Chapter 225 Qinglong No. 2

But this is not the end.

At 17:00 on the same night, at the Bingzhou Satellite Launch Center.

The first stage of a CZ-6R2 rocket entered the deceleration program and adjusted its direction to the recovery station.

This is the 11th recovery of the Long March 6 rocket "Yunkai" series. It has been successfully recovered 8 times before, failed 2 times, and successfully recovered 6 times in a row in the most recent time.

Obviously, the status of the Long March 6 has stabilized and can basically achieve a high recovery rate, but this time, everyone is as nervous as the first recovery.

Because this Long March 6 is not recovered by supporting legs, but by grid rudders.

R2 refers to the change in recovery method.

This is paving the way for the recovery of 6-meter and 11-meter rocket body grid rudders in the future. The latter two are not only costly to test but also take too long to prepare.

Although the difficulty of the Long March 6 may be higher because of its light weight, it is still much easier to use it for experiments.

So far, including the iterations in the supercomputer, the "Yunkai" recovery control system has reached the sixth generation, and the simulated grid rudder landing has been successful 100 times, so this actual test was carried out.

Compared with the past, the recovery posture of this Long March 6 is more stable. It is slightly tilted and smoothly descends at a uniform speed, approaching the recovery tower with two support frames already opened.

Then, in the eyes of hundreds of people expecting, CZ-6R2 hits the recovery tower accurately without slowing down.

The hollow body of the rocket hits the steel and is instantly broken apart. The remaining fuel escapes and is ignited by the tail flame, ending the recovery mission with a bright flame.

The strong explosion was heard even in the nearby villages. Looking up, you can see a bright place in the mountains in the evening.

…

"The first recovery of the second stage of the Xinyuan 3 rocket failed, and cracks in the rocket body are suspected."

"The first attempt at the new recovery method of the Long March 6 failed. The recovery tower was burned by high temperature, and there was no loss of personnel."

On August 12, 13, and 14, the rocket test of the Chinese camp failed three times.

The problem with the Long March 10 was the YF77, and the preliminary investigation of the Long March 6 found that it was the sensor failure again, and the Xinyuan 3...

Guo Shen, Shelev, Androv and other Xinyuan executives stared at the second-stage rocket wreckage that was fished out of the sea.

If it fell from a height of more than 200 meters on land, it would definitely be just picking up fragments, but it landed on the sea, and the rocket body was basically intact, but it was injured and could not be used anymore.

The inspection report has been released. It is not a crack in the rocket body. The problem lies in the pressure relief port of the rocket body oxidizer tank. This small detail was not handled properly, resulting in a continuous increase in pressure in the engine shutdown process, which broke the thermal insulation layer.

This is the first rocket test failure of Xinyuan. Although it is not a major problem, it still shows that the system has only achieved reliability in technology, and the system engineer who actually produced and designed it is not a god.

But in the eyes of the outside world, especially NACA and a number of aerospace agencies, they all breathed a sigh of relief.

The myth of Xinyuan's 100% success rate has finally been broken, and the space agency has two bad news. Finally, it looks like a normal aerospace.

Ma Yilong tweeted overnight x-on:Lin Ju expressed regret for his failure in this recovery, and praised this failure as a "milestone" exploration and a "pioneering" step for recoverable rockets.

Rocketdyne also appeared and told the media that the YF77 is not as good as the J2 hydrogen-oxygen engine used in the second stage of Saturn V half a century ago. It is unreliable and backward in design.

Even JAXA dares to show off its LE9 hydrogen-oxygen engine. After all, the data of YF77 is lower, right?

The domestic reaction is actually not bad. The online group that has begun to "rational" to dominate the mainstream has not had much criticism. Instead, it has been crazy to like the Weibo post released by Lin Ju that "although the recovery failed, we have found the reason and obtained complete experimental data."

After all, it is not justifiable that XAP has never failed, and a small failure is nothing.

Even the Long March 10 has not received too much pressure from public opinion. Overall, it is still ahead of SLS, right?

As for the Long March 6... it is not like everyone has never seen a recoverable rocket explode.

In fact, by August this year, more than 20 recoverable rockets have exploded around the world, and China alone has 7 of them.

These 7 rockets come from four private aerospace companies. Before they decided to buy Xinyuan's recovery system solution, they were stubborn and tried it themselves. Only one of them succeeded twice in suborbital rockets because the maximum altitude was only 10 kilometers, and the rest of the rockets that were ready to enter orbit all failed.

The most outrageous one lost control during recovery and fell directly into the Whale Sea.

But now they have calmed down, and they have successively accepted Xinyuan's mature subsystem sales plan after June.

Because of the open attitude of the Aerospace Development Commission on components, the number of private aerospace companies in China has now increased to 17, ranging from deep space equipment to rocket manufacturing, and the funds and scale are much larger than the original world line.

After all, as long as you have money, you can buy any key components, which is a test of cost control and structural design. How easy is it to enter the market?

In late August, Blue Sword Aerospace was preparing to launch the Qinglong-2 rocket, with a body diameter of 3.8 meters and a core stage equipped with seven K120V engines. It has a maximum takeoff thrust of 875 tons, a takeoff mass of 670 tons, a non-recovery LEO capacity of 27 tons and a recovery capacity of 20 tons.

This is almost an enhanced version of the Falcon 9, except that the 9 Merlin 1D engines are replaced with 7 K120V engines with greater thrust, and the second stage uses the more advanced Xinyuan 25-ton hydrogen-oxygen engine with a particularly high load factor.

The Falcon 9 is now quoted by Lao Ma for 52 million US dollars, and what about Qinglong 2? Their external quotation is 350 million!

57 million US dollars, but the cost per kilogram is only 76% of the Falcon 9.

Compared with the Long March 7, which also uses a 3.35-meter rocket body and a carrying capacity of 20 tons, Qinglong 2 should be cheaper because it has fewer engines.

Of course, the reason why Qinglong 2 can be quoted so cheaply is just a gimmick for the current publicity and the private capital behind the scenes wants to seize the opportunity.

57 million US dollars is definitely the lowest price after comprehensive consideration of all aspects. There is profit, but the profit margin is not too much.

Because the recovery control system is purchased, the engine is purchased, the rocket body needs to be invested, the second-stage engine needs to be purchased every time it is used, the supporting facilities also need to be purchased, and the launch site needs to be rented...

But as long as you stick to it, when you make money and set up your own team, the cost will be reduced a lot. Anyway, Lin Ju thinks that the profit margin can be achieved with hard work.

Lanjian is considered to be relatively strong in technology among the private brothers, but there are also those who are not technically strong enough to work hard:

Evergrande Aerospace.

You can tell which company invested by listening to the name. Although it has nothing in technology, it does have sufficient funds.

From rocket body technology to engines, they directly buy what the Aerospace Development Commission currently allows to be sold, and buy all the design plans. The factory buildings and personnel are also rapidly expanding with sufficient funds.

Of course, the traditional BAT Big Three are also ready to move. More than once, the media reported that they have the intention to enter the aerospace industry.