Beijing E-Town's private aerospace achieved consecutive rocket launches.

Oct 23, 2018 (China Knowledge) - There are remarkable developments and achievements in the aerospace industry this month at Beijing E-Town. After the successful launch of the second commercial sub-orbital rocket by One Space and the construction of the aerospace propulsion rocket engine production base, two more private aerospace companies have announced successful rocket lift off.

The TQ-12 short nozzle thrust chamber, with an 80-ton liquid oxygen methane engine independently developed by Land Space Aerospace, carried out a successful twenty-second short-range launch test at a testing bay in Huzhou city.

Zhang Changwu, CEO of Land Space Aerospace, said that the purpose of the launch test was to speed up the verification of the core technology of TQ-12 thrust chamber, and to start with large-scale ground trials of TQ-12 engine and "ZQ II" liquid carrier rocket. It is the first heavy-lift liquid oxygen methane thrust chamber test in China by a private enterprise.

According to reports, theTQ-12 engine has carried out some related tests before. The latest test, which covered 60% of the operating conditions, lasted for 20 seconds and was aimed at verifying the combustion efficiency of the injector under low operating conditions, combustion stability under low thrust chamber, thermal protection of regenerative cooling, membrane composite cooling schemes, reliability of injector structure and new material solutions. This has laid a foundation for the trials of subsequent products.

The thermal test bench base, that undertakes the lift off, is independently constructed at Huzhou city, Zhejiang Province, by Land Space and is the only private aerospace thermal power test platform in China. According to the design of the base, it is equipped with a 100-ton test platform, high-pressure extrusion test platform, diversion trough, gas bottle field, measurement and control room, office building as well as fire protection and utilities. The base is capable of carrying out various hot testing of thrust engines which weigh less than 100 tons.

According to Yuan Yu, a senior engineer at Land Space, the liquid rocket engine integrates various disciplines and technologies such as combustion, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, structural mechanics, low temperature technology, measurement and control technology, which requires not only simulation calculation but also a variety of tests for engine research and development. The cumulative test time of a mature and...