As America’s SLS rocket waits on Kennedy Space Center’s LC-39B launch pad for its first mission to the moon, China has successfully tested a hydrogen and liquid oxygen engine that will be part of the future Chang Zheng 9 rocket designed for manned flights to the moon and Mars.

In fact, China plans to build two large-caliber rockets for future manned missions to the Moon: a derivative of the current Chang Zheng 5 rocket called the Chang Zheng 5DY (which will have two side-by-side launch vehicles modeled after the Chang Zheng 5DY rocket). Falcon Heavy), as well as a new, huge one, the design of which has already begun, called Chang Zheng 9. It will have a diameter of more than 10 meters, a height of about 100 meters, and will be comparable to the legendary Saturn V and the current SLS.

And China chooses hydrogen

The Chang Zheng 9 project has undergone constant changes in recent years, but some things have remained the same, including the ability of Chinese engineers to use hydrogen as fuel for the first two stages. The same hydrogen that NASA uses for the SLS rocket that has been causing so many problems lately. But this should not discourage Chinese engineers, there are other rockets (albeit not certified for crew launch and smaller sizes) that successfully use hydrogen: Delta IV and Delta IV Heavy, the European Ariane 5 launcher or the Japanese H-II rocket (actually comes from the American Delta family).

Maybe China will learn something from the current problems that have plagued the SLS rocket inherited from the space shuttles? Let’s see. If the first stage of the Chang Zheng 9 rocket was originally supposed to be equipped with 16 YF-135 engines (before that, the plans mentioned YF-130 engines), it seems that their development encountered some problems, as they were replaced by 26 engines. engines whose names we do not yet know; hence the larger but lower power of the YF-135. It remains to be seen what the final decision will be regarding the propulsion of the Chang Zheng 9 first stage, as the rocket will begin to be assembled in just a few years.

If the first stage of the Chang Zheng 9 rocket is still not very clear, we know for sure that the second stage will use the YF-79 engine successfully tested in recent days. It is also fueled by hydrogen and liquid oxygen and is derived from the YF-77, the current first-stage engines of the Chang Zheng 5 rocket, currently China’s most powerful rocket (yes, that’s the one that, after launching elements for the space station China Spacecraft, it spirals uncontrollably through the atmosphere, and we are all waiting to see if it will fall on any human settlement or not).

In fact, in the previous version of the Chang Zheng 9 missile, its second stage was supposed to be equipped with YF-77 engines, but probably their version optimized for vacuum flight was called YF-79.

New engine, performance comparable to the American engine of the 60s

We inevitably wonder how this engine compares to the one used by the SLS. Well, for the secondary stage of the SLS rocket, called the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS), NASA decided to use a single RL10 engine that also runs on hydrogen, comparable in performance to the Chinese YF-79 engine. I think it’s worth mentioning that the RL10 is the longest-running rocket engine ever used, dating back 60 years in 1962.

Obviously, today’s version is an improved one (RL10B) and it should be emphasized that the ICPS is an intermediate secondary stage that will be replaced in the coming years by the Reconnaissance Upper Stage (EUS) powered by four RL10C engines. We do not yet know the mass of the second stage of the Chang Zheng 9 rocket, so it is difficult to directly compare the performance of SLS Block 1 or SLS Block 2 with China’s upcoming Chang Zheng 9 rocket, but we can conclude that the two large-caliber launchers will be somewhat similar, and both they will have manned missions to the moon.

China plans to launch the satellite around 2025

The Chang Zheng 9 rocket is due to make its first flight around 2030, and after that date, working in tandem with the Chang Zheng 5DY, China hopes to send the first taikonaut crew somewhere to the South Pole of the Moon by 2035. somewhere near the pole. The US Artemis 3 crew is also due to reach the south of the Moon, the mission is currently scheduled for 2025, but with so many delays and problems, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a real race to the Moon’s South Pole between the US and China in the early years of the next decade.

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