The Flight of Jiageng-1

On April 22, 2019, Space Transportation Technologies - a Chinese company - flew a winged rocket demonstrator, the Jiageng-1. This is meant to be a demonstrator for a two stage to orbit rocket. The flight flew up to 26 km altitude and hit Mach 3.5. The test vehicle has a waverider shape designed by Xiamen University’s School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The vehicle has a length of 8.7m and a wing span of 2.5m.

The purpose of the demonstrator is to verify the recovery and reuse of the vehicle. I am absolutely sure it's also meant to verify a number of aerodynamics characteristics as well of the waverider. That is very, very useful for hypersonic aircraft. The rocket was successfully recovered:

The video isn't available on youtube afaik, but is here:

news.xmu.edu.cn...

The ultimate goal, as stated, is a TSTO. The imagery is a little embellished for the roadmap:



However, the flight path ought to be remiscent of what ATS loves to speculate(*) the US has had since the 1980s:



The landing looks far more Kratos Valkyrie than SpaceX or Rockwell STS or their proposed X-33. It does remind me a bit of the cancelled and rotting X-34.

Jiageng looks interesting for the future for both launch vehicles and as a testbed for potentially hypersonic aircraft.

Keep your eyes open, folks, and your bots set to crawl.



*. they're wrong though

Some related info:

spacenews.com...

a reply to: anzha

So they want to put a Pegasus on a fancy first stage?

Nothing secretive about the US equivalent. Flying white world since 1990.

a reply to: mightmight

The Pegasus isn't launched from the ground and isn't a waverider.

a reply to: anzha

Of course not, but it provides pretty much the same capability based on your graphic. I can't read Chinese.

I dont see the point of using a 'Waverider' type design. That would be pretty niche and unnecssarily complicated. Smaller payloads can be easily handled by a more conventional Pegasus type solution. And if they're looking at larger payloads i don't see why they wouldnt go for a *conventional* resuable rocket like the Falcon.

a reply to: mightmight



Pegasus is a 4 stage counting carrier. The cost per launch is $40M. The Chinese are probably aiming to reduce that cost.

This is, in many ways, closer to the XS-1 Boeing is supposedly making for DARPA than the Pegasus.

a reply to: anzha

Again not the argument, of course the Pegasus a different, less ambitious solution. But it provides the same capability - putting a payload into orbit.

And how would the Chinese approach be any cheaper?
Based on your graphic the upper stage is still expandable. And i seriously doubt they waverider first stage will be as cheap to operate than the L-1011 for Pegasus.
Of course they could end up with a somewhat cheaper upper stage since the first stage waverider would have a far superior flight envelope compared to the L-1011. But you know as well as i do how little the flight envelope of the first stage matters when you need to reach Mach 25.

So about the XS-1 comparison. Maybe thats in their cards. We've already talked about that though and I haven't changed my opinion. Don't reinvent the wheel and put your reusable spaceplane on the equally resuable Falcon instead.
If you want an emergency launch capability, by half a dozen Falcons and put them in high readiness storage.

I love ambitious tech as much as the next guy, but i'll be very surprised if the Chinese will end up with some waverider first stage and not a conventional Falcon / New Gleen clone.

a reply to: mightmight

I suspect the Chinese are testing multiple tech here. Waverider is being tested on top of the other application. Their art doesn't show waverider-ish characteristics. Probably helped pay for the test article by allowing it to be used for another purpose.

If you read the bottom link, the Chinese are pursuing a F9 equivalent. However, that's not something aviation related (no wings) and so kinda ot.

As for the F9/XS-1 discussion, you're right that we've been round that circle plenty. Does make you wonder if its really a bad idea if both the Chinese and Americans are pursuing it though.

IDK why people dd so much cheese when they edit these things, but...here it is.

Supposedly, part of the Jiangeng-1.

One cool machining job that.