The inaugural launch of Long March 7 failed. This is pretty significant.
7 thoughts on “Space Setback For China”
I was hoping for a tubetube of the earth shattering kab-boom.
If, as rumored, it was the third stage that failed on 7A, it’s far less significant. LM-7 (soon to be renamed 7B) doesn’t have the third stage. It’s 7B that will launch the Tianzhou cargo ships and the 14 ton LEO version of the new manned spacecraft. 5B will launch the main CSS elements and also the 21 ton lunar version of the new capsule (coming shortly in April?). 7A and 5A are mainly for comsats and large space probes (hence the need for an uppermost stage).
The failure was less than two minutes into flight, so it wasn’t anywhere near the third stage.
Two minutes? After max Q then, right around the normal time for first stage separation and second stage ignition.
Do you have a source for that? Every article I’ve seen about the failure states it happened much later in the flight.
Correction: 300 seconds. Still well before LEO injection.
I was eyeballing the video, and it was somewhat misleading.
I was hoping for a tubetube of the earth shattering kab-boom.
If, as rumored, it was the third stage that failed on 7A, it’s far less significant. LM-7 (soon to be renamed 7B) doesn’t have the third stage. It’s 7B that will launch the Tianzhou cargo ships and the 14 ton LEO version of the new manned spacecraft. 5B will launch the main CSS elements and also the 21 ton lunar version of the new capsule (coming shortly in April?). 7A and 5A are mainly for comsats and large space probes (hence the need for an uppermost stage).
The failure was less than two minutes into flight, so it wasn’t anywhere near the third stage.
Two minutes? After max Q then, right around the normal time for first stage separation and second stage ignition.
Do you have a source for that? Every article I’ve seen about the failure states it happened much later in the flight.
Correction: 300 seconds. Still well before LEO injection.
I was eyeballing the video, and it was somewhat misleading.
Third stage problem then.