China’s “Saturn V”

The NEXT Saturn V: Made in China?

It appears that China is studying the Saturn V in preparation for making a really big booster of its own…possibly for manned missions to the moon.

But it looks like theirs will be just a little less powerful, and possibly not up to the task. This suggests to some that the Chinese are looking to assemble their moon rocket in orbit. But who really knows?

The Chinese haven’t even announced they plan to send people to the moon, although many (including me) are pretty confident that’s what they want to do.

They’ve methodically developed their manned spaceflight capabilities. They started by putting a Taikonaut into orbit; then they did a two-man mission; and next a mission with a space walk. They’ve got a docking mission planned for next.

In other words, they’ve been systematically developing the skills for a moonlanding. Their program (so far) pretty well mimics our old Gemini program—which paved the way for the Apollo moonlandings.

Building a Saturn V is hard. The U.S. no longer knows how to build one—the detailed plans were (amazingly!) not retained. The Russian equivalent—called the N1—was a huge failure. The N1 blew up on the launch pad, killing many technicians. The Chinese, understandably, might not want to run that risk. So, it appears they’re building something big, but slightly smaller.

More about Chinese moon plans here.