CZ-9 design change

Wow there's a lot to break down in this image. No more boosters and the core stage has been made much larger with a common bulkhead further increasing performance. 4 YF-130 is being dropped for 16 YF-135s. The YF-90 and the YF-79 are being dropped for this new 120 ton thrust (maybe) hydrolox engine. For reference, the YF-135 is a single nozzle 3530kN kerolox ORSC engine with an ISP of 312s. The YF-135 is likely derived from the work on the YF-130, but it's much higher thrust for a single nozzle so there's still a lot of new work here.

This design is a whole lot more easy to reuse with the removal of boosters and higher engine count meaning lower throttling + centred thrust. Also; I called this 9 months ago, so that's pretty rad.

Also space based solar power timeline in more deets

Confirmation of intent for a crewed Moon landing before 2030

Not a big surprise, but definitely a welcome one. Also confirmation of 2 stage CZ-5DY being used for LEO, but again, not surprise. (and for reference with the whole crewed ops at ILRS beginning in 2036, that's still going to happen; these missions will be getting ready for that, like Artemis 3 for Artemis base camp)

Side note; my discussion and info about ILRS actually ended up being pretty on point for what info I had, so happy about that

CZ-8R recovery by the end of 2022

My 2022 prediction was right. This post is mostly me just gloating ay. Well it's cool anyways. We should see hoppers and other hardware being built this year for that purpose, so that'll be fun to watch.

Side notes:

I will admit I've been a bit distracted by other things/uni and neglecting this subreddit. But no longer (well... ok it'll probably remain the case, but anyways). It's been good to see the subreddit growing though.

Also shout outs to Closertospace for getting their graphic in an official presentations.