"Star of Asia? Asian ace pigeons are about the same, JAXA, these red deer, they and India jointly developed a moon rocket? Do you want our astronauts to go to the moon on a spacecraft?! ”

When the "Star of Asia" moon landing program was announced, and the two countries really exchanged formal consultations many times in the following week, the world was a little stunned.

The first thing worth complaining about is the name, Asia Star? Huaguo is so big and doesn't say that he is an Asian star there, you two Wolong and Phoenix chicks are called Asian stars?

Xiao Okada directly tweeted and angrily scolded JAXA, what grade do you dare to call an Asian star? It's about the same as an Asian ape.

And another slot of the H-X (Asiastar rocket JAXA codename) rocket is its configuration, which cannot be said to be exactly the same as the SLS, it can only be said that the division is of the same origin.

The core stage of the four LE-9 hydrogen-oxygen engines and the two five-stage SRBs are properly placed in a scaled-down version of the SLS.

Moreover, the rocket body and engine technology of the island country are derived from the "Delta-1" rocket technology purchased by Aramco after deregulation in the 70s, and India's S200 fixed thrust technology is obviously also derived from Aramco.

So...... Is this Aramco technology saving a monkey version of SLS?

But interestingly, the H-X with a take-off thrust of 2,200 tons and the SLS rocket with a take-off thrust of 3,900 tons seem to be much different from the low-moon transfer orbital capacity, the former is 23 tons, and the latter is 27 tons.

Of course, this is not how powerful the two LE-5B gas generator cycle 10-ton hydrogen-oxygen engines that the island country is preparing to use for the H-X second stage, but the second stage of SLS Block 1 uses only one RL-10B engine with a thrust of only 11.2 tons, which greatly reduces the carrying capacity.

Of course, the latter is not only two, but even the SLS Block2 with two RL-10B engines will not be able to beat the "Blue Moon" lander and spacecraft that Blue Origin spent $3.4 billion to develop.

SLS Block 2 is a cargo rocket, which mainly carries a large number of payloads to low earth orbit, and Artemis plans to land on the moon in the early stage of this configuration.

So if the SLS rocket could speak, it would definitely point to H-X and say: there is no hero at the time, so that the vertical son becomes famous.

But the Asia Star program ...... How to say it, if you look at the H-X rocket alone, it seems that it is really about the same, like the SLS, all the engines are ready-made, and the rocket body, including the rocket body, is full of mature technology, and there are no difficulties.

The manned spacecraft island country does not seem to lack technology, and India's Gaganyan program has also obtained a lot of information from Lucia, and the theoretical feasibility is quite good.

But really......

The third brother + island country, two countries that are not very reliable in the aerospace field, engage in manned moon landing such an operation, which is scary to think about.

Of course, not all countries are not optimistic.

Yuri, director of the Lucia Space Agency, said that he would support the independent space program of his Indian friends, and that Lucia could provide all the help for the Star of Asia program.

The third brother was extremely moved, and the director of the space bureau said that he would visit Moscow in the near future for specific consultations.

The Aviation Development Committee didn't speak, knowing that Lao Maozi was about to swing the dragon slaying knife to slaughter the white elephant again, so he quietly watched the excitement on the side.

……

On October 15, Steadfast ushered in its fifth manned mission, once again sending eight tourists and two professional astronauts into space.

The day before, the Long March-7A rocket arrived in Qiongzhou.

Its chief engineer Feng Ruixing followed the R&D team and also arrived at the Qiongzhou launch site.

The basic Long March 7 is a one-and-a-half configuration, and the first flight this time is the Long March 7A, a three-stage and a half-stage configuration, with an additional three-stage hydrogen and oxygen engine.

The Long March 7 of the original World Line, which used seven YF100 liquid oxygen kerosene engines with a take-off thrust of 727 tons, was originally launched in June this year.

The new Long March 7, which is now an improved version, has undergone major changes in the recovery mode and configuration.

First of all, in the development process of the new Changqi, in order to reduce the workload of the recovery control system, only one YF100K was used for the 3.35-meter-diameter rocket body of the core stage, and four boosters with the same 3.35-meter-diameter were each equipped with two YF100Ks.

This leads to the question, if the overall recovery booster is not separated, then the fuel of the booster will be exhausted in just over 100 seconds, and more than half of the core-level fuel stored in the same amount of fuel will remain?

If you want to let the YF100K of the core stage continue to fly with the four dead boosters, it will be over, how heavy this is, and the load factor must be miserable.

So after careful consideration, Feng Ruixing made a decision, anyway, it is to recycle as a whole, then connect the booster with the fuel tank of the core stage, and the first stage and the booster actually share the fuel tank as a whole.

This ensures that all nine engines consume the same amount of fuel, and then shut down as a whole at the time of separation until the engine in the core stage is started for recycling.

This is very similar to Lucia's "Proton" series of rockets, you think that the outside is tied to the booster, but it is not.

The other is the two-stage engine, which was originally intended to use four YF-115 oxygen-rich classified combustion cycle liquid oxygen kerosene engines, with a vacuum thrust of 18.75 tons and a total thrust of 75 tons.

YF115 thrust is small, the specific impulse is low, the thrust-to-weight ratio is small, it can be said that the performance is miserable, four YF115 can actually use a YF77 can be replaced, not to mention that YF77 is more than 400 seconds of hydrogen and oxygen machine far more than kerosene engine, if YF77 is used as a secondary engine, the performance will rise significantly.

But the problem is YF77, it's not reliable!

The Long March 7 is to be manned, and it is the main force of the future space agency to carry a new generation of manned spacecraft, and it is absolutely impossible to risk using the YF77, which was blown up not long ago.

But Feng Ruixing really didn't want to reduce the pitiful load factor of the Long March 7, so in the last two months, he brought the H80 hydrogen-oxygen engine that the space bureau bought from Xinyuan to use.

The H80 has a sea level thrust of 80 tons and a vacuum thrust of 112 tons, which is a bit larger, but the thrust is adjustable and stable in a wide range, directly replacing the four YF115s.

As a result, the carrying capacity of the basic two-and-a-half-stage Long March 7 has increased from 20 tons to 25 tons, and if it is not recycled, it can even achieve a capacity of 32 tons, which is similar to that of the old Long March 5.

Now the data of the Long March 7 is much better, and the launch cost has not increased, the average cost of ten launches is only 155 million yuan for a single launch, which is so cheap that the space agency tears.

The model of the first flight this time is the Long March 7A, which adds a three-stage rocket using YF75 hydrogen-oxygen engine to the second stage, with a single vacuum thrust of 8 tons, and a single mass of 2.8 tons, a total of three lunar orbit resource exploration satellites, namely "Yuegui" 1 to 3.

These three satellites are jointly manufactured by Xinyuan and the Space Agency to explore the distribution of resources on the south pole of the moon and other places, and each of them is equipped with a 1.5N high-thrust Hall thruster provided by Xinyuan, which can support multiple orbit change operations for flexible survey missions.

Compared with the part-time "Magpie Bridge", "Laurel" is much more professional.

Xinyuan originally planned to launch with the Xinyuan-5B rocket, but the Space and Space Bureau did not need money.

They also believe in the quality of the space agency's rocket, at least there must be no problem with the launch, the hydrogen and oxygen machine of the second stage is made by Xinyuan, and YF100K is also a cousin of K120, so there is no big problem.

(End of chapter)