A Chinese rocket narrowly missed a landing on Sunday

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/09/a-chinese-rocket-narrowly-missed-a-landing-on-sunday-the-video-is-amazing/

4 Comments

  1. Incredible footage. I had been tempted to post it but it falls foul of the social media rules and Andrew Jones, who does great work following the Chinese space program, only had social media footage.

    It can be seen in two ways one) look how far behind they are and two) take them seriously they are really determined to get there.

    Having mastered the control level to bring a largish class booster to a halt is a good sign they are making progress and hitting milestones. It is still in the Delta Clipper/SpaceX Grasshopper stage but its further than most competitors seem to have gotten. Its not a huge step to stick the landing.

    The next big hurdle will likely be turning around at velocity. That would induce severe tank slosh and will require a lot of guile and work to get it to then relight.

    The footage of the crash is amazing drone work, drone seemed to have been circling for a “Hollywood” landing but to be fair to them, released the crash anyway. Likely they think they can stick the next landing and build up the kind of buzz for them that SpaceX does as it iteratively goes through the various issues we seen with Grasshopper, the early F9 turn arounds, Starhopper and now Starship. Showing the slip up helps people feel how hard progress is and makes the landings that much more impactful, as drama.

  2. That was an amazing video. And soooooo close. Hopefully they can get it down intact next time!

  3. chrundlethegreat303 on

    That is the most ridiculous and pathetic
    “ video “ I’ve seen people think is real…
    Wake up . CCP Propaganda. And not even believable lololo

  4. Incredible progress from the Chinese space industry and agency. They will be the future of space exploration, the way NASA and the US govt. is dropping the ball.