Episode Details

🇨🇳China Passes Landmark Spacecraft + Rocket Test

This month China launched its new Mengzhou manned spacecraft for a max-Q abort test (the capsule escapes from the rocket at maximum speed/pressure in the atmosphere).

Not only was the abort test & sea landing successful, the Long March 10 rocket that carried it continued downrange for a soft propulsion landing in the sea, next to a recovery ship designed to eventually catch it.

Mengzhou will enable manned missions to the moon as well as ferrying personnel to and from China's space station in low earth orbit.

While upset Westerners are claiming this is a "copy" of SpaceX's Falcon 9 - because both are superficially shaped like a cylinder and perform similar flight maneuvers - Long March 10 has no technical resemblance to the Falcon 9.

It is a completely different type of rocket engine with completely different functions, specifications, & requirements.

I saw one argument that China "stole" the grid fins featured on the Long March 10 booster - as if SpaceX invented grid fins long used on Soviet rockets & missiles since the Cold War!

It would be like claiming Toyota copied Chevy because both make cars with 4 wheels, engines, & drive down the road.

China is rapidly catching up to the US in the very small and shrinking fields of expertise the US still holds advantages in - space launch technology being one of them - and eventually/inevitably - China will far surpass the US.

And many in the West are not taking this with grace, humility, or a desire for constructive competition, cooperation, or coexistence - all to their own detriment.

(IMAGES: The initial launch before the abort test, the soft landing of the Long March 10 booster, the Mengzhou spacecraft being recovered after splashdown).
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RevOMW3cIyM