initially at a height of only 1.8 meters, with the fourth test achieving a 100-meter VTVL (80 meters) and the eighth test achieving a kilometer-class VTVL (744 meters). The accumulation of 8 times has obtained a large amount of relevant data recovered by VTVL, which has accumulated valuable experience for the next test version of the Falcon 9 rocket.
According to the plan of Deep Blue Aerospace, in the future, they will use 9 Thunder-5 engines in parallel for the "Nebula-1" carrier rocket, the completed version of the Nebula-1 rocket takes off thrust of more than 150 tons, leo carrying capacity of more than 2 tons, and can achieve the design goal of reusing 20-50 times.
It can be seen that this is very similar to the related indicators of the Falcon 9 rocket, which also means that after the successful commercialization of the Nebula-1 rocket of Deep Blue Aerospace, it is likely to become a private commercial space company that benchmarks Space X in the rocket field.
It's just that we hope that this day will come sooner rather than later.
2. Bright Sword: Carpool service under multiple stars in one arrow
In 2017, the third brother, who has always declared that "China is ok, I will also do it", made a big deal in the field of aerospace.
On February 15, 2017, India successfully launched a 104-star one-arrow rocket with the PSLV-C37 carrier rocket, breaking the world record of 37 stars set by Russia in 2014 and becoming the new holder of the multi-star world record.
One arrow multi-satellite technology, popularly speaking, is to use a rocket to carry multiple satellites or payloads and send them into a predetermined orbit, one arrow multi-satellite technology is not like a repeatable recovery rocket, is a "only one, no other semicolon" black technology. At present, the world's major space powers, including China, the United States, Russia, ESA and India and other countries have mastered this technology.
We also used the Long March 6 carrier rocket to send more than 20 satellites into space in 2015, setting an Asian record for multiple stars at that time.
The predecessor of the one-arrow multi-satellite technology is intercontinental missile sub-missile technology (MIRV), the original icing missile can only carry one warhead, but if you want to hit multiple targets, you have to launch several missiles, and a warhead is also easy to be intercepted or interfered with by the enemy.
Therefore, the intercontinental ballistic missile with split-missile multi-warhead was born.
The intercontinental missile with a split-missile multi-warhead can send multiple sub-warheads in a whole fairing into the sub-orbit together, and after the fairing falls off, it can release the first sub-warhead one after another, and then accurately adjust to the re-entry orbit of the second sub-warhead, and release all the sub-warheads in turn.
Moreover, as enemy jamming and interception techniques become stronger and stronger, intercontinental missile fairings will add some decoys, which have the ability to reflect signals with false real radars, helping real warheads improve the success rate of penetrating enemy radars.
In 1981, the mainland used the Storm 1 rocket to send three Shijian-2 satellites into a predetermined orbit, becoming the fourth country to independently master the technology of one-arrow multi-satellite launch.
Unlike the repeatable recovery rocket technology, the mainland's strength in one-arrow multi-satellite technology is not weak.
After India successfully launched 104 satellites, a domestic expert in the field of space said calmly in an interview, "We congratulate India on creating a new launch record for spaceflight..." But then vaguely expressed that the third brother's one-arrow multi-star launch was somewhat "not worthy of the name".
Although The 2017 launch of Sango successfully sent 104 satellites into the sky, the SSO carrying capacity of the PSLV-C37 carrier rocket was only 1.5 tons, and 104 satellites were sent to the same orbit. Taking stock of the payload, the main satellite is the 730 kg Indian "Cartography-2D", with two 19 kg microsatellites attached, and the remaining 101 are all nanosatellites weighing less than 10 kg.
The most critical thing is to measure the release method of the technical level of one arrow and multiple stars, and the third brother adopts the simplest and most brutal way of releasing one by one and firing directly. This makes it impossible for most satellite payloads to be accurately orbited, which is equivalent to one car putting many carpool passengers on the side of the road and leaving them to fend for themselves.
Therefore, many netizens joked that the three brothers' multi-satellite launch was more like "sprinkling a handful of potatoes in space".
There are two types of rocket multi-satellite launches, one is to drop multiple satellites in similar orbits, and the other is to drop satellites separately in different orbits.
Obviously, the second kind is more difficult, as a true one-arrow multi-satellite technology, rather than a simple and crude one-level multi-satellite launch like the third brother, it is necessary to master three core technologies:
Precision measurement and control technology, load non-synchronous separation technology and upper stage multiple ignition technology.
Among them, the upper-level technology is crucial.
On December 29, 2018, the Mainland Long March 2 Ding carrier rocket sent the upper stage of The Expedition 3 into space. Since then, after four orbit changes, Expedition III has sent 7 satellites into predetermined orbits with an altitude difference of hundreds of kilometers.
According to official reports, Expedition 3 completed 21 ignitions as planned, deploying the two sets of satellites to different orbits for the first time.
The upper stage is a separate flying machine inside the rocket, a bit like our shuttle bus in the scenic area, which can carry tourists to get off at different scenic spots according to a certain route. After it is sent to a certain orbit by the rocket, it is ignited several times by carrying the satellite payload by autonomous power, sending one or more payloads to different orbital surfaces.
At 23:00 on January 24, 2021, the Falcon 9 rocket carried 143 satellite payloads in the upper stage of "Transporter-1", which broke the launch record of one arrow and 104 satellites in 2017, and the total number of satellites launched in a single launch accounted for 5% of the total number of satellites currently in orbit.
As a "price butcher", SpaceX wants to do more than one arrow, and the purpose is obvious, that is, to reduce costs fiercely. To this end, SpaceX also used the "transporter" level to launch a "small satellite carpooling service".
In August 2019, Space X announced the launch of the "Small Satellite Carpool Launch" business, planning to carry out exclusive SSO-level spelling launches three times a year.
The logic of this business is a lot like the ticking carpooling in our daily lives. As a result, on January 13, 2022, "Transporter-3" realized the launch of the one-arrow 105-star spelling service, on June 30, 2021, the "Transporter-2" realized the launch of the one-arrow 88-star spelling service, and on January 24, 2021, "Transporter-1" realized the launch of the one-arrow 143-star spelling service.
At the beginning of 2022, SpaceX also announced that it is expected to carry out at least 4 small satellite single launches this year, which shows that the development of this business is very popular in the market.
The reason for the popularity is also well explained, the current downstream satellite market, the number and frequency of small satellite launches are higher, Musk also tweeted, "I am very happy to bring more opportunities for more small satellite companies to enter space." ”
As a medium-sized liquid launch vehicle, the Falcon 9 has a LEO capacity of 22.8 tons and a GTO capacity of 8.3 tons, while the general weight of small satellites is less than 1 ton, and more is between 200kg and 500kg. Therefore, small satellite group launch is an efficient way to squeeze the capacity of the launch vehicle.
The more satellites launched each time, the lower the cost of a single satellite, and the development cost of rockets will be lower with orders for batch launches of rockets.
According to foreign media reports, the cost of SpaceX's co-ordinated launch is 200 kg of payload to SSO sunsynch orbit, with a minimum price of $1 million and an increase of $5,000 per kilogram for the mass portion.
As soon as this price news was released, many small rocket launchers on the market could not sit still, and they worriedly told the media, "The Falcon 9 rocket will rob them of the market share that should belong to them." ”
Musk's consistent style: go your own way and leave others with nowhere to go, and stage again.
According to the general understanding, the Falcon 9 is a medium rocket and should operate for higher-mass satellite launches. However, it is now all-sized, making both big and small customers money and small customers together to make money.
This ability to eat dry and wipe clean is obviously due to the multi-star technique of one arrow.
It can be said that the repeatable recyclable rocket originally allowed the Falcon 9 to have a one-third of the low quotation of the peer, coupled with the blessing of one arrow and multiple satellite technology, its price cost can continue to explore, the group mode brings a broader small satellite launch market, the long tail demand is concentrated on the volume, and the group purchase method that was once popular in China was staged again on Space X on the other side of the ocean.
Nothing more than Bezos once told the U.S. government, "SpaceX makes it impossible for others to play." ”
Fortunately, in the one-arrow multi-satellite technology, domestic commercial space companies have already made several successful attempts.
At 12:13 on December 7, 2021, the domestic commercial space company Galaxy Power successfully launched its own Ceres-1 (Yao-2) carrier rocket at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, and successfully sent five commercial satellites into the SSO orbit 500km away.
Photo/Galactic Power One Arrow Five Star Launch, Source/Galactic Power
In addition to Galaxy Power, the Interstellar Glory Hyperbolic 1 carrier rocket, which achieved the first orbital orbit of China Commercial Rocket Company in 2019, also successfully achieved an orbital stage launch of a double star with one stone.
Among the many technologies mastered by the Falcon 9 rocket, perhaps the one-arrow multi-satellite technology is the area where The gap between Chinese commercial space companies and SpaceX is the smallest. But Falcon 9 can currently achieve the launch of 143 stars with one arrow, although the number of satellites does not represent the level of technology, but it is reflected in market share, which means that it has a "winner-take-all" capital.
3. Dark Surge: A New Era of Satellite Batching
In July 2020, Galaxy Aerospace officially started construction of its satellite factory in Nantong, Jiangsu Province. According to media reports, "After the completion of the Galaxy Aerospace Supersatellite Factory, it will achieve a mass production capacity of at least one satellite per day." This means that the era of low-cost mass production of Chinese satellites is coming. ”
This good news in the domestic commercial aerospace field is very exciting, satellite mass production capacity is the core capability required for the current hot low-orbit satellite constellation networking, large-scale satellite mass production can significantly reduce satellite production costs, compress satellite development time, while standardized and modular development methods make the quality of satellites guaranteed.
In 2020, at the State Council's press conference, the satellite Internet was confirmed to be included in the country's new infrastructure. As the infrastructure of the next generation of "space-earth integrated communication", the construction of satellite Internet has been placed on a strategic height by the state, and in April 2021, a new central enterprise star network group was established, which is specifically responsible for the construction of the mainland satellite Internet, and the Internet constellation construction plan originally launched by aerospace science and technology and aerospace science and industry has also been integrated into a new "state grid" plan.
The official top-level design continues to advance, and domestic commercial space companies have also begun to find their own positioning in the context of national strategy.
Before the Spring Festival in 2022, a news that "China has achieved mass production of low-orbit broadband communication satellites for the first time" came out, and Galaxy Aerospace's super intelligent satellite factory rolled off the production line of 6 low-orbit broadband communication satellites.
Photo/ Galaxy Aerospace Satellite Factory, Image Source/Galaxy Aerospace
A founder of a commercial space company once said that "in the past, there was no problem of batch satellites, because there was no such demand, and in the past, it was necessary to develop one by one." But now it is different, due to the constellation networking, thousands of satellites to be launched into orbit, but also to consider the expiration of life during the launch or fault replacement and other issues, the actual number of production is certainly more than planned. ”
As industrial products, satellites used to adopt a custom design-development model, which led to the extremely high cost of satellites, and a geostationary communication satellite was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The cycle is also very long, usually taking about 30 months to build a satellite.
But with starlink's networking plan for the giant low-orbit Internet communication constellation, the huge 42,000 small satellites will inevitably require an industrialized mass production model to continuously unsurface satellites.
Musk once tweeted that "the speed of the Starlink satellite offline has almost not caught up with the speed of rocket launch." ”
This slightly Versailles remark not only shows the powerful carrying capacity of the Falcon 9 rocket and even the future Starship super heavy rocket, but also expresses SpaceX's practical need for the capacity of Starlink satellites to continue to expand.
On the mainland, many commercial space companies have begun the construction of satellite factories. After all, under the boom of low-orbit satellite constellation networking, the mainland's future "national grid" plan also has a demand of up to 12,992 low-orbit broadband satellites.
In addition to the above-mentioned Galaxy Aerospace, the nine-day MSI satellite factory will start construction in Tangshan in 2020, and after completion, it can achieve an annual production capacity of 100 small satellites.
In March 2020, Geely started construction of its satellite project in Taizhou. As a subsidiary of Geely, Space-time Daoyu said, "The company has learned from the final assembly process of the automotive industry to create a modular, flexible and intelligent manufacturing plant that can flexibly meet the satellite assembly and testing of different model specifications." ”
Space-time Daoyu also plans to achieve an annual production capacity of 500 satellites at satellite factories in 2025.
A satellite expert said, "Modular design and brick-building industrial production can realize the reuse of existing tooling configuration systems, and the interoperability of structural modules within and between platforms." The procurement of raw materials can also achieve scale, the cost and time of production and debugging are also greatly shortened, and the cost of platform development and production cycle will be greatly reduced. ”
Galaxy Aerospace also issued a document confirming that "the cost of a batch small satellite of the factory off the production line is already half of the first star developed by its own laboratory." ”
Generally speaking of the topic of manufacturing capacity, many people believe that the mainland has a huge advantage over the "hollowing out of manufacturing" in this regard.
But in fact, as a representative of the aerospace high-tech industry, satellite mass manufacturing is not a general manufacturing industry that relies entirely on scale and manual victory.
On January 4, 2022, U.S. satellite operator Loft Orbital announced that it had ordered 15 satellite platforms from Airbus from the prestigious satellite factory that OneWeb and Airbus had built in Florida.
In April 2016, OneWeb reached an agreement with the Florida government to build a satellite factory in Florida covering about 14 acres. When the plant was built, the capacity to produce three satellites per day was expected, when OneWeb announced that they would be able to greatly improve efficiency by using a similar assembly line assembly method to aircraft.
Photo/Airbus satellite production process, image source/Airbus
In June, OneWeb announced a partnership with Airbus to reduce the cost of research and development per small satellite to about $500,000.
The black-tech satellite plant broke ground in March 2017 and went on production in the fall of 2019, with two production lines, FAL2 and FAL3, and a 73,000-square-foot ultra-clean workshop.
At each site, teams of manufacturing engineers, robots, and "smart tools" make up the jobs. To improve efficiency, all devices and components work in parallel.
Automatic guiding robots can move parts from one station to another to improve efficiency. Once each module is built, it is transported to the assembly station using an automatic guided robot and then integrated into the satellite.
Airbus also integrates satellite testing into the assembly line of mass satellite production, internally referring to it as a "hospital" and sending satellites here if they find problems during assembly or testing.
This allows repairs to be made without interruption to the main assembly line, and if the module cannot be repaired within an hour, it is sent back to the original supplier, guaranteeing the high efficiency of the assembly plant.
Photo/Airbus' factory built for OneWeb, Image source/Oneweb
Once the satellite is built and the initial tests are completed, they enter the space environment simulator for a 2-day electrical and environmental test. There are 32 labs in the OneWeb satellite factory that can conduct experiments at the same time. Finally, the oneWeb acceptance satellites are placed in containers and shipped to the launch site.
Although SpaceX did not disclose the production process of its Starlink satellite, in March 2020, Musk said in an interview with reporters, "Our satellite manufacturing speed has exceeded the launch speed." ”
In August 2020, SpaceX said in a report to the FCC that the company's "Starlink" satellite production capacity has reached 120 per month, the cost of a single satellite is less than $500,000, and it is expected to complete the deployment of all 42,000 Starlink satellites in 2027. This is probably the highest capacity in the world right now.
If reusable rockets and multi-satellite technology are only related to cost and efficiency, then the ability to mass-produce satellites is related to the space strategy and long-term development of future continents.
Musk's "Starlink" plan will complete the deployment of 42,000 Starlink satellites in 2027, all of which are deployed in low-orbit orbits of 200km-2000km.
Last year's failure of the United Nations "Starlink" satellite almost collided with the Chinese space station, and the space light pollution caused by the Starlink satellite, which was reprimanded by astronomical enthusiasts around the world, shows that the "Starlink" program is gradually monopolizing the sky above our heads.
According to the ITU's organizational rules, the orbit and frequency resources in low orbit implement the principle of "first-come, first-served", so Starchain launched 42,000 small satellites into space, and gained the first hand in satellite networking. Better track resources and locations will be occupied by SpaceX, leaving players with only passive choices.
In the spectrum selection of the Beidou navigation constellation, we have suffered from the loss of GPS, and because of the thrill of the last moment, we have surpassed the ESA "Galileo" plan that was one step ahead of us and won the spectrum resources of itu.
The development of the space industry requires several generations to continuously lay a solid foundation for future generations, under the aggressive progress of the "StarLink" program. For China's aerospace industry, the ability to mass-produce satellites is not waiting for me.
End
During the nearly 20-year-long U.S.-Soviet space struggle, the United States paid nearly $50 billion for the entire Apollo program, and the former Soviet Union also spent $5 billion, and the space hegemony also dragged down the vitality of this declining empire and slowly led it to the grave.
In 1970, Zambian nuns wrote to NASA asking why they spent billions of dollars on Mars, but there are still many children on the earth who cannot eat and many families cannot feed.
While nasa's director's response answers the question well, "It brings a lot of new technologies and methods that can be used outside of Mars, generating several times the original benefits." ”
But for spaceflight, which cannot generate immediate commercial gains, spending taxpayer resources is not a long-term solution. Musk once said in a lawsuit against NASA, "Why are you spending a huge state budget to subsidize those people? (Referring to the arms magnate)"
But Space X itself also relied on Pentagon orders to obtain one after another research and development funds, and it was able to continue to go on.
Due to the remarkable characteristics of the aerospace industry's "three highs and one long", any commercial aerospace enterprise is facing a huge bottleneck in the early stage of development, and rockets and satellites are not like semiconductor chips, and the downstream is such a broad consumer market as consumer electronics. Rockets and satellites are products procured by governments or scientific research institutions for scientific research and exploration or defense and military purposes, and they are very far away from ordinary people.
Therefore, in the case of huge initial investment in the supply side, and there is no obvious market size on the demand side, it is difficult for commercial aerospace to take a money-burning method similar to that of Chinese Internet companies, "first to scale, and then to make a profit", and it will not be able to attract the attention of capital.
For such a problem similar to "egg chicken", the government has a pivotal role in the development of commercial space enterprises.
In addition to commercial space companies to make greater efforts to reduce costs and increase efficiency, there is also a need for a market for commercial space revenue, and this market should be large enough and imaginative enough, which is why NASA is committed to commercializing part of the International Space Station.
This is also Musk's goal of Space X to make humans multi-planetary creatures and achieve the vision of colonizing Mars. It's a bit fanciful, but it's big enough to be gimmicky.
In addition, the government will play the role of an incubator for industrial take-off.
One background to the take-off of U.S. commercial space is that the declining U.S. national space industry has led to NASA's "no arrows available," and the shadow of the Russians using the RD-180 in previous years is vividly remembered.
However, China's aerospace industry is just the opposite, and domestic commercial aerospace enterprises were born and grew up in the journey of China from a space power to a space power. Therefore, if the United States needs domestic commercial space companies as the main force in its space industry, then for China's aerospace industry, domestic commercial space companies are a powerful supplement to our space industry.
In 2022, the last few days before the Spring Festival, the white paper "China's Aerospace in 2021" was released. Explore the vast universe, develop the space industry, and build a space power. In the journey of realizing the dream of a space power, I believe that China's commercial space companies will have great potential.