hallo it's scott manley here once again
social media is full of images of a
rocket booster which has crashed into
somebody's house in china this is a
booster from a long march 3b which
launched a pair of Beedle satellites on
saturday the launch status check Chang
which is built in the mountains
thousands of miles inland primarily
because the Chinese space program began
during the Cold War and security was a
big deal like the US and the USSR
China's space program began as they spin
off from their ICBM development during
the 1950s China had direct assistance
from the Soviet Union in rocket
development but this stopped after the
sino-soviet split of 1960 it would be
only weeks then before Chinese
scientists actually launched their own
homegrown missile in 1970 China launched
their first satellite using a long march
1 rocket essentially this was a DF for
Dongfang for ICBM with an extra third
stage that was a solid rocket motor this
historic vehicle was about 30 meters
tall and massed 80 tons with the first
two stages powered by yf2 a engines
burning a mixture of unsymmetrical
dimethyl hydrazine or udmh and nitric
acid each engine developed about 27 tons
of thrust and they had forthose engines
on the first aid stage and a single
engine on the second stage and the third
stage was a two-ton spin-stabilized
solid rocket motor and this vehicle was
able to put the 300 kilogram Dongfang
hong satellite into Earth orbit where it
actually remains to this day the long
march one would launch only one more
payload before it was retired I should
probably mention that while the Rockets
are named long march in English they
take the name Chang Zhang or C Z in
China the name recalls the long march of
the Red Army as it tried to evade the
forces of general Chiang kai-shek and
ultimately regroup this events a man
Mao Zedong as the leader er and it
became a cornerstone of the Chinese
Communist Party's propaganda the long
march to was a big step up it was based
on the df5 missile it was more than
twice the size of the long march one
clocking in at a hundred and ninety tons
fully fueled it had two stages burning
udmh and nitrogen tetroxide
the engines were now YF 20 engines with
four in the first stage and one in the
second stage each of these engines would
generate 70 tons of thrust the first
launch in 1974 was unfortunately a
failure but a year later the slightly
upgraded long march to a launched and
then launched again all of her payloads
at this time were fsw reconnaissance
satellites which I previously mentioned
because their re-entry heat shields were
made of impregnated oak now around the
same time there was another rocket
called the Fang vile one which had been
developed in parallel with long march to
for political reasons they shared the
same df5 ancestor and had similar
performance the fang bowel made eight
orbital attempt launch attempts over its
career with only eight of them being
successful the long march to see
stretched the propellant tanks to
improve performance bringing the wet
mass up to two hundred and thirty tons
it first launched in 1982 and is still
flying today having launched 51 times
with only one failure it has an optional
solid rocket third stage to improve
performance again that makes the two CSD
that variant was actually used in the
1990s to launch a dozen iridium
satellite the third stage is also
capable of putting some surplus small
satellites into geostationary transfer
orbit now the long march 2d isn't a
direct evolution of the long march -
it's a long march for so we will get
back to that later but the long march to
e was a big deal it added for
liquid-fueled radial boosters supporting
a lengthened core and second stage the
vehicle now massed four hundred and
sixty tons and it could deliver ninth
to law Earth orbit however it suffered
from design problems with excessive
vibration and structural weakness in the
payload fairing that actually destroyed
a couple of satellites now while that
was bad for those satellites the
consequences would ultimately affect the
entire Chinese space program the
satellite manufacturer huge space and
communications offered to help China fix
the problems with the rocket and its
weak fearing but this caused great
kalitta chol controversy in the US and
it was asserted that the information
could then be used to improve chinese
rockets and ballistic missiles so in
1998 the US congress reclassified
satellite technology as ammunition and
placing it under ITAR this made it
impossible for more satellites to launch
on chinese rockets and essentially cut
out china from most of the commercial
launch market so the long march to e was
retired but the 2f which is largely
based on the same layout is the primary
launch vehicle for China's human
spaceflight program carrying both the
Shen Xue spacecraft and the tiangong
stations so that's long march to Ceres
don't worry the all the others don't
have nearly as many variants so the long
march 3 is the obvious next step
it took the long march to sea and it
added a hydrogen oxygen upper stage
powered by a newly designed y f73 engine
it was designed to put about 1.3 tons
into geostationary orbit and it operated
from 1984 to 2000 notably it was used to
launch asia sat.1 which had previously
been launched on the space shuttle as
West r1 but after it failed to boost
into geostationary transfer orbit
another space shuttle crew went up
rescued the satellite returned it to
earth where it was refurbished and that
then was launched in a Chinese rocket
after the company lobbied the US
government to get a license and Reagan
at the time was very big on engaging
China and started allowing these
launches and that set the precedent for
the next few years obviously until the
long march to
incident so the long march 3 was then
superseded by the 3e which made
everything bigger bigger propellant
tanks and improved performance over all
the engines are still derived from those
YF 20 engines they now have a new
designation YF 21 but they're basically
the same thing burning udmh and NTU the
performance for the extended tanks is
now 2,500 kilograms to geostationary
orbit and the first launch of that was
in 1994 and again the vehicle is still
in operation today you probably noticed
by now by the way that the engine
designations all begin with YF and I
understand that this means Yeti Fadem
are in our liquid type engine and you
also noticed by know that my chinese
pronunciation is terrible and i expect
lots of comments telling me how to say
things correctly I admit I'm not perfect
the Long March 3 be added for liquid
fueled strap-on boosters more than
doubling the geostationary performance
to 5.1 tonnes in 2007 they then
stretched this to make the b /e bringing
the performance up to five and a half
tonnes now that meant the difference
between the long march 3a was your 2.5
and the 3b he was 5.5 that left a big
gap if he wanted to geostationary
satellite that was in the middle so they
came up with the 3c and that's basically
a 3b but with only 2 strap-on boosters
instead of 4 ok so that's enough of
threes now it's the long march for a
there was no regular 4 so that took the
first and second stages of the 3a but
instead of a hydrogen option upper stage
it switched over to a hypergolic udmh
nitrogen tetroxide stage and you're
providing 4.2 kilograms to low-earth
orbit that version only flew a couple of
times but the 4b and 4c still fly I
think the main difference between these
is the size of the fairing but it's hard
to get information on it and yeah that
brings us back to the long march 2 D so
again they just took the first two
stages of the 4a and put on Y Zed 3 ru
Wang's
saying that's a restartable upper-stage
that can be used to put satellites into
you know intermediate orbits I believe
that's a variant of the stage that's
used by the Badu satellites to put them
into their intermediate altitude orbits
roughly speaking the family is groups
such as Long March to have small or no
third stages the long march three have
the hydrogen upper stage and the Long
March four have large hypergolic third
stages so the Long March two three and
four account for almost all of the
launches from China and they're all
based on the same yf-23 engines with
it's nasty hypergolic fuel but the new
generation of vehicles are switching
over to cryogenic propellants the YF 100
series engines burn kerosene and liquid
oxygen in an oxidizer rich stage
combustion cycle and they generate about
a hundred and thirty tonnes of thrust
the engine was pretty much developed by
reverse engineering the RD 120 with a
handful of examples and a collection of
documentation being acquired during the
1990s during the breakup of the Soviet
Union anyway the long march 5 is a big
step up in terms of launch capability
the design uses a two-stage hydrogen
oxygen core with four radially attached
boosters burning kerosene and liquid
oxygen it has a large mass of 867 tons
and it's intended to be able to put 25
tons into low-earth orbit and will be
used to launch China's tianhe-2 and the
long march 5 is still considered to be
in development a having had 2 launches
with only one partial success it's also
notable that these new launch vehicles
are launching from Wang Qiang which saw
in Hainan Island and therefore it drops
the expanded stages into the sea the
long march 6 is a small rocket using the
YF 100 engine it's supposed to be able
to put a hut with 1000 kilograms into
some synchronous orbit it has a wife 100
in the first stage and a YF 115 vacuum
derived version for the second stage and
it's got a little small
ah garlic stage is flawed about three
times right now carrying lots of
payloads there tend to be or farms of
coups s on each flight the long march 7
is supposed to be a more versatile
launch vehicle with a two-stage kerosene
liquid oxygen core and augmented by 2 or
4 radial boosters and those boosters can
either be solid or liquid propellant
there's also an option for a wise e15
maneuver stage RA hydraulics upper stage
for those at high-energy GTO
trajectories as far as I can tell
there's not much information on the long
march 8
beyond statements there's supposed to be
a reusable launch vehicle but the long
march name the end development super
heavy launch vehicle with a 10 meter
diameter core for radial boosters and
new more powerful engines it's supposed
to be capable of putting maybe a hundred
tons or more into low-earth orbit
giving China a vehicle that is capable
of sending crews to the moon at least
when it begins flying in the 2030s
is everybody keeping up the final long
march is the long march 11 and it is a
four stage solid rocket motor launch
vehicle that doesn't need complex grown
support for launch
indeed in June 2019 they actually
launched one off a barge in the Yellow
Sea so that's all the long march yeah
there's what also a couple of Chinese
launch vehicles which aren't part of the
long march family there's new commercial
space providers in the form of land
space link space one space X pace and
they're all trying to differentiate
themselves from the government launch
program despite all having strong links
to the government launch program so far
only X space has launched anything with
their quasi rockets it's a small solid
rocket launcher derived from the DF 21
missile which has launched eight times
so far in fact twice this month from the
same site showing impressively fast
turnaround time and that rapidity is
worth noting in another way this year
China has launched 28 Rockets while US
launch providers have only made
23 launches and that includes the five
electron rockets that are launched from
New Zealand
the Chinese launchers are almost all
Chinese payloads due to the difficulty
in building spacecraft that can be
licensed for export under current
technology embargoes yep it's difficult
to talk about rocketry without getting
into politics or speculating how this
will play out but it's clear that China
is very much a world class launch
provider largely restricted to only
serving a small portion of the world
market it'll be interesting to see how
this plays out in the coming decades and
I'm gonna say also as a rocket fan I'm a
continuously disappointed by their lack
of real-time coverage of their launches
and of course zero transparency when
things go wrong and they don't expect
that to change anytime soon
I'm Scott Manley fly safe
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