China showed a render of a suborbital transport rocket very similar to Starship and named its rover

This weekend, China hosted the sixth National Space Day in Nanjing. The event was held on a grand scale, which is understandable – the Celestial Empire has something to show and tell about. China’s space program is going according to plan, the country has achieved a number of goals, including sending a station to the moon, sampling lunar rocks with their successful delivery to Earth, and developing its own space station.

Naturally, representatives of the space industry of this country talked about further plans. This is, for example, the Zhurong rover, which should arrive on the Red Planet as early as next month. Interestingly, the rover could not be given an official name, and only now it received it. Zhurong is the god of fire in traditional Chinese mythology. But let’s talk about the rover later, and now it’s worth discussing China’s orbital transport project. The fact is that one of its implementations is very similar to Starship, both externally and in essence.

What kind of transport?

His presented China Missile Research Institute. And this is not a finished project, but only visualization, rendering. According to the plan, a rocket (and this is a rocket) can deliver passengers from one point of the globe to another in just an hour.

The Chinese have two options for implementing such a project. The first, as mentioned above, is almost an exact copy of Starship. The render resembles Musk’s rocket both externally and in principle, plus the render itself has a lot in common with SpaceX’s own video showing a visualization of a similar journey.

This is Starship:

And this is a Chinese rocket:

It looks like everything is here – takeoff, separation of the first and second stages, and landing. In addition, the Chinese concept also has a shiny metal case without any identification marks.

SpaceX unveiled a suborbital flight project in 2017. The company showed passengers taking off in New York with a landing in Shanghai. According to company representatives, the flight takes only 39 minutes. Actually, such a rocket is capable of delivering passengers anywhere in the world in less than an hour. Distance does not play a special role here.

The Chinese told about the same thing.

But they also have a second project, which seems to be nothing like the others. In the render, we see a vehicle on a platform – as far as we can understand, this is an electromagnetic catapult. Transport is very similar to a supersonic aircraft. It is launched into flight by the platform, after which the “plane” turns on the engine and is sent to the suborbital space of the planet. After that, the vehicle begins to descend and descend at the airport of another country.

In general, both concepts are good, and there is nothing wrong with the fact that China showed something similar to Starship – the main thing is that the country’s space program develops. Unfortunately, this is not a near-term project – it will be implemented no earlier than 2035. And this is only the first stage – the delivery of goods. Passengers will start flying in a similar way. not earlier 2045.

By then, according to Musk, a human colony will have already been established on Mars. So it may be that the Chinese will nevertheless accelerate somewhat and begin suborbital flights earlier.

As for the use of third-party ideas to implement their own projects, in the case of China’s space program, this situation is not unique. The PRC has been tracking the work of SpaceX since the very beginning of the work of the American company. For example, during the first rocket launch in 2006 near the landing site in the ocean was noticed Chinese ship.

In 2019, the Chinese tested landing systems similar to those used by SpaceX in the first stage of the Falcon 9 during atmospheric entry. The Chinese state-owned company is developing a Long March 8 rocket, the first stage of which is capable of landing on an offshore platform. And private companies like LinkSpace and Galactic Energy are clearly copying SpaceX’s technology directly.

Is this good or bad? From the point of view of business, albeit space, it is probably not very good. On the other hand, the business of SpaceX is now unlikely to be damaged by Chinese companies – everything is going smoothly with Elon Musk’s organization. There is government support from NASA, and there are many commercial clients. And from the point of view of an ordinary person, the more private space companies there are, the faster space will open to everyone.

Well, now a little about the Chinese rover

He was mentioned above, and since almost no one spoke about this system on Habré, it is worth briefly describing what it is and why. So, the rover is designed to explore Mars, the Chinese program is no less ambitious than the NASA program. The device, according to its creators, should “ignite the spark of interplanetary travel and help mankind begin to explore the unknown depths of outer space.”

The rover weighs 240 kg, its height is 1.85 m. The service life is 3 Martian months, which is 92 Earth days. But the Chinese are hoping the rover can last longer.

It can move at a maximum speed of 200 meters per hour. It works on solar energy, and its task is to collect data on water on Mars. The Chinese want to understand whether the planet has groundwater or not. In addition, the rover will study the geological structure of the Red Planet.

The rover should descend to the surface of the Earth’s neighbor in mid or late May 2021. If all goes well, testing of equipment and chassis will follow, and only then the Chinese rover will enter service and begin to study Mars.

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