China apparently plans to cause recurrent waves of panic by launching uncontrolled rockets that threaten people on Earth, and soon, also on the Moon.
At first, Chinese space officials thought that the country’s 20-ton Long March-5 booster stage would impact in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea on May 9, causing concern in Israel, but it instead crashed in the Indian Ocean. The Pentagon was asked if it had plans to shoot it down.
At least three more Long March-5 space launch vehicles (SLVs) will be used to complete China’s space station, another three will be needed to launch planned probes to the Moon.
There is also the prospect that China will subject future inhabitants of the Moon to the same potentially deadly drama. In both cases, it may be the lack of power or launch capacity of China’s SLVs that requires compromises that put others in danger.
Between 2025 and 2030, China is expected to use its new “921 Rocket” which reportedly can put 27 tons into Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI), or transport to the Moon.
As China’s next-generation manned spaceship configured for lunar missions weighs about 21 tons, this means that China will require two 921 Rockets to send the manned spaceship and the manned Moon lander to rendezvous in lunar orbit.
At a major space conference in 2018, and more clearly at another in September 2020, Chinese military-space officials revealed some configurations for a manned Moon lander, an initial Moon shelter, and a large manned Moon rover that can also serve as a shelter.
While these may not be final designs, they seem to share a characteristic derived from the former Soviet Union’s aborted manned Moon program. As the Soviet’s large N-1 SLV could only put 23 tons into TLI, and it had to carry both the manned spaceship and Moon lander, the latter had to be lightweight.
The LK’s internal Block E engine complex would complete the landing and later return one Cosmonaut to a spaceship orbiting the Moon. China is reported to have purchased the designs for the Block E engines from their Ukrainian designers. It is likely they also gave China insights into the integral Block D engine complex.
We can infer this possibility because the Chinese manned lunar lander, shelter, and rover concepts revealed to date also employ a detachable stage just like Block D, apparently also designed to crash into the Moon.
Furthermore, early Moon exploration and Moon Base building for the United States and China will be concentrated at the South Pole of the Moon, where there are higher concentrations of lunar ice water. This means that U.S. and Chinese Moon bases may sometimes be in close proximity.
While China’s Long March-9 super heavy SLV could put up to 50 tons into TLI, meaning larger and safer Moon lander designs could be accommodated, there remains the possibility that China could also require scores of 921 Rockets using Block D-like decent stages to build an early presence at choice South Pole lunar locations.
So, in addition to having to endure added drama from the potential danger of more Long March-5 SLV booster stages hitting populated areas of the Earth, early Moon explorers may also have to endure the danger of Chinese “Block D” descent engines impacting near or on their Moon Bases.
A Chinese refusal to modify its Long March-5 SLVs for controlled and safer descents to Earth would not bode well for a willingness to similarly modify their “Block D” Moon descent stages.
Without such modifications, it would be logical for U.S. space planners to consider both passive and active defenses for Moon Bases, like lunar laser weapons. This would violate current treaties and conventions against “militarizing” the Moon, but the alternative would be to subject U.S. government, and allied and private sector Moon personnel to the danger of Chinese “Block-D bombs.”
China, however, may desire this outcome, as it would justify the militarization of their Moon Bases already controlled by its People’s Liberation Army, making them ready to assert Chinese claims to Moon territory and wage battles for eventual control of the Moon.
