By 
September 3rd, 2016
China is building upon a heritage of Long March boosters.
Credit: CALT
China is preparing to stage the maiden liftoff of the powerful Long March-5 booster.
Rocket components are transported from northern China’s Tianjin Port for the launch base in southern Hainan. The booster is expected to be launched by year’s end.
Long March-5 is central to carrying the Chang’e-5 lunar probe in 2017 and will be used to launch elements of China’s multi-modular space station and Mars-bound spacecraft.
China’s Long March 5 engine test.
Credit: CMSE/CCTV
Chinese news services are underscoring that the country has made “major breakthroughs” in designing and fabricating the booster.
Rocket building techniques
According to Cui Yun, deputy director of assembly shop of Long March-5 rocket:
“Expanding the diameter from 3.35 meters to 5 meters is not simply a change in numbers, but a breakthrough in rocket building techniques,” Cui says. “We cannot touch anywhere when standing inside the rocket. So we must rotate it to ensure installation is complete.”
He Wei, general designer of Long March-5 carrier rocket, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation adds in a report from CCTV-Plus:
“We can share the technology, lower research cost, and quickly develop a series of rockets that have various payload capacities and can operate in low, medium, and high Earth orbits.”
China’s human spaceflight program is moving forward on a multimodule space station in the 2020s.
Courtesy: CMSE
Modularized approach
He Wei, general designer of Long March-5 carrier rocket, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation also notes that “the design and building of the Long March-5 rocket is a great leap forward in terms of design technique, design tool and manufacturing mechanism, which lays a solid foundation for the future design of larger rockets for our country.”
Rocket designers in China say they have modularized the rocket to lower cost and facilitate future rocket design.
New technologies
According to CCTV, China has the intellectual property rights over all technologies used to build the Long March-5 rocket, including 247 key new technologies.
New technologies accounted for 100 percent of the total used for the rocket, much higher than the global average of 30 percent, explains CCTV.
The Long March-5 is the country’s most powerful carrier rocket, sporting a payload capacity of 25 tons in low Earth orbit and placing 14 tons into geostationary orbit.
To view the CCTV-Plus report, go to:
http://cd-pv.news.cctvplus.com/2016/0826/8030677_Preview_1472213773593.mp4
Posted in Space News
