[FPSPACE] CE4 - recoverable rovers 2017-2020

Tue Mar 3 14:11:40 EST 2009

Hi Gert - 

At the time of the CE1 impact with the Moon, China released many details of its plans for the next several years - but I don't think that its a complete list. For example, there was also a visit by the head of CNSA to the China's Phobos-Grunt participant team. Another item not mentioned in the releases was earlier plans for a "Deep Impact" type mission, which Chinese space leadership had spoken of as occurring immediately after CE3. 

On Tiangong, the orbital laboratory, we now have pretty good info on TG1, SZ8, SZ9, SZ10. But earlier they had spoken about a second TG, TG2, which it appears will run until their station.

So how many rockets,  how many korabl, how many probes, how much money over the upcoming years? Then you have the comsats, weathersats, earthsats, and defense missions. It would be nice to have all of this laid out in time, along with some rough cost numbers. 

It appears the 2017-2020 rovers will be done with CZ5, but then there's the CZ 2h coming into use at some point as well. CZ5 has several variants with different mass payloads for the Moon, so even trying to roughly guess about future landing sites for rover or sample return is tough. 

Again, while China's leadership welcomes good news, fundamentally China's space program is pragmatic, and it has to be, if their space leadership intends to maintain the Chinese peoples' willingness to pay for it. 

Given that, my guess is that China will look for polar ice on the Moon; the good point for base construction is well known, but we'll see....

In any case, I don't think that NASA will have to fight too hard to get its budget during Obama's first term.

E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas

Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 13:42:14 +0700
Subject: Re: [FPSPACE] CE4 - recoverable rovers 2017-2020
From: geert at navtools.nl
To: epgrondine at hotmail.com
CC: fpspace at friends-partners.org; jameseoberg at comcast.net

The moondaily article is interesting as it indeed shows a craft which looks a lot like a Soviet Y8E derived sample return probe taking off from the moon.

As I mentioned earlier the crash of Chang'e might very well be used to track mascons and photograph the terrain at a planned landingsite, and the most interesting point about this landingsite is its location, which allows a direct ascent trajectory back to earth. Landing at this position only makes sense if you plan to fly a sample return mission.

If they indeed manage to re-fly a Y8E mission then China will be the third country who returns moonrocks/dust to earth.

Disadvantage of all the Y8E derived missions is that they are very restricted in their landingpoints, getting a sample from any other location on the moon will be a lot tougher as the ascent stage will probably need to fly to lunar orbit first prior to TEI burn. On the other hand, there are still several spots on the backside of the moon which also allow a direct ascent trajectory, that's one of the missions the Soviets were planning before everything collapsed. Getting samples from the backside would definitely be interesting, and such a mission is within reach of Y8E/M hardware...

Regards,

Geert.

On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 11:24 AM, E.P. Grondine <epgrondine at hotmail.com> wrote:

Hi - 

The impact of CE1 has provided China with the opportunity to release statements on a number of manned space topics, from the lunar program to Tiangong to the launch complex.

First off, a "CE4" series has now been approved for the Moon:

http://www.moondaily.com/reports/China_To_Land_Probe_On_Moon_At_Latest_In_2013_999.html

With launch from 2017-2020 most likely by CZ5's.

Then there's Tiangong:
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90881/6603285.html

which clears up the naming confusion. 

(For some reason its tough to find the original release - anybody have a copy of it? There is a mention in this report of a manned Moon landing before 2020, but how that fits in with CAPS after 2020 is not clear. The CE4 series seems to have been influenced by Japanese proposals to use robots as predecessors to and along with men in manned Moon missions.)

Then there's the station:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-03/03/content_7528607.htm

In the secondary reports we still see a lot of confusion.

E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas

PS 1 - anybody broken out pad and factory utilization for all of this yet?

PS 2 - Thiokol is now playing up Ares 1 first stage re-usability. But Direct's SRBs are the same as those now flown, which are already recoverable. I don't know how much money you save by recovering casings, but I don't think its that efficient, say in comparison to folding wing fly-back liquid first stages.

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Geert Sassen
weblog: http://geertsassen.web-log.nl

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