IMAGE: twitter.com/linkspace_china
China’s Linkspace Aerospace Technology Group conducted flight tests of the NewLine reusable rocket prototype. NewLine Baby, or RLV-T5 as it is officially known, is 8.1 metres high. It has a weight of 1.5 tons and uses five liquid rocket engines in parallel to get it off the ground.
According to a released video, the rocket hovered in place for 10 seconds after rising to a height of 20 metres during a test flight in eastern China’s Shandong province. According to reprots, the test was designed to check various technologies, including multiple engine thrust adjustment, multiple start, vector nozzle, and roll control ready for subsequent testing at increased heights.
While the rocket itself includes no fresh know how, the private Chinese aerospace company is going to conquer suborbital launch market with this rocket.
“A solid-fuelled sounding rocket now costs 2 to 3 million yuan [$300,000-450,000],” Chu Longfei, LinkSpace’s chief technology officer said. “Our product will cost around one-fifth of that price.”
Additionally, Linkspace Aerospace Technology Group is working on the NewLine-1, a two-stage rocket with a reusable first stage designed to launch microsats and nanosats. This rocekt is fuelled by liquid oxygen and kerosene in its first stage and has a height of 20 metres. The rocket’s maiden launch is scheduled for 2020.
In March, another Chinese private firm, OneSpace, conducted a maiden laucnh of its OS-M solid propellant rocket. The OS-M1 has a length of 19m and a diameter of 2m. According to official claims, it’s capable of carrying a 205-kilogram payload to 300-kilometer low Earth orbit, and 73 kilograms to 800-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit.
However, the OSM-1 maiden launch, which took place in late March, failed shortly after entering second stage flight.
Shouldn Musk get his Tesla failure on tracks before trying something new?
If Tesla was his only business, yes. But a man who owns multiple businesses cannot concentrate on one of them to the detriment of others. He focuses on the new ones, and once they are up and running he delegates and moves on the next. Some of them will do well, some so and so, and some of them will fail. Its how you create a business empire, you start up new businesses, some of them do well, some won’t, and those who cannot be fixed are terminated before you lose too much money on them. And if everything works out those which do succeed generate more then enough money to not only compensate for the losses, but also increase the overall profits of all your enterprises. To say oh look, one of his businesses is failing is, Elon Musk is therefore a failure is just an ad hominim attack. That’s what Trump haters do when they say some of his businesses have gone bankrupt. You gotta look at his overall bottom line for all his businesses.
Hell, with the way Western tax codes have been written chances are Musk could probably tax deduct his losses for that company anyway. Western governments bend over backwards to please major corporations. To the detriment of their own citizens.
Good point