Rocket Report: A dark day for Blue Origin; Pentagon eyes new launch site
摘要
美国蓝色起源公司的新格伦火箭在佛罗里达州卡纳维拉尔角发射台爆炸，导致其唯一的轨道级发射台严重损毁，火箭将长期停飞。事件影响深远，后续发展值得持续关注。此外，报告指出中国在过去十年间航天发射活动激增，但似乎忽视了火箭末级离轨的国际惯例。专家分析显示，过去五年间，中国在长期轨道上的火箭体质量已从不足100吨增至252吨，加剧了太空碎片问题。
Welcome to Edition 8.43 of the Rocket Report! A disclaimer: No one yet fully appreciates the ramifications of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket explosion Thursday night on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida. What we know as of this writing is that much of Blue's sole orbital-class launch pad has been destroyed, and the New Glenn rocket will be grounded for an extended period of time. It is too soon for any hot takes, at least until the Sun rises at the Cape on Friday morning. One thing I am sure of is that we will be writing about this event for weeks, months, and years to come.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Charting China's contribution to space junk. There's a problem with the drastic uptick in Chinese space launches over the last decade. China appears to be ignoring long-established norms about disposing of the upper stages of rockets, Ars reports. These are the parts of the vehicle that separate from the first stage of a rocket and push a satellite or spacecraft into orbit. In the early decades of spaceflight, launch operators routinely left upper stages in orbit after they released their payloads. But most launch companies today reserve enough propellant in their rockets to remove them from orbit to avoid the risk of spent upper stages becoming a source of space debris. But China is not following this trend. There has been striking growth in China’s rocket body mass. In the past five years, the mass of Chinese rocket bodies in long-lived orbits has risen from less than 100 metric tons to 252, according to a new analysis by Space Domain Awareness expert Jim Shell.
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