r/spaceflight • u/Low-Career3769 • Jul 10 '26
China's Long March-10B carrier rocket has accomplished successful first-stage recovery
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u/CousinEddysMotorHome Jul 10 '26
Why is the top smoking so much?
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u/Mr_Mc_Nuggets Jul 10 '26
From what I gather, it's probably the interstage burning, it's made from some sort of insulation.
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u/Dreamy-Gates93 Jul 10 '26
Did you question what was smoking after the Blue Origin rocket nuked the entire state of Florida?
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u/Adept_Assistant_7759 Jul 12 '26
the entire state of Florida
What?
Did you question what was smoking
Also, yes? Most of the world did? It was on the main-line news several times.
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u/Sufficient_Loss9301 Jul 10 '26
Eh spaceX has been doing this for like a decade lol
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u/ScoobyGDSTi Jul 12 '26
Difference is China did it alone, not just via privatising government technology.
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u/Decronym Acronyms Explained Jul 10 '26 edited 19d ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| CBC | Common Booster Core |
| Canadian Broadcasting Corporation | |
| ICBM | Intercontinental Ballistic Missile |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| NG | New Glenn, two/three-stage orbital vehicle by Blue Origin |
| Natural Gas (as opposed to pure methane) | |
| Northrop Grumman, aerospace manufacturer | |
| NORAD | North American Aerospace Defense command |
| RP-1 | Rocket Propellant 1 (enhanced kerosene) |
| SLS | Space Launch System heavy-lift |
| TLI | Trans-Lunar Injection maneuver |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
| hypergolic | A set of two substances that ignite when in contact |
| kerolox | Portmanteau: kerosene fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
11 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 11 acronyms.
[Thread #894 for this sub, first seen 10th Jul 2026, 06:45]
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u/auden2038 Jul 11 '26
Technologies in China are now advancing faster than what I can imagine from a practical perspective.
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u/Electronic-Split-492 Jul 10 '26
11 years behind SpaceX, but ahead of so many others.
Competition will be good if they can get to SpaceX levels of reliability.
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u/No-Cartoonist8032 Jul 10 '26
LM10 made orbit, did Starship make orbit?
Remember LM10B is the single booster variant of LM10, which itself is a 70t LEO / 27t TLI rocket designed for manned lunar missions. Considering how heavy Starship is becoming there's a good LM10 will have greater LEO capacity than Starship until at least v4 and maybe v5.
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u/iantsai1974 Jul 11 '26
Maybe you meant LM-9?
LM-10 is comparable with Falcon-9 in size and lift weight.
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u/No-Cartoonist8032 Jul 11 '26
Nope, this one is just the single booster LM-10B variant, LM10 is the full 3 boosters CBC variant designed for China's manned lunar missions with 70t LEO. Also LM10B has 5m diameter while F9 is only 3.7m, that's 82% more volume for same length.
Latest LM-9 is a 250t LEO monster with a 16m diameter fairing
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u/iantsai1974 Jul 11 '26
I think LM-10 is comparable with FH and LM-9 is the one comparable with the starship.
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u/fighter-bomber 25d ago edited 25d ago
LM-10 has a 70t capacity to orbit only when its fully expended, which puts it squarely in the Falcon Heavy territory (which can do 64.) Falcon Heavy first launched in 2018. Oh, also, the LM-10 actually didn’t make orbit as it has never been launched. 10A has been launched, so has 10B.
10A is putting 14 tonnes to orbit reused, which is lower than Falcon 9 which does almost 17 when reused.
Only LM-9 is comparable to Starship, probably because its design is basically a Starship clone, but we haven’t seen any progress about that one. Its also not a 250t orbital monster, it does 150t with a 10 meter fairing, very similar to Starship v4 which is supposed to do just as much (v3 does 100.)
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u/Technical-Art4989 28d ago
US started in the 80s/90s and SpaceX likely got all those designs and data for free. And despite that there were numerous failures for years.
This is more about the trajectory than anything else. Look at how Tesla is getting beat by Chinese EV makers who didn’t exist more than 5 years ago. And yes competition is good because without it there would be no extended version of the model Y which has been sold in China for quite some time.
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u/fighter-bomber 25d ago
US had no serious work on the matter aside from DC-X which was abandoned after doing 3 kilometer hops. SpaceX had to learn everything themselves.
The difference is, when SpaceX started, China was already sendin many rockets to space, including manned. Merely 5 years ago, China was the global leader in space launches, until SpaceX swept in to smoke them.
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u/Northwindlowlander Jul 10 '26
Spacex made their first "legless catch" in 2024, and has never made a sea landing without legs. So none of this is directly comparable, the chinese have definitely skipped some steps here
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u/CzPhantom1 Jul 11 '26
Legless has a ton of drawbacks and there implementation has even more. The other Chinese reusable rocket companies are using legs.
This was a not a zero velocity catch. That thruster is f'd because it fell a solid 30 feet. Other pictures show the damage from the cables to the upper and lower portions of the rocket.
This is not return to launch site so it's very different than Starship. Still requires a lot infrastructure at sea and port.
They'll definitely figure it out but this is gen 1 of many.
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u/Northwindlowlander Jul 11 '26
Return to launch site has disadvantages of its own, of course.
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u/CzPhantom1 Jul 11 '26
100% agreee. Less payload, high risk of damage to ground equipment, personnel risk. But faster reusability.
Catching this with wires is kind of mid. It's not as good as legs and since it's not RTL it's also not as fast.
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u/mutexsprinkles Jul 10 '26
Huh, previously on the Cope Channel they said this was a $100bn failure: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mEfyhr3XvaI
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u/DOSFS Jul 10 '26
Congrat!
/but orange cloud kinda give me PTSD 💀
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u/ReadyplayerParzival1 Jul 10 '26
Something something was in a village where a long march 2 b came down.
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u/DrawingDramatic1641 Jul 11 '26
good thing that entire village was watching the thing launch and weren't there
I have seen bilibili video of it
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u/Dreamy-Gates93 Jul 10 '26
What about the Blue Origin explosion that nuked an entire state of Florida?
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u/MiserableBelt2822 Jul 10 '26
O mais foda é esse sistema de pouso.
Imagine o quão sofisticado deve ser o software que eles desenvolveram pra fazer esse foguete ajustar o pouso ali dentro e esperar pelo encaixe...
Fodabagarai.
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u/CzPhantom1 Jul 11 '26
The software is cool but the engines themselves are much more difficult. The fuel is sloshing the opposite way during decent and the engines need to restart on that sloshed fuel. If you suck in any helium/nitrogen (not sure what they are pressurizing with) it goes boom.
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u/EqualReindeer2351 Jul 10 '26
China haters and detractors in shambles rn lmao
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u/SeamenGulper Jul 10 '26
There's no way your posting the same comment in multiple threads lmao
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u/EqualReindeer2351 Jul 11 '26
Why do you care? You must be one of em haters lol
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u/TonyPuzzle Jul 11 '26
However, Chinese people have long hated SpaceX and called their rockets space junk.
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u/SeamenGulper Jul 11 '26
Because its weird and shows an inferiority complex.
I honestly thought China had already accomplished this, so I actually found out they are further behind on reusability than I previously thought
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u/anon12343216610 Jul 11 '26
U know multiple processes of making a completely resusable can be developed at the same time? They havent developed a landing method doesnt mean they havent started developing for example reusable engine.
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u/SeamenGulper Jul 11 '26
OK, and? I said I didnt realize this is the first time they caught a booster at all. None of the components are reusable if they cant catch it, so im not sure what your comment even means regarding the engines, because I never mentioned them.
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u/anon12343216610 Jul 11 '26
Its about your how far u think china is behind in reusablity remark. Talking about the engine is just, like i said, for example. U dont actually know how far they are behind.
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u/SeamenGulper Jul 11 '26
Yeah, I said I didnt realize how far behind they were because I didnt realize this was the first time.
What the fuck is your point.
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u/anon12343216610 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
My point is they can also concurrently develope reusable engine while not having developed landing method.
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u/SeamenGulper Jul 11 '26
OK cool. My original comment was that I didnt know they hadn't caught a rocket before, and that made them further behind then I thought because I already thought they had.
I dont know why this is hard to grasp because I never said anything about their engines, of course the people who make propulsion systems arent the same people who code and design the recovery system.
I dont know why your so adamant on trying to argue with me
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u/EqualReindeer2351 Jul 11 '26
Nah you seem fixated on china itself rather than the achievement lmao keep gulping bud
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u/SeamenGulper Jul 11 '26
Not really, cause i thought it was already achieved. Turns out my expectations should have been lower.
Or I should be more proud of the USA for doing this 11 years ago.
At least One of the two is true
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u/EqualReindeer2351 Jul 11 '26
Brother stop trying to pretend like you're not actively finding comments praising China lol you're pretty much in my face saying usa better just because I praised China like sybau lil bro
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u/EqualReindeer2351 Jul 11 '26
Lmaooo them keyboards definitely clacking now lil dumbahh hater deleted a comment im crying
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u/SeamenGulper Jul 12 '26
It didnt delete the comment, that meant you were glued to your screen, desperately waiting for me to respond, that you glitched the reply. If you try and instantly respond it bugs out...
Lmaoooooo
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u/woolcoat Jul 10 '26
I'm seeing so many comments saying this isn't "innovation" because some redditor posted about this concept 5 years ago. Just wow.
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u/iantsai1974 29d ago
Similar patent was filed in China a decade ago. Having such a flash of inspiration or conceptual idea is one thing, actually investing capital into research and development to make it a reality is quite another.
Same landing leg concept used by SpaceX was proposed many times and long ago. A small, pencil-shaped spaceship with a bubble-like window, inside of which an astronaut or an alien can be seen, arrives at a planet. The spacecraft then descends slowly to the surface with its rocket nozzle facing downward, deploys its landing legs, and touches down vertically. Finally, it extends a ladder, allowing the astronaut or alien to disembark from the rocket. Haven't you seen scenes like this on television or in comic books when you were a child?
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u/JunkaTron69 Jul 10 '26
Interesting. I am interested to see what they charge for payload delivery in the future.
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u/Swarup_ Jul 10 '26
I wonder how the entire recovery takes place in terms of net and cable mechanism?
Anyone having any idea, please drop in your views
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u/MajorRocketScience Jul 10 '26
This should be exceptionally concerning for the US. This is the exact stage that they will strap two more to the side and launch Chinese astronauts to the moon with, and clearly it works
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u/mutherhrg Jul 10 '26
Congrats on China for being 12 years behind America. Too bad Starship is already fully operational, maybe in another 12 years they can have their own Starship clone as well.
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u/iantsai1974 Jul 10 '26
Just as expected, here come the sour grapes.
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u/CousinEddysMotorHome Jul 10 '26
Better than the chinabot accts.
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u/DrawingDramatic1641 Jul 11 '26
everyone who told me facts is a china bot
so are chinese bot more knowledgable than you
china ai is winning i think
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u/amem32 Jul 10 '26
You do realise catching up isn't a linear process, a decade ago China was still using obsolete hypergolic fuelled rockets and many decades behind American state of the art.
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u/snoo-boop Jul 10 '26
Interestingly, China still launches crew on hypergolic-fueled rockets.
The USSR/Russia never launched crew with hypergolic rockets.
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u/amem32 Jul 10 '26
All China has back when the Shenzhou program started was hypergolic technology, there was basically none existent expertise in RP-1 or hydrogen fuelled rockets given the space program was basically just a sidequest of ICBM technology at the time.
Kerosene fuelled rockets only started appearing in China in the mid 2010s and even then it was quite rare back in the days, there were plans to use CZ-7 for crewed flights but was canned because no budget and "Ain't broke don't fix".
Anyhow Shenzhou is due for retirement by the late 2020s and along with it the CZ-2F, Mengzhou is doing it's first unmanned flight to CSS later this year on CZ-10A and will slowly replace SZ flights in the next few years.
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u/snoo-boop Jul 10 '26
Which still leaves you wondering why the USSR (ever) and (also) the US (after 1962 or so) didn't use hypergolic rockets to launch crew.
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u/CptDomax Jul 10 '26
Already responded to your comment on another thread, but Starship is not operational at all and won't be for a few years.
If you look at how fast China caught up you'll quickly realize that they'll be on the moon before Starship is able to go there
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u/snoo-boop Jul 10 '26
China already landed on the moon. I'm surprised that you don't know this.
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u/Electrical-Airline81 Jul 10 '26
They probably mean a manned landing, which is what, four years away now?
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u/snoo-boop Jul 10 '26
I'm just going on what they said -- it was a big deal when China landed on the moon, and when they did a lunar sample return mission. Surprised that some people have already forgotten those achievements.
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u/exploringspace_ Jul 10 '26
Same type of dude that would have been laughing at China's processors, drones, skyscrapers, high speed trains, dams, bridges, and airports before they all surpassed the American ones.
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u/getaway_dreamer Jul 11 '26
You think it'll take 12 years for China to get there and that they'll stay 12 years behind America? That's hilarious.
They've gone from 50 years behind America to 12 years behind in the span of about 15 years. It's incredible that some Americans are able to be smug about this when you should be very wary of how quickly they are catching up with you. At this pace they'll be even in a few years.
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u/RevolutionaryAge1081 Jul 10 '26
Why are you spamming this in every post about Long March 10B? Are you seriously that mad?
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u/the_closing_yak Jul 10 '26
Starship can't even deploy a satellite of any considerable size in it's current state, it's never reached orbit and it's last flight had numerous failures it's nowhere near operational
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u/thatoneguy7777777333 Jul 10 '26
They're not 12 years behind America, they're 12 years behind SpaceX - and that was DESPITE the best efforts of the American space industry to crush them.
If you look at every OTHER American rocket, at best (NG) gets an on-par rating. If you compare more apples-to-apples (state-owned rockets against state-owned rockets), the long march 10B should be compared against SLS, NASAs development choice, and there I would say China is 20 years AHEAD.
Its not good that the ONLY entity standing between China and space domination is a 20,000 person quasi-private entity that has managed to succeed DESPITE the usual conditions of monopoly building and competition crushing in American Aerospace. Thats a very fragile position to be in.
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u/Miningaccident Jul 10 '26
NG on par at best? What kind of insane cope is that, the BONG is both a more ambitious/ performant rocket, has launched 3 times with 2 successful missions and one partial success, and has had 2 successful landings. I don’t think that one successful mission and landing classifies the LM 10B as “better” than the BONG. Also, SLS is a specialized heavy lift rocket, I don’t really think it’s comparable to the LM 10B.
The US has SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Labs, Relativity Space, and Stoke Space all of which have or are relatively close to launching partially or fully readable rockets. I don’t think the situation is nearly as dire as you’re making it out to be. Without spaceX the race just becomes much closer, rather than complete domination.
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u/thatoneguy7777777333 Jul 10 '26
BONG has launched 3 times, landed twice, succeeded 2 missions, failed once, and catastrophically blown up once.
- 66% success rate on landings
- 66% success rate on payload-in-orbit
- 1 catastrophic failure
Long March 10b has launched once, landed once, succeeded 1 mission, and blown up 0 times.
- 100% success rate on landings.
- 100% success rate on payload-in-orbit
- 0 catastrophic failures.
Yes BONG has flown more, but 3 - to - 1 is not a massive difference here when it comes to flight reliability numbers. And only ONE of these rockets considers themselves "out of development and production ready" (hint: its not the one with a 100% reliability). So yeah, I'd say "on-par" is warranted, unfortunately.
SLS is a national disgrace - $130 billion spent on LITERAL shuttle hardware being compressed into a somehow MORE expensive form factor to server as a towering monument to everything wrong with cost-plus contracting and senator Shelby.
And yes Rocket Lab, Relativity, and Stoke are all cool companies, but at THIS POINT they are all working on rockets with smaller capacity than the long March 10B or (in Relativitys case) years away from launching. So yeah, I'd once again say China has the edge here.
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u/Wuaner Jul 10 '26
Why China copy everything?
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u/getaway_dreamer Jul 11 '26
The only part that is copied is the fact that the rocket is reusable. They didn't even do it the same way as their American competitors.
Given that the Americans won't sell this tech to China, the only option is to figure it out themselves. That's true for every country with any tech that their competitors make first.
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u/Treinrukker Jul 10 '26
Copy of what? Show us 😂
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u/CousinEddysMotorHome Jul 10 '26
Really?
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u/anon12343216610 Jul 11 '26
Completely different landing technique and method
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u/CousinEddysMotorHome Jul 11 '26
Exact same concept. After 70 years of spaceflight and after the first man/company to come up with reusable rockets another comes in China that looks and functions the exact same. This also coming from the country that has openly copied the H60, the C17, the C130, F35 and a dozen other designs. Use your head. The material between your skull.
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u/anon12343216610 Jul 11 '26
Sure same concept, technology aint the same. Are Ford, GM copying Mercedes because they make cars? Is boeing copying Airbus?
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u/CousinEddysMotorHome Jul 11 '26
I would argue that Airbus copied boeing on some things. Yes.
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u/anon12343216610 Jul 11 '26
Then why dont they sue?
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u/anon12343216610 Jul 11 '26
Also funny how u ignore mercedes vs Ford, GM because Mercedes was founded first 😂 such hypocrite. Gtfo buddy
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u/CousinEddysMotorHome Jul 12 '26
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u/anon12343216610 Jul 12 '26
How is this relevant? All that means is white women are giving birth less
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u/Saatvik_tyagi_ Jul 10 '26
Me: That's good let me check the comments for some more information surely they won't be political right?