Re:China successfully launches its largest reusable rocket
by mabbo on Sunday August 11, 2019 @08:23AM
(#20667827)
"Altitude" is a weird metric for rockets because going up is useless- you immediately fall back down.
Achieving orbit requires a horizontal velocity many times higher than the vertical velocity achieved.
Re:China successfully launches its largest reusable rocket
by liability on Sunday August 11, 2019 @10:56AM
(#20668430)
They may well have provided more relevant figures which the reporter or editor failed to understand the value of and consequently emitted in favor of the figure that played to their "space is up" worldview.
I found this Reuter’s story on the launch.
Exciting, if they meet their goals.
https://www.reuters.com/article/space-exploration-china-link...
“The Beijing-based company aims to launch its next-generation RLV-T16 next year that will be capable of reaching an altitude of up to 150 kilometers, Hu said.”
“LinkSpace previously told Reuters it hoped to charge no more than 30 million yuan ($4.25 million) per reusable launch.”