Main Engine Cut Off - T+271: Checking in on the Chinese Space Industry (with Andrew Jones)

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

Andrew Jones returns to the show to catch up on the Chinese space industry—Tiangong, reusable launchers, constellations, and the Moon.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 35 executive producers—Tyler, Jan, Will and Lars from Agile Space, Benjamin, Warren, Pat, Russell, Craig from SpaceHappyHour.com, Theo and Violet, SmallSpark Space Systems, Steve, Fred, Stealth Julian, Better Every Day Studios, Kris, The Astrogators at SEE, David, Joonas, Pat from KC, Brandon, Donald, Josh from Impulse Space, Joel, Ryan, Matt, Harrison, Bob, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, Lee Hopkins, Frank, and four anonymous—and 823 other supporters.TopicsAndrew Jones (@AJ_FI) / XOrienspace breaks Chinese commercial launch records with Gravity-1 solid rocket - SpaceNewsShanghai firm behind G60 megaconstellation raises $943 million - SpaceNewsChina to debut large reusable rockets in 2025 and 2026 - SpaceNewsIndia targets uncrewed Gaganyaan orbital test mission in July, crewed flight in 2025 - SpaceNewsChina rolls out rocket for Queqiao-2 lunar satellite launch - SpaceNewsChina's 2024 space plans include 100 launches and moon sample return mission - SpaceNewsThe ShowLike the show? Support the show!Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] @WeHaveMECOFollow @[e-mail] on MastodonListen to MECO HeadlinesListen to Off-NominalJoin the Off-Nominal DiscordSubscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhereSubscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off NewsletterArtwork photo by Intuitive MachinesWork with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

hello and welcome to main engine cutoff i'm anthony galangelo back with another friend of the show here andrew jones is returning the show to catch us up with what's been going on in the chinese space industry and the the larger both commercial private company picture but political side of things as well and the programs that they're taking on. Always good to check in with him and get his insight. He's one of the people covering this, right? There's like not many of them covering this whole side of the space industry. So I'm constantly keeping up with what he's writing and always love having on the show. So without further ado, let's give Andrew a call. Andrew, welcome back to the show.

Your absence has been far too long, so apologies for that. But I guess that means I've now brought you back with too long of a to-do list to talk about. So, sorry. Hey, thanks for having me. It's good to be back. Yeah, I just can't comprehend how much has gone on since the last time we spoke i mean when was that was it this decade or i do not remember uh i really don't remember i guess i should have searched before was this like before they had a space station or or not i think this was january 2021 so okay so a few months before they launched the first module so yeah so there's that yeah and i know you love you know leo and uh space station so yeah all right

listen all right geez he's coming in hot today but let me let's start there let's start there because yes i have i have many thoughts on leo stations on the nasa and isa and canadian side of things but um my one thing all along with with uh tiangong was like you know they're gonna get stuck in leo the same way we did and then that's going to delay the lunar program over time and that has been a thesis that i would now a couple years in like to test as they've deployed all the core modules. And I think I saw from your coverage that there's plans for more upcoming. So maybe you can do a previously on Tiangong and give me your thoughts on how it sits in terms of the overall programmatic things that they're taking on within the larger space program. I think with Tiangong, they're very happy with how that's gone and,

you know, the prestige side of things and so on. And just getting used to having, you know, regular cargo and crew missions and just being able to kind of operate the station in Leo. So I think if they, I mean,

there's a lot of positives to this, you know, if they were just kind of going to skip that step and go straight to the moon and try to build infrastructure there, I mean, they're going to be missing out a lot in terms of, you know, just space flight experience and so on. So it's completely understandable from my point of view. I was, however, surprised at how quickly they've apparently moved on to expanding this.

So I think it was 2027, maybe, that they're thinking of sending up like a multi, I can't remember what they call it, but basically a smaller module, which they can use to then extend it with another few modules after that. So you're looking at a six module space station rather than three modules um i'm kind of i'm kind of guessing that they see some kind of interest internationally in terms of you know hosting international astronaut maybe even getting a country interested enough to pay for one of these new modules, something like that, and try to get some kind of political and diplomatic benefits from this. So it's interesting. The other thing is the commercial side.

So they're looking at commercial cargo. So they opened a call for both state-owned and commercial companies to propose low-cost returnable spacecraft, which can send cargo up and down. That would also bring in the commercial launches and give them something to do. So they see a lot of things that they can do with this. So it's a bit different to how the ISS played out. Of course, they're learning lessons from what NASA, ESA, and so on have been looking to do ever since.

One thing that you mentioned about scale there, right now when they do crew changeovers, they're indirect, right? So one crew leaves and then the next one arrives. I think that's the case because they're doing direct these days. Yeah. I can't keep track of how many things are happening, but. No. So, yeah, I mean, they do, they do a handover and a ceremony and everything.

So, okay. But if I guess, you know, the point is that if they wanted to go beyond that, if they wanted to have another visiting mission or, you know, uh, do some like tourist flights or something like that, that are not their core astronauts, they probably need some more facilities to support a higher number of crew as well. So, you know, if there's any interest whatsoever in other national astronauts or private astronauts flying up,

they have to have some extra facilities to support that, which is an interesting consideration as well to say, like, you know, why do you need more space? I guess in some way that I can support that. It's like letting the demand grow naturally, but it did seem like a really fast, all right, we've,

we've finished the space station. We're going to build more. We're going to build like a whole second half of the space station. So I don't know, maybe you can, you can continue to refine my thesis that, that they're going to get stuck longer than they assumed they would in, in Leo. But, and that's also, you know, me having an opinion about being stuck versus going out to the moon that's that's a strongly worded opinion i guess but um in terms of the uh budget and you

know on the nasa side of things we see this huge budget log jam right now between all the competing demands on the human spaceflight side of things and a very limited budget on the the chinese side of things do we have any insight into the the budget of tiongong and and very limited budget. On the Chinese side of things, do we have any insight into the budget of Tiangong and the relative budget of other programs that are happening on the human side of things? No, we don't really get to see numbers. So like Euroconsult will do things where they look at what's happened

and try and attribute some kind of level of cost to those things and say, okay, well, this is what we think the annual budget is, but we don't get to see, you know, documents would say, okay, this is how much we have allocated for this. And this is for this. We don't get to see any of the, you know, arguing about what resources are going where and the thing like that. So it's just kind of like, Oh, okay.

Yeah. It's looking back. You don't get any research and development money in that either. So there's a huge budget outlay for expanding the station there's work that leads up to that for years and we don't have a sense of that scale yeah i mean there were a few indirect things where i think a few years ago there was big concerns uh within the chinese like science community that the science side of tiangong wasn't really being funded so you know the the hardware was being made and everything like this but the actual experiments and everything like this the clearance and the money just wasn't moving forward but

apparently that you know with uh xi jinping coming in uh it seems to you know hold space to be a part of his grand vision for a stronger China and so on. So the kind of budgets have apparently increased, or the ease of which different entities have been able to get their plans approved has kind of eased up a bit. So, I mean, that's the kind of insight that we get sometimes if we're lucky. But, yeah. The other thing that they've been working on over the past couple years is a whole new round of long march vehicles last time we

talked some of them had flown some of them haven't i think um if my memory stretches that far back but uh you know long march 8 is really just getting rolling now um there's a transition period where they're still flying the old you know know, hypergolic based, based vehicles out of the old, uh, launch sites and moving out to these new vehicles out on the Island launch site. Do we, is this going faster, slower than we anticipated? What, what does the transition phase feel like right now? Yeah, that's a really good question because, um, yeah, we see the, I I mean the long match five the largest rocket has these kind of big important missions do like genuine one and the channel emissions and and so on the 5p launching the space station but there's

aren't kind of you know high cadence kind of things. The other ones, I mean, Long March 7 is supposed to take over from the Long March 3 series. But the thing is, it's kind of the infrastructure. So like Xichang and Taoyuan and Jiuquan up in the northwest, I mean, these have historically been, you know, hosting these hypergolic rockets. So actually, you know, you'd have to, you also have to kind of make these spaceports then able

to handle the cryogenic stuff. So, I mean, that's taken, you know, longer. So there's a bottleneck in terms of launch facilities. So that's kind of slowed things down. So I think it's quite surprising when you look at, okay, they have different variations of the Long March 6 coming out, which some have got solid boosters, for instance. So it's kind of like, okay, you're doing all these different things

for slightly different kind of payloads to SSO or something like this. So on one hand, it's kind kind of surprising but at the same time you you know considering that still relying on the on these older long march two three and four i mean yeah yeah i it's it's um we're seeing a commercial spaceport close to Wenchang like the national spaceport on the island that you mentioned, there was talk of one on the eastern coast as well that kind of

slowed down but then there was noises from there at the end of last year that that might be happening again so these kind of things would be needed really to kind of give the commercial launches more of a chance, but also then maybe they could handle the kind of Kerouac's long marches. So, yeah, I mean, yeah, they're still building these rockets.

There's bottlenecks, so quite how they'll work it out and how long it will take to transition, I don't know. Well, from the outside perspective, it seems a bit hard to tell, really. The other aspect that you mentioned is all these new commercial or private launchers. There's tons of them, and they're all named similar enough names that it gets confusing. It's like different variations of the same name um but also it's it's hard to understand there seemed to be like a big difference in a lot of these companies their first vehicle was something you know solid rocket booster based and it was sort of derived from a vehicle that existed elsewhere and then their second

vehicle was like this whole new design new engines that was a pattern that i felt like maybe i'm wrong but it felt like a couple of different companies had that. So always hard to tell, you know, yes, you're getting credit for like a private launch, but it doesn't really feel like you built a brand new thing yet. And so let's focus on, you know, what are you building next? Then you've got others that are starting to fly with their new vehicles. And there's always two parts of this, right?

Like the technical side of things, how well these things work, but then the business side as well as, you know, what does it really mean to be a private launch provider there when Long March is doing so much of the lifting? And what are the, you know, which companies are looking to actually buy launch services from these new companies? Is it stuff internal to China with, you know, constellation programs that are starting now? Um, or is there a actual market there that is coming in from outside of China? So, you know, whichever end you want to start on,

is it technical side or the business side that you're more curious about with these companies? Well, I would say that just I've kind of been, I kind of started following China you know just as this kind of thing was starting so it's been interesting to follow um at the beginning like these these first you had a first handful of um companies and they were building as you say kind of light lift rockets um most of them were solid uh you had land space and high space who were looking to build kind of smaller liquid propellant launchers and speaking to them they were kind of

like well yeah we're you know we we can't step on the toes of uh cask which is the state-owned kind of main space contractor which does the long marches and and so on and they were like we're going to launch uh you know cubesats for universities and and so on right so they you know they they didn't really know what the market was or what they were doing and it didn't really seem like there would be enough of those kinds of launches to kind of you know keep many launches at all kind of in the market or anything like this. So what we've seen over the last few years is that a growth in these kind of launches. You have a couple of companies who are still doing solids.

Well, there's another one called Orion Space, which launched this absolutely massive. People keep calling it the Kerbal Space Program. It totally is. Yeah, and the absolute state of that launch from that from that barge in the sea was absolutely amazing yeah that poor boat yeah amazing stuff so yeah yeah so you kind of got that going on but these rockets have been getting bigger and also kind of the reason that these rockets will be getting so much bigger, for example, you've got Tianlong-3, which should be launching around, I think, July, I think,

which is going to be kind of Falcon 9 kind of payload capacity in that kind of area. And it's going to be expendable at first, but it's designed to be reusable, so they'll start trying to recover that before long too. So the reason that these rockets have suddenly been growing so much bigger is that China has kind of got a mega constellation, which would be its answer to Starlink.

It's called Guowang. And so the understanding is the first satellites for this are starting to go, the first operational satellite should be going up this year, and there could be batches of them. And the understanding is that commercial launch service providers can earn contracts to launch these satellites. So that would give them a way to survive and so on. So, yeah, and there's another constellation called G60, Starlink, which is kind of the Chinese side of a failed kind of Sino-European or Sino-German kind of project which fell apart a few years ago. project which fell apart a few years ago.

So they were still arguing over the frequency rights for that, but it seems that the Chinese side have relocated to Shanghai and they'll be building satellites and wanting commercial launches to put up a load of satellites for that. So I think they have to get 10 of these um constellations up by 2027 something like this so that's going to be like 1 300 satellites in a few years so you know they've got to get going so uh yeah the commercial side that's really you know where they're looking to earn their main contracts perhaps and also that would help out china in terms of its launch cap launch capacity to get these things up there um

that's interesting too because you know before this if we were trying to do projections on one of these constellation launches you know all this is taken with we don't really know what's going on internally but it didn't seem like there was a lot of movement towards massively increasing the cadence of long march launches or or even like you're saying facilities wise are they able to support you know 2x the number of launches that they've got planned even in you know this year they're planning 100 or something like that um but to launch that satellites, you're going to need a massive increase. And those projects take a long time to really, you know,

not have, not only have the production lines running up as much as you need, but to be able to have the launch sites to support that as well. Um, so it's, it's an interesting pairing of this, where this new project is coming on that needs a massive amount of launch. Um,

and ideally, you know, every like the Amazon style of buy all the launch vehicles you possibly can. It's a good time for these companies to be trying to, you know, get going and actually start launching when there's a huge need over the next couple years. So, you know, maybe your insight says that they would have been able to scale up Long March to the extent that they would have needed to to to do this kind of projects, but it certainly feels like, you know, good timing overall for, for both sides of this. Yeah. Yeah. So there were, there were a few ideas floating around. So one would be to use the

Long March 5B and scale, you know, scale up the production of that. Or then there's an upgraded version of the Long March 8, which will be launching from the commercial launch site in Wenchang. I think the first launch will be in a few months. So, yeah, I mean, they have been boosting their engine production facilities and so on. So they are really trying to ramp up anyway. But, yeah, especially if they can get reusable commercial launches as well, that's really going to help with the sheer number of satellites

that need to get up there. And of course, that would leave CASC to kind of focus on these kind of, it's, you know, on the civilian and military kind of stuff that they need to do and lunar stuff and space station and so on. And then the commercial side can kind of carry on with, you know, can take over this kind of extra capacity that's needed for the constellations. So, yeah, it's kind of China's national strategy in space. It's, you know, it's very good timing for these launches to be coming online.

You mentioned the reusable aspect there, and maybe we can try to get our heads around the different projects that are going on there's there's been a lot of hop tests over the last couple years many of which i'll be honest i just completely ignored because they were with either like not the actual engine that the vehicle would be using so i was like i'll i'll pay attention when they get a very equivalent engine underneath um you know because a lot of times i feel like this is more general than just china but certain things get covered or get attention that are just you know part of the

development process which are really cool but i'm like i don't know if that needs like full attention or if it's just an interesting thing that we all should keep an eye on uh and i felt like that was where a lot of those hop tests were which was very early tests maybe they're testing software avionics or something um but uh it wasn't it wasn't as put together as something like even spacex's grasshopper where it was yeah this is basically a flight equivalent vehicle um so you're getting like a full end-to-end test as much as you possibly can with these sort of things um but are there any that that stand out in your mind of of you know there's certainly been some more interesting ones recently. Are there any of these hop tests that stand out as this company is clearly farther along this path than the others?

Yeah, good question. So they finally got to orbit with their Jutruet 2, which I think they unveiled back in 2017, was it? They planned to reach orbit by 2020 with this kind of, you know, first methane liquid oxygen rocket. So they made it last year on their second attempt. They reached orbit and then followed up, I think, with some active payloads after that. So I think after the second successful flight later on, they announced that they're kind of pivoting to stainless steel rocket,

would you believe, and aiming for 2025 launch of this. I can't remember the payload capacity of it, but was it about 15 tons or something to Leo? But yeah, I mean, I think they're doing kilometer or 10 kilometer level hop test in June. I think that was the latest target. And, you know, obviously trying to have an orbital launch next year. So, I mean, that's quite fast. Pretty wild.

I found a recent article of yours. It says payload capacity up to 21 tons to LEO. Okay, yeah. That's a big boy. Yeah. Yeah, so that's not messing around. So I think the first one, I think the first orbital launch and recovery test

would come from a company called Deep Blue Aerospace. And they were kind of one of the earlier companies to do a hop test. I think it must be a couple of years ago, at least, where they did, you know, a few hundred meters. But again, as you say, it wasn't an engine which is, you know, which would be used in an orbital launch. So the more recent ones with Landspace and iSpace, I think, you you know those were both

um orbital engines that they were using so that's you know a lot more interesting so with space pioneer um which i mentioned tianlong three they'll be launching this year so yeah i mean that was a weird company i think they started on mono propellants um you know and said oh we're going to make this started on monopropellants, you know, and said, oh, we're going to make this kind of engine that's going to be, you know, green and everything like this. And then they kind of reappeared a few years later and said, oh, well, we're not doing that anymore.

We're building some large reusable Keroulox rockets. Oh, okay, sure, why not? So, yeah, I mean, those guys, I think they're a bit quieter about what their plans are. So I'm not quite sure when they're planning to try to recover one of their rockets. So it's kind of hard to know what's going on with them. But I mean, they also have made big, big progress. So yeah, but I think, I mean, a bit of context, their first orbital launch last year, so about a year, about a year ago now, 3.35 meter kind of core so it's kind of same kind of thing as uh you know long march a lot of the long march rockets so you know they're

kind of borrowing a lot from other places so you know the speed at which they were able to do it you know it's been it's been helped a lot by technology transfer and so on. So, so it's, I was talking about like the business side is one question. Technical side is another, a lot of these companies that even if they're borrowing the tech from elsewhere, then there's the business question is the one that you lead with,

right? Whereas others are, are inverse where it's like, well, it's obviously what market they're targeting and, but they have to develop all their own technology from the outset. So, you know,

I'm not sure one is wrong necessarily given where the market is for these companies, but you're right. Like you have to then kind of score it based on that, based on where they were starting from versus where they say they're starting from, which is a monopropellant rocket. So that's fun.

Yeah, and I think the kind of one of CASCs to rocket building institutes, I think they've been doing, very quietly, they've been doing hop tests, I think, and they might have been using commercially built engines, which is another very interesting thing. So those would be Methalox engines from a commercial company. So that might, I can't remember which rocket that is so they're launching something called the long march 12 this year i think that might be

expendable but they were also um you know this shanghai academy of spaceflight technology they're also wanting to build a reusable rocket. So that's one that should be happening in a year or two. So hard to say. But again, because that's kind of state-owned, whatever hop tests they've been doing have been a lot more low-key and not public because if they screw up, then it's a lot bigger issue for a commercial company.

The other one that was kind of kicking around was the Long March 8 as a recoverable vehicle, right? Where they were testing some, maybe it's not 8, I think it was 8, where they're testing grid fins and talking about recovery, but sounds like that's not been talked about of recent times. Yeah, I think that was one of their first ideas. And yeah, they were going to keep the side boosters

kind of stuck on you know for for ballast so they didn't have to throttle down so hard you know for the landing so that was one of the kind of first ideas where cask was trying to think okay we need to kind of get into reusability game and this is how we're going to do it but it seems that uh yeah that that's not going to be happening so they're looking to i think boost greatly boost the cadence of the long march 8 but it's going to be expendable it's interesting to i mean that that one sounds more like they started running numbers and we're like that doesn't actually make a lot of sense to keep these things attached and try to land it again that's a bizarre situation but um i guess the other aspect to all this though is is

if with this huge um swell of private or commercial companies that are looking to either start a reusable program or even just start high cadence launches with a lot of vehicles is what kind of um programmatic support they would look to find in that you know it it's if they all are kind of coming on the market at the same time and all competing over the same you know handful of satellites as they get rolling off the line do you end up in a scenario where it's unhealthy overall and it doesn't actually lead to a couple of them panning out because it's sort of ends up like NASA's CLPS program has been, which is a little bit of a race to the bottom in a way that looks really good at first, might not pan out well so well long term. We talked about the space station side of things where China is looking to do a commercial cargo type program or something like that. Are there any equivalent launch focused programs or efforts that would be similar to like the U.S. National Security Space Launch Program, where even military or some piece of the Chinese government is going to actually do some, you know, bulk contracting with these companies? Or does it feel like it's going to be a free for all?

some bulk contracting with these companies, or does it feel like it's going to be a free-for-all? As I said, I think it's going to be through the GOR1 constellation, the main one, where they'll be able to get contracts to launch satellites in bulk. I guess there would be, well, this is a commercial company, It's a commercial company, but the company makes the Jilin-1 satellites, which escapes me. The name escapes me for the moment.

But what's it called? Changguang satellite technology, so up in the Northeast. So, I mean, they're kind of, I mean, they're supposedly commercial, but they're also, you know, it's a spin-off from a state-owned company so i mean they're launching hundreds of earth observation satellites so that's kind of one which is you know um there's at least like bulk possible in in some of these programs yeah yeah so galactic energy uh i think they've they've launched 11 times, is it? I think they've got a new mission coming up now. So they've proven, you know, I think they've been successful 10 out of 11 times,

something like that, which is quite impressive. So my understanding is they've earned some contracts from a few places, which are commercial, semi-commercial. So, you know, it's basically if you can prove that you can launch reliably then you could you can earn contracts from from different places um for the for the military side of things i i don't know i haven't seen that happen yet i mean uh i mean that's kind of casks area and you know the long march is uh on the, apart from, well, there was an upper stage malfunction last week, which, you know, sort of the loss of a couple of satellites,

which were intended to go to kind of distant retrograde orbit. Yeah, but I think it was well over 100 launches before, you know, since the last Long March kind of launch problem. I mean, the thing is that China, I mean, China's always looking at the policies being enacted and that have been tried in different countries and assessing them and seeing what would work with them domestically. So they may well have looked at kind of what the US has done in those terms

and think, okay, well, maybe we can support our commercial industry like this. But I haven't seen any evidence of that. But yeah, it's something to watch. I mean, I got asked the other day if there was like, you know, is there an equivalent of kind of you know a chinese intuitive machines or something like that that's something that we haven't seen so whether or not these commercial companies would be you know eventually allowed to go move into the lunar domain it's you know it's uh it's it's a possibility of something that's probably being

considered but i don't think there's any companies which are anywhere near ready enough to do that it's a possibility it's something that's probably being considered but I don't think there's any companies which are ready enough to do that kind of thing yet so yeah I mean it's a matter of following and seeing what's going on I think so

well we probably should finish off on the moon then because you mentioned intuitive machines there's been a whole host of lunar missions that were not Chinese. You know, we've had slim and intuitive machines. Astrobotic flew out that way. So there's been a lot of activity. And now we've got Chang'e 7 coming up in the not too distant future. Chang'e 6.

Chang'e 6. Well, 7, I guess, in the more distant future then. Well, seven, I guess, in the more distant future then. This is also tied in with the larger moon plan from China that they've always talked about, them and Russia developing the, let's see if I can get the acronym right, the International Lunar Research Station, something like that.

That's moon, yep. So yeah, Chang'e 6 is the next one up, but what's the outlook from here? And then how does that actually tie into the larger lunar plans that they've got cooking? Yeah, so Chang'e 6, I think it's launching in May. The Long March 5 rocket just got delivered to Wanchang, so they're going to start putting that together. to Wanchang, so they're going to start putting that together. Before that, the Chui Chiao 2 lunar relay satellite, that's actually going to launch late 19th, kind of Eastern,

and early March 20th UTC. So, yeah, they need to get Chui Chiao 2 into its kind of specialized elliptical orbit to support that far side landing. So yeah, I mean, Chang'e 6, it's basically a copy of Chang'e 5. It's a lunar sample return. They're going to land in Apollo crater within the South Pole 8 can basin on the far side. So it's similar to Chang'e 5, but they need a relay satellite to do it so that's a bit more complexity um it's a longer mission i think it's going to be about 53 days uh so yeah sample return the idea is that they get some samples which might contain uh material from the from the lunar mantle which

was excavated by these uh large impact large impacts on the far side. So, I mean, scientifically, it's really interesting. How it plays into the International Lunar Research Station, it's kind of, I don't know, just nominally, in a sense, it's kind of like, well, yeah, they call it the fourth phase of China's lunar exploration program, and just tie it in with Chang'e 7 and Chang'e 8, which will be missions to the lunar south pole so yeah it's not it's not a major you know it's not a critical part so if it if it fails then you

know they just don't get these samples to work on and the science community will not be happy uh you know it'd be quite quite a blow um i think internationally as well uh those samples will be eventually you know available internationally as well. Those samples will be eventually available internationally as well. And also just from the science perspective, I think the international community would really like those. Chang'e 7 and Chang'e 8, they are the proper precursors to the International Lunar Research Station. So those would be kind of scoping out resources, water, ice, and so on, and working out the topography and all kinds of things. There at the South Pole, that's mainly with Chang'e 7 in 2026, and then in 2028 or 2029, Chang'e 8 would be...

The main thing there is that they want to test kind of in-situ resource utilization. So taking some regolith and kind of heating it up and then maybe 3D printing with it, can they make a brick out of it and so on. So that would be kind of setting up the main ILRS missions in the 2030s, which would require a super heavy lift launcher. Yeah, so that's kind of what they're building to at the moment.

One of the main things was last year was the growth in partners, which China managed to attract. I think it was about eight different countries which were involved, who had kind of signed an MOU to join the ILRS. So China said it was going to kind of formally create kind of a cooperation organization. I think it was in November or October or something. They haven't done this yet, so maybe they're still trying to get some interesting partners to join.

So I think Russia was the first one to join, then Venezuela, South Africa, Egypt was an interesting one. So maybe they're trying to get another, you know, kind of useful country, maybe, I don't know, what Saudi Arabia is doing. That would be something which would be interesting, given the, you know, they have quite a strong interest space these days um and lots of money to throw at it so but of course they're part of Artemis so yeah so basically this is a very interesting situation where you've got the US

and China trying to attract partners and uh into kind of these different streams of these separate kind of parallel lunar programs. So yeah, that's something which is something I try to follow quite closely and find it quite interesting. So yeah, did that answer the question or did I just talk all right? It did. No, no. Again, like all this is me trying to continue to get myself a lay of the land of the situation because it's so hard to understand in some cases because there's just not information available or, you know, we need people like you that can actually project started out it kind of felt like um you know russia was the old steady partner that had a lot of experience doing things and uh all these years on it's like

you know the russian side of the iss has fallen apart they've got major issues within their space industry generally they are you know warring in ukraine all the time here i'm has any of that had an effect on like the relative positions of them as partners or um maybe china's embrace of the russian space program overall um yeah i would i would say so um i mean publicly openly I mean, publicly, openly, they still talk about having a, you know, a joint lunar base program. So China actually dialed that down in 2022. So yeah, so they first formally announced this in St. Petersburg in June 2021. And of course, in February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. And so after that point, you saw that China wasn't openly talking about Russia

when it was trying to present these plans. You can come and join us and be a part of these different missions and so on. And Russia wasn't being mentioned for obvious reasons, for toxicity purposes. purposes um so yeah i mean internally it's had an effect uh i think um i think there's been different kinds of i mean this is it kind of gets a bit silly where you're looking at you know someone's made a presentation and it's suddenly you can't see a Russian heavy lift launch you in there and you're kind of thinking, okay, yeah. So does that mean that they're just not thinking that Russia's able to do anything?

Or does it mean that China's just going to kill them as a partner? I mean, yeah, there's lots of kind of opinions on what's actually going on. Or is it as sloppy as NASA illustrations are sometimes that leave out entire vehicles that are actually part of the program, that kind of thing? It's an illustrator's intuition on what the program is, not actually a statement of technical intent. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's interesting, but at the same time, it's like, okay, that intern might have just chucked together something. You can't read too much into it. Right. But internally, I mean, I think that the way that they would see Russia as a partner, based on the things that you mentioned in terms of the failures and so on, in terms of, you know, their economy and so on, the loss of expertise. I mean, yeah, it's going to have an effect. I'm sure it has.

But at the highest levels, there's very strong kind of links between, you know, the leaders and so on. So they would be keen maybe to show a stronger face than there actually is, perhaps. they would be keen maybe to show a stronger face than there actually is, perhaps. I mean, there was something last week, I think, or last couple of weeks, where news about Russia and China planning to put a nuclear reactor, or nuclear-powered power source on the moon. So, yeah, I didn't actually look into that very much, but my understanding would be that that would be one area in which russia could still be very useful okay and that china would also need that kind of expertise so that might have been kind of um you know russia saying well you know this is what we're planning and this is going to be kind of useful and trying

to make themselves actually a part of this still so uh so yeah it's yeah it's yeah i mean china doesn't have that many options i mean the the artemis program i mean there's been a big diplomatic effort to attract a range of company uh countries from you know all the continents and so on so uh so yeah there's a very interesting geopolitical aspect to this and uh it'd be interesting to see if countries would consider trying to be a part of both but there would obviously be uh problems and at least push back from one side of that so uh we'll have to see yeah very curious all right well thank you much, Andrew, for helping me understand this stuff, for coming back on after all this time has elapsed. Hopefully we don't wait as long the next time so we can catch up on the deeper details of more stuff rather than constantly trying to orient me.

But I appreciate all your insight. And if people want to follow along, where can they go to keep in touch with you or keep track of what you're writing yeah so um i tweeted uh aj underscore fi on on um well x um yeah uh writing you know regularly at space news space.com as well and uh a few other outlets on occasion as well and um i've been intending to do a newsletter but um i've been living in pure chaos so uh yeah newsletter is very difficult at the moment but yeah i'll get on to that because the thing is there is just so much happening in china that uh you know you can't write an article on everything and not everyone's interested in the kind of minutiae and stuff really into the weeds.

But it's also worth kind of noting down and copying. So, yeah, I'll try and get that sorted. Would you be interested? I would a thousand percent be interested. And I understand living in pure chaos. So I fully validate that. Yeah, I mean, it would be probably i know there's a lot of people out there that would read it but for you alone to go back and search an archive of all the

things that you've tracked it would be a very useful a useful thing to uh you know probably look back at former self and be like where was i at with that uh back in the day when they were talking about these plans so yeah that side of it has been helpful. Even for me, it's like someone now that can go back into the archives and be like, have I ever talked about that? What did I say about that? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I've got crazy notes, you know, every year, notes that I have to make just to, you know,

just before I can start doing anything in the morning. It's absolutely insane. So it's good to have those, but also it would be good to kind of flesh that out. So, yeah, as you can tell, even you asking me questions makes me think it would be good to kind of flesh that out so so yeah as you can tell even you asking me questions makes me think about things rather than just kind of covering things in you know piecemeal and then like being asked a question oh yeah that's a good question so yeah less chaos needed i'm glad we have a symbiotic relationship then well thanks

so much thanks again for coming on the show to andrew and thanks for supporting the show to all of you out there listening to say 100 listener supported show so if you like what i'm doing here mainenginecutoff.com support is where you should head to jump in like the 35 executive producers of this episode have thanks to tyler yon will and lars from agile space benjamin warren pat rus, Craig from SpaceHappyHour.com, Theo and Violet, Small Spark Space Systems, Steve, Fred, Stealth Julian, Better Everyday Studios, Chris, The Astrogators at SEE, David, Eunice, Pat from KC, Brandon, Donald, Josh from Impulse Space, Joel, Ryan, Matt, Harrison, Bob, Tim Dodd, The Everyday Astronaut, Lee, Frank, and five, four anonymous executive producers.

I can't read my own writing, but I thank you all so much for making this episode possible. Like I said, managercutoff.com slash support. It's where you can check out what I'm doing over there, support the show, get Miko headlines, an extra show that I do. You got a special RSS feed to drop in your podcast player, and you can stay up with me on all the space stories

that are worth paying attention to. So support the show, get some extra extra content it's a great deal but otherwise thank you all so much for listening and i shall talk to you soon