Jones, Andrew. “China Tries To Solve Its Rocket Debris Problem.” IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News, IEEE, 24 June 2021, 13:34 GMT, spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/space-flight/chinas-rocket-debris-problem.
Article title: China Tries To Solve Its Rocket Debris Problem
Warnings aren't enough, but reusable rockets might be
Photo: STR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
My summary of the article:
The Chinese rocket Long March 2F succeeded on a mission to send the crewed spaceship Shenzhou-12 spacecraft into orbit. Well, although the mission itself was a success, one downfall of the launch was that its empty rockets fell to the ground at an extremely high impact velocity of 7.8 km/s. A video that was filmed after the impact showed nitrogen teroxide, a hazardous propellant gas, leaking from the damaged rockets.
This is just one of numerous of such incidents that happen with Chinese space launches. One of the biggest causes of such incidents with empty rockets falling on land is that most Chinese spaceports were built deep in-land due to security concerns (most Chinese spaceports were built during the Cold War era when, obviously, security was of great concern). Wenchang launch center, built in 2016, is the only Chinese spaceport located near to the coast. China, with their growing investment on the space industry, has been aiming to launch about 40 times more rockets annually in the last few years. With this trend, the problem with their empty rockets falling on land is growing. Sometimes, empty rockets fall near inhabited areas like schools, making this a very serious problem that must be addressed with concern.
As an attempt to mitigate this problem, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC) is developing controllable parafoils with grid fins in hopes of being able to control the trajectory of the empty engines as they fall. Their ultimate goal, however, is to develop reusable rockets with precise landing coordinate control like those used in Falcon 9. However, as demonstrated in this video, vertical landing is not an easy feat.
My response to the article:
As a student who dreams of one day working in the space industry, wherever that may be (SpaceX, the Korean government, or perhaps a Korean private space company), I always wondered what happens to the main rockets and boosters after they have been detached from the spaceship. Although I did guess that they would perform insane amounts of calculations prior to launch to ensure that rockets did not crash on land and certainly not on inhabited regions, I also realized that there would be quite a large region of uncertainty due to uncontrollable factors that affect crash location of empty rockets such as wind and rotation of the body (+ its effect on how the body interacts with the atmosphere).
This was one of the reasons I thought SpaceX's vertical landing technology was such an enormous breakthrough in the field of aerospace engineering, since it not only provides immense economic benefits, but also ensures that the used up rockets land exactly where they want them to land, preventing potential damage to the environment, private property, and even human life.
This article mentions the fact that CASC, a government organization, is working on developing a similar vertical landing technology as done by SpaceX. This highlights the impact that SpaceX is making on the space industry itself and how important SpaceX is to the space industry. SpaceX inspires these government space organizations to follow their footprints, ultimately benefitting the general quality of space exploration itself all around the world. Given that SpaceX is a private organization, this just blows my mind and reminds me of how influential Elon Musk, the man who started it all, is in accelerating the technological development in the world we live today.
コメント