【军武次位面】作者：军武菌
As long as the customer has a budget
I can find you the "Dongfeng missile".
On the afternoon of January 11, 2024, China successfully launched three satellites into the scheduled orbit using the Gravity-1 commercial launch vehicle in the waters near Haiyang, Shandong Province.
Compared with other domestic rockets, this rocket is worth mentioning too much, it is currently the world's largest carrying capacity of solid launch vehicles, the shape is stubby, launched on the sea launch ship, and the launch flame is extremely spectacular.
▲ Shoot Hailan House twice a year, and every time you have a new feeling, Hailan House, a real man's rocket
More importantly, it is developed by a private aerospace enterprise in China, "Oriental Space" company, and the launch was also exclusively named by a clothing brand, and the rocket was written with a big "Heilan Home".
Isn't Heilan Home a man's wardrobe, but a man's rocket? Actually, in China's civil aerospace field, this kind of rocket co-branded operation is very common.
The so-called rocket co-branding itself is actually a kind of commercial advertising, which is developed from aerospace advertising.
What may surprise many people is that it was not the United States that first engaged in aerospace advertising, but the Soviet Union, which had a planned economy.
Soviet astronautics used to be very good, and it created countless firsts, the first manned spacecraft, the first space dog, the first cosmonaut Gagarin, the first female cosmonaut Tereshkova, the first cosmonaut family, the first spacewalk, the first space station, the first rendezvous and docking, the first unmanned lunar probe, and so on......
These achievements in the space race with the United States have led to a problem: space is a complete cash-burning business, and it does not make any money at all.
As a result, when the Soviet economy was good, space achievements could grow explosively, but once the economy deteriorated and funding decreased, space would be unsustainable.
For example, at the end of the Soviet Union, in order to compete with the United States, the Soviet Union used most of the funds to build 13 Buran space shuttles (including test aircraft), but the budget was spent.
At this time, the Japanese came to find me.
In 1989, Japan's Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) approached the Soviet Union to send one of its own journalists into space with the Soyuz TM-11 spacecraft, making history as Japan's first astronaut and boosting television ratings.
The Soviet Union, which lacked foreign exchange, immediately agreed, offering $37 million.
▲Japan's first astronaut Toyohiro Akiyama, a former reporter for the Tokyo Broadcasting Corporation
This price makes the Japanese a little too big, and it seems to be a little expensive, but the shrewd Japanese immediately thought, since I paid the money, then whether the right to use the rocket belongs to me?
The Soviet Union, which had no idea about this, readily agreed, and the Japanese TBS divided the rocket into several advertising slot areas, and then began the auction.
Because it was to send Japan's first astronaut into space, this matter is very popular in Japan, and TBS live broadcast will definitely win the top of the ratings list at that time, so major Japanese companies are desperately trying to win advertising space, and finally won by the wealthy Sony, Unicharm and Otsuka Pharmaceutical.
So the effect presented at the final launch is that under the rudder of the spacecraft fairing grille, the first is Sony, the second is Unicharm, the third is Otsuka Pharmaceutical, and the logo of the Soviet Aerospace Technology and Equipment Corporation and TBS is on the rocket body.
▲ Soyuz TM-11 rocket launch, pay attention to the Japanese advertisement above
Although it is a bit embarrassing to print the brand of Japanese sanitary napkins on the rockets of the socialist Soviet Union, the most important thing is not to starve to death for the Soviet space, which has no money.
In 1999, Pizza Hut printed its own logo on a Russian rocket and went into space with the rocket, becoming the first pizza company to advertise in space.
Former NASA administrator Bradenstine believes that "sponsoring manufacturers may think that they have the right to interfere with the direction of NASA's program, and astronauts who are NASA employees may also weaken NASA's influence on astronauts if they can get a huge sponsorship fee from the sponsoring company." ”
So what should some companies in the United States do if they want to do aerospace advertising?
First, build your own rockets and shoot them yourself. For example, Musk used his own rocket to shoot his Tesla sports car into space.
Second, the use of near-earth space to rub the edge of space advertising, and the use of balloons to send the brand logo into the air at an altitude of more than 30,000 meters, although it is not out of the atmosphere, but also far away from the earth to produce a visual sense of space travel.
What Americans may not realize is that they are already far behind China in the field of space commercialization.
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Mini programs
In China, this simple rocket body advertising model is actually outdated.
The reason is very simple, if you just put an advertising space on the rocket, saying that the XX brand is in space, but in fact, many people know that most of the rocket bodies can't actually enter space, and they will be separated and fall early, which seems to be suspected of false propaganda.
Therefore, China has chosen another model - co-branding, which is actually naming rights.
We all know that a certain type of rocket, although the same series will have the same name, but how to distinguish each rocket in this series?
China uses "YX" (remote X) to distinguish, China's rocket technology first came from the Dongfeng missile, the missile will be equipped with remote control, measurement, data return and other equipment, so referred to as "remote", remote several, is the first few (but not necessarily the number of the launch time is also later).
Therefore, names such as Long March 7 Yao 5 and Long March 5 Yao 3 often appear in the news, and "Yao X" represents the name of this rocket.
It sounds like this kind of name almost meaningless, rustic. So it's better to sell the naming rights to make up for the launch costs! As for the arrow body advertisement, it can be regarded as a co-branded bonus!
In this way, the name of this rocket will forever be recorded in the annals of history along with the chronology of space launches! What could be better publicity?
Therefore, in recent years, China has launched a lot of rockets, which can be co-branded.
▲Chang'an Auchan rocket
For example, after the release of Changan Auchan's new model, it directly co-branded the launch of China's first private rocket, Beijing Interstellar Glory Company's "Hyperbola No. 1" Yaoyi, and the words "Changan Auchan" were directly written on the rocket body.
In China's first sea rocket launch mission, the Great Wall Weipai high-end car brand also co-branded the Long March 11 rocket, helping Weipai quickly enhance its brand awareness in a short period of time.
▲ Is this launch canister familiar?
There are also Hongqi cars have also begun to join in the fun, people are not co-branded rockets, but satellites, coincidentally, this "Hongqi No. 1-H9" satellite, also made in Changchun.
In addition to car companies, some cutting-edge companies also like co-branded rockets.
For example, in 2019, Xiaomi and Liankong Tianxing successfully launched the horizontal recovery technology verification rocket "Tianxing I-1", and took 50 rice fans to go for a ride in the universe together, successfully realizing the promise of "the first rocket for young people".
▲Xiaomi's rocket looks very sci-fi
▲ The first rocket of a young man
And in 2023, the Ceres-1 Yao-7 rocket "Haohuanluo" was successfully launched, which also made Haohuanluo the first brand in the snail flour industry to successfully launch a launch vehicle.
▲How does the "snail powder" rocket look like Dongfeng Express with a new livery?
In addition to this kind of joint name, some enterprises and aerospace have many in-depth cooperation models, such as the "Jilin-1" remote sensing satellite named "Bilibili Video Satellite" After the "Jilin-1" remote sensing satellite was launched, Station B announced that it would regularly update popular science videos on the basis of massive remote sensing videos and picture data taken by satellites, and customize shooting tasks for Station B users to use satellites to photograph the earth from home.
Even the well-known UP master of station B, "Film and Television Hurricane", bought a satellite to launch in November 2023, broadcasting the wishes made by fans 2 years ago to the earth in space.
▲The satellite launched by the UP main "Film and Television Hurricane" broadcasts fan messages in space
Seeing that the rocket co-branding is so lively, even the national team can't sit still, and the China Aerospace Science and Industry, which is good at "sending people to the West Sky", has directly begun to advertise for the Kuaizhou rocket (the foundation of this rocket "DF-21 change", everyone who understands it) has openly recruited brand partners from the society, and the exclusive title of the task, the advertising coating of the arrow body, the development of cultural and creative products, and the rights and interests of aerospace science popularization and research are at your disposal.
To put it simply, as long as you have the money, you can always find a cooperation model with aerospace.
▲ "GAC Trumpchi GS4" Dongfeng missile, no, it is a Kuaizhou rocket
The answer is very simple: The root cause is the collective outbreak of China's private aerospace industry.
Many people wonder why China still needs private aerospace when it has a strong national team?
This starts with the plight of China's aerospace industry.
During the Cold War, space was a national security expansion, but now, space launch is a commercial activity.
In the past 30 years, with the development of the Internet era and the progress of satellite communication technology, human beings have begun to rely more on satellites, and the commercial satellite launch market has been expanding on a large scale.
China has long been interested in this market, in the 90s China had commercialized space launches, with the advantages of reliable performance and economical price of Long March rockets, China once entered the international commercial space launch market, accounting for 9% of the world's commercial launch market, earning a lot of foreign exchange.
▲At that time, many satellites from the United States, Australia and other countries were launched by China
But later, the United States ordered a ban on all countries that use American parts and technology from using Chinese companies with "government and military backgrounds" to launch satellites, and many countries were forced to tear up their contracts, and even gave their satellite launch contracts to India and not to China.
At present, China's commercial launch vehicle launches account for only 3% of the world's market share, which is completely inconsistent with China's launch capacity and launch volume, which accounts for 40% of the world's launch.
Looking at such a large-scale market but not being able to eat because of the US ban, to be honest, it makes people quite anxious.
Turning a state project into a private model is an attempt to circumvent this ban.
▲ The rocket planning of the "Interstellar Glory" company
In 2015, China opened up the civil aerospace track, and civil aerospace companies sprung up, such as Science and Industry Rocket, Jielong-1, Blue Arrow Angtian, Interstellar Glory, Zero One Space, Galaxy Power, Deep Blue Aerospace, Star Exploration, etc.
Compared with the national team, these private aerospace companies have unique advantages.
On the one hand, the design team is young, accepts new things and new technologies relatively quickly, and does not have much historical baggage, coupled with the explosion of Chinese talent technology in recent years, many young talents after 80s and 90s have become the backbone.
On the other hand, if a university or commercial company wants to launch a satellite, if it waits for the national team, it will have to be scheduled, and when the daylily is cold, but if it is handed over to private aerospace, it can help you hit the sky in minutes.
With the support of policy, capital and talents, China's private aerospace has developed very rapidly, for example, on April 2 last year, Tianbing Technology successfully launched a liquid-fueled rocket for the first time, and three months later, Blue Arrow Aerospace's Suzaku 2 was also successfully launched, which undoubtedly added more confidence to the development of China's private aerospace.
In particular, Suzaku 2 is the first liquid oxygen methane rocket in human history to be successfully launched into orbit!
Those who are familiar with this aspect know that there are three major schools that have been put into use on a large scale in terms of the fuel used in liquid rockets: the first is nitrogen hydrazine fuel, the second is liquid oxygen kerosene, and the third is liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, but all of these have their own defects.
So humans have been exploring new rocket fuels, and it turned out to be methane.
There are three major benefits to using methane as a fuel compared to these conventional fuels.
The first is cheap! cheap! cheap! The price is only one-30th of the cost of dimethylhydrazine!
The second is the high energy density of methane, compared with other liquid fuels, the same weight of methane can produce more heat energy, which helps to improve the thrust of the rocket.
The third is that methane has a low carbon content, burns cleanly, and has less carbon deposition in the engine, which is good for the secondary ignition when the engine is recovered.
▲Suzaku 2 was launched
Therefore, whether it is Musk's Falcon, or Russia's Angara rocket, or the latest version of the Long March 9 that China used to land on the moon, they are all methane fuel.
And now, China's private aerospace companies have finally developed methane rockets, which means that China has also entered the low-cost space track.
Although Suzaku 2 has not yet been recycled, a number of domestic civilian enterprises have made initial breakthroughs in recycling rockets. The next step is to see who can take the lead in maturing the reusable rocket technology.
▲In 2022, the 100-meter vertical take-off and landing flight test of the Deep Blue Aerospace Nebula-M1 test arrow
▲On November 2, 2023, China's first recyclable rocket "Hyperbola 2" vertical take-off and landing experiment was successful, judging from the video, it has a few seconds of hovering automatic control when it is more than ten meters above the ground, indicating that it is different from Musk's Falcon rocket recovery principle. On December 10, the second repeated launch test of "Hyperbola-2" was successful!
More importantly, the prospects of China's aerospace market are huge. At present, China has launched its own "satellite network plan", which will launch 12,992 satellites in the next few years to realize the Chinese version of Starlink, and the first satellite of the satellite network has been successfully launched on July 9 last year.
Then the next question is how to launch these more than 10,000 satellites into the sky at a low cost.
The solid-fuel rocket "Gravity-1" at the beginning of the article is designed to shoot 30 satellites with one rocket and launch small satellites in batches. Tianbing Technology is developing a partially recoverable rocket that can launch 60 satellites at a time, and Interstellar Glory is developing a heavy-duty rocket with parameters close to that of Falcon 9, which can be recycled and reused 20 times. Obviously, they are all aiming at the market of China Star Network.
The collective outbreak of the country's private aerospace industry is inseparable from the support of the state.
At present, the country has become more and more like NASA in the guidance of the civil aerospace industry, on the one hand, engines, measurement and control technology, and talents continue to be transmitted to private aerospace to help private aerospace grow.
On the other hand, in the future, the national team will undertake more major tasks such as planetary exploration and space station missions, while in the field of commercial space launches, such as communication satellites, the national team will slowly fade out and give the market to private aerospace companies.
Even the launch site, which is the most expensive and difficult for private companies to build, has been solved by the state, and now the Wenchang commercial launch site in Hainan is about to be completed, and it is expected to reach China's annual capacity to launch 200 civilian rockets in five years.
It can be said that China's private aerospace companies are stepping down the road to SpaceX-style success.
Of course, compared with the national team, the biggest problem of private aerospace is the sustainability of funds, in the start-up stage that has not yet achieved profitability, it can operate normally if it is not funded, and it may go bankrupt if it is not obtained, so in the start-up stage, it is necessary to diversify the sources of funds, and rocket co-branding is a good idea.
For civil aerospace companies, the cost of rocket co-branding is actually a little paint cost, which can be said to be a huge profit.
▲ Bubble Mart rocket
For the brand, today's civil space fever has brought unprecedented traffic to aerospace, Chinese are entering the space age, a rocket co-branded advertising cost of about several million, companies or individuals with a certain budget can buy a shot, write the company name or girlfriend's name to shoot into the sky, in the sea of stars in the road to leave their own mark.
Finally, the military mushroom quietly revealed, if any reader has a rocket co-branding request,
We have channels for the military, and whoever wants to sign a joint name can come to us.