
First private Chinese attempt to send rocket into space fails - NicoJuicy
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/28/first-private-chinese-attempt-to-send-rocket-into-space-fails
======
gpm
It's worth remembering that SpaceX's first 3 attempts failed as well. Space is
hard. It sounds like a lot of things went right with this launch before
something failed. So, good for them!

~~~
ChuckMcM
Yes, and none of them were carrying "real" satellites. (Falcon 1.1 had a
student build satellite, 1.2 a dead weight, and 1.3 had some nano satellites
and another test satellite.

According to the article this first attempt at launch in China had a State
television communications satellite on board. Ouch!

~~~
T-A
According to spacenews.com it was a "small “Future” (Weila-1) satellite for
China Central Television (CCTV) for space science experiments, remote sensing
and use in a television show" [1], so not quite that much of a loss.

Also, the company's name is Landspace.

[1] [https://spacenews.com/landspace-ready-for-first-chinese-
priv...](https://spacenews.com/landspace-ready-for-first-chinese-private-
orbital-launch-but-looks-to-grander-plans/)

~~~
deedubaya
I was hoping the company’s name was NotSpaceX

~~~
acct1771
NewSpaceX

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dhruval
Rockets are very hard and failure is very costly. Requires a different mindset
from software. All the best to the team.

~~~
baybal2
>Requires a different mindset from software. All the best to the team.

Definitely - it is all about the software team forgetting the accursed word
"iteration"

There, the software must works right from first compile. The way of writing
software "in hopes it works," and reworking it by going from one newly
discovered roadblock to another doesn't work.

Also, formal verification is genuinely needed here, even more than say in
embedded space.

~~~
nicois
My naive perspective is not that software engineers should forsake iteration;
rather that their tests / simulations have to be "out of this world". After
all, the software is still written by taking real world constraints and models
and then applying them in software. Anything you are counting on software to
do properly should be testable, up to a point, in a virtual environment.

~~~
baybal2
>rather that their tests / simulations have to be "out of this world".

Formal verification far exceeds testing as know to mainstream software
development.

And in addition to it, some "sanity tests" are preferably to be done just to
have an assurance that your are not verifying the wrong thing. I heard of few
cases when formally verified software failed despite devs being religiously
zealous with it.

One on my mind was of oxygen sensor wired to ADC, and ADC was able to measure
negative voltage... Thus it was keeping the fuel injector running for the
negative amount of time... You can imagine the following sequence of events.

------
Symmetry
It speaks well of their program that the first two stages worked. Losing a
couple of rockets in the first 10 launch attempts is par for the course in
developing a new rocket, even for organizations that have been doing this for
decades. If a new organization loses a couple more on their first rocket then
that's how you learn.

------
baybal2
And so did Alibaba's first attempt at running a satellite business.

[https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/alibaba-
reaching...](https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/alibaba-reaching-for-
the-stars-with-singles-day-satellite)

~~~
netvarun
Did it actually fail? Can’t tell from the article (though they quote an expert
calling it a gimmick)

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EngineerBetter
There seem to be a lot of stories with a negative view of China on HN.

~~~
crispyporkbites
I can see why the title specifically says Chinese, but really it feels like it
shouldn't need to mention the country of origin. It's equivalent to referring
to SpaceX's launches as "private American attempts".

This isn't (or at least should not be) China vs USA, these are two private
companies competing. It does feel like there's a narrative to make it feel
like the space race where you had two nation states competing, but it's really
not like that at all. The American people should feel little extra connection
to SpaceX than they do to Landscape, after all, the people of America will not
benefit SpaceX successes in the same way they would if NASA were to succeed.

Personally I don't appreciate nationalism and I think there's a huge element
to this in the way many of us think about the world, which is reflected in our
reporting of events.

~~~
gpm
Rocket companies are so closely tied to countries that they are inherently
national. The only substantial difference between a rocket and a ICBM is what
you put at the top. To take SpaceX as an example, they are a "private"
company, but

\- They are only allowed to hire US citizens and permanent residents

\- They are not allowed to export their technology

\- They derive a substantial fraction of their income from US government
contracts. Most of which can only be won by american companies.

\- NASA shares substantial amounts of information with them.

\- Also the reverse.

\- (I'm pretty sure the list goes on)

China is relevant not just as a "go <country>" sense but it's about what
technology this group has access to. The regulatory regime they are part of
(how many people are they allowed to risk killing). The funding options they
have. How this technology affects politics. Etc.

