China reports successful space flight

[DogOnPorch]

And about N2O4, it was chosen by both American and Russian as rocket propellant of their liquid ICBMs just because it is safe and storable. It can be filled into a ICBM fuel tanks for several month without need of drain it out. How would we imagine if an American Titan ICBM was filled with fuel, it must blast off at once to trigger WWIII? Or American must halt to charge their Titan fuel until they find Russian nuclear missiles flying to them?

That's simply incorrect. Once loaded onto the rocket, N2O4 goes to work breaking down the very containers it is kept in. Modern ICBMs are solid fuel for a reason.

I think you confused the dangerousness of storable liquid propellant(N2o4/(CH3)2NNH2) and hydrogen/oxygen propellant. It is the hydrogen/oxygen propellant are unstorable and more dangerous. If a malfunction occured after the fuel of shuttle has been charged and it is going to be lift off, NASA must reconnect a leakage pipe to the tanks to let out the oxygen/hydrogen vapor to avoid the shuttle oxygen/hydrogen tank to be breached, and if fixing the problem needs long time, the fuel must be discharged because under the normal temperature the pressure of liquified hydrogen/oxygen is very high, and any hull of rocket can not seal it.

LOX and LH while extremely explosive near a flame, combine into water in non-ignition conditions making it VERY safe in comparison. Spill a little here or there...no "problem" (in comparison). Not so with hypergolic fuels which ignite upon contact with each other...or regular air in some cases. Even during launch, the initial smoke cloud from a hypergolic booster launch is not just an irritant but toxic to all life...astronauts included if trouble occurs.

Your involvement in the Chinese space program would be of great assistance to certain individuals over at Orbiter Forums who are building a virtual Chinese space program. That would be for Orbiter Space Flight Simulator if you're unfamiliar. Please feel free to join us over there where you'd be most welcome. Fellows from other space programs (NASA, Roskosmos and ESA) also hang out there along with regular space flight enthusiasts/astronomy types. The simulator itself is a full up 3D platform with superb graphics and extreme realism. The Saturn V/Apollo some of the guys designed has a complete working virtual cockpit with every switch and dial being functional as in real life.

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Let's go!

---Yuri Gagarin

[xul]

You're thinking of UDMH...not N2O4. N2O4 is extremely corrosive. Corrosive to ANYTHING.

The propellant tank of a rocket mainly is made of aluminium based metal. As an oxidizer, N2O4 can make aluminium an oxide layer and it will protect aluminium from farther corrosion, so N2O4 can be kept in the tank for long time. And it also has lower liquified pressure so it is easily to be sealed in a pressurized propellant tank without supplying additional supplement ceaselessly like liquified oxygen and hydrogen.This is why UDMH/N2O4 were called "storable propellant". The pair of UDMH/N2O4 were mainly used ICBM in 1960s to 1970s because they have such advantage. And I guess there still are some liquid ICBMs on service in Russia, China and maybe America over several decades, and there is no evidence that any of them was corrupted to be breach.

Americans used hypergolic fuels for their main booster during only one of the manned programs...Project Gemini. There the oxyidizer was Aerozine 50...a slightly 'watered down' version of N2O4. They also had a method to drain the tanks as in the Gemini 6 launch abort.

I think American turned to kerosene and liquid oxygen booster in their Saturn project just because kerosene and oxygen is cheap then UDMH/N2O4. A saturn V rocket lift-off weight is about 3000t, so developing kerosene/oxygen boosters is higher cost-effectiveness than developing a new generation UDMH/N2O4 boosters for the new rockets. The first generatioin space launch vehicles use UDMH/N2O4 just because they are based on ICBMs. The lift-weights and payloads of ICBMs are suitable to launch earlier spacecrafts which only can sustain one to three astronauts in space for several days. If Chinese choise to lauch payloads far heavier than present spacecraft, such as landing something on moon, they also may choose alternative solution for their new rockets and boosters.

ChangZheng 5 Heavy-Load Space Launch Vehicle

Chinese sources were quoted saying that the launch became irreversible after the tanks were fueled.

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90881/6505718.html

I think you means these words:

launch has become irreversible after the loading, sources with the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest Gansu Province said.

You just don't understand Chinese political terminology. This "irreversible" is not technical irreversible but political irreversible. Charging propellant into rocket means all technical tests and checks has beeb passed, the weather forecast has said OK and, the chairman of CPC, who would be a mainly delay factor if he wanted to watch the launch and happened had no time in the scheduled launch day, has decided which day he have time to come.

Basically, the Chinese use the Long March because they have it NOW.

You are right. But why Chinese must give up their mature UDMH/N2O4 booster to develop a new rocket if its payload is suitable for sent three astronauts into space for a short journey? In fact, the UDMH/N2O4 boosters of Long March rockets have never failed for almost 30 years in over a hundred of launches. Several cases of launch failure you cited were due to other problems such as control system, not due to UDMH/N2O4 booster. And I think UDMH/N2O4 liquid rockets have been launched thousands times around world in past 50 years, the problem you said were not reported.

Says the Communist authorities. Not to be trusted...as we have plenty of evidence to show. American eyewitnesses have a different story.

In where they are? If you think today's chinese medias and websites are all run by the CPC and what they said are exactly the official stance of China government, you are absolutely wrong.

This video link CZ-3B failure comes from China's largest website SINA, but obviously it was not the CPC posted it there. If you wathch the video, you will find it is the same as the video you cited. At present day, the CPC no longer forbids people talk about such technical failures, so you can find some big-mouth guys all the time. If you can read Chinese words, you can find lots of CPC-beating posts in all kinds of Chinese website forums, even those western media so-called Chinese young nationists also like beating the CPC when they refer to Chinese domistic problem, especially for the reasons of the CPC failed to offering them from safe food to offering them a good job and salary. But you could not suppose there would be an uprising tomorrow.

In any case, there were not 500 people killed, not even 50 or 25. The video picture showed is truth but the voiceover was wrong. One of my colleagues told me she was there and lived in one of the white low-rise apartment-liked building(it's a hotel or dotmitory for technicians from industry department who come here to instruct the launch) but that night all these building shown in video were almost empety. Exactly the destroyed building in vedio is not a real "village", it a part of the base, they are the dormitories of technicians, soldiers and the peasant families(different from western army, in China the families of army officers are allowed to live in the base, and they usually use those "free" field in the base to grow vegetables and sell them to army to gain more money) of army officers in this base. This is why soldiers guarded the debris, they were just protecting anyone who would pick-up their military files and facilities under the debris. But at the moment of the lift-off of the rocket, no one but only several on-duty soldiers were keeping perimeter of these evacuated building.

Edited October 13, 2008 by xul

[xul]

That's simply incorrect. Once loaded onto the rocket, N2O4 goes to work breaking down the very containers it is kept in. Modern ICBMs are solid fuel for a reason.

LOX and LH while extremely explosive near a flame, combine into water in non-ignition conditions making it VERY safe in comparison. Spill a little here or there...no "problem" (in comparison). Not so with hypergolic fuels which ignite upon contact with each other...or regular air in some cases. Even during launch, the initial smoke cloud from a hypergolic booster launch is not just an irritant but toxic to all life...astronauts included if trouble occurs.

Your involvement in the Chinese space program would be of great assistance to certain individuals over at Orbiter Forums who are building a virtual Chinese space program. That would be for Orbiter Space Flight Simulator if you're unfamiliar. Please feel free to join us over there where you'd be most welcome. Fellows from other space programs (NASA, Roskosmos and ESA) also hang out there along with regular space flight enthusiasts/astronomy types. The simulator itself is a full up 3D platform with superb graphics and extreme realism. The Saturn V/Apollo some of the guys designed has a complete working virtual cockpit with every switch and dial being functional as in real life.

Thank you for introduce these website to me. I have said my speciality is not on aerospace engineering. I know these knowledge just becasue I was ever a fun of aerospace technology when I was in High school and college.

I think there is not a absolute universal correct or wrong way to solve a single engineering problem. Some engineers likely adopt this way, others like other way, depending on their knowledge, ability, understanding of the problem, the schedule, and of course the budget their boss offered them. So maybe you are right, but Chinese solution maybe isn't wrong. The solution is based on their country's reality, that means their country is still a developing country, can not afford such money which American spent to develop areospace technology, and in fact China government did not spend lots of money funding aerospace industry just as everybody thought. And so far, It seems they are success especially in the aspect of cost-efficiency. I don't think China's aerospace technology is match with America or Russia, but China did spent less money to achieve its main goal than other countries, this may be correct corresponding their country's circumstance.

Edited October 13, 2008 by xul

[DogOnPorch]

Thank you for introduce these website to me. I have said my speciality is not on aerospace engineering. I know these knowledge just becasue I was ever a fun of aerospace technology when I was in High school and college.

Seriously. Come on down. You'll be in good company.

As for the simulator...here's a pic.

Here's a

of Apollo in action.

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It's a Daisy

Edited October 13, 2008 by DogOnPorch

[xul]

Seriously. Come on down. You'll be in good company.

As for the simulator...here's a pic.

Here's a

of Apollo in action.

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It's a Daisy

Thank you. I will come some day if I could help.

I have just watched the video. It's great and very impressive. Contrast with the video you recommend, the CCTV's simulator video of the spacecraft China launched resently is really worse. I think if the CPC's dictator came here and saw the video he might piss his incapable propaganda CCTV off instead of hiring this website.

Edited October 23, 2008 by xul

[DogOnPorch]

Orbiter Space Flight Simulator is not-for-profit (100% free)...at least in its present form. There is some talk about having a commercial version for use by space agencies to demonstrate mission profiles and such. The new version due out soon will have even better visual graphics, if you can believe it.

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We spent a lot of time in simulators. We were going to do it right.

---Wally Schirra: Mercury 8 (Sigma), Gemini 6, Apollo 7