The Long March 5B Is Coming!

[brewer]

The Launch profile of this particular rocket model can’t be changed to make sure the rocket falls back ballistically at the end of the mission.  

Most rockets shed stages as it ascends into orbit.  The shed stages themselves never reach orbital speed, so they fall ballistically back to earth soon after being discarded.   Only a small upper orbital insertion stage go with the payload into orbit.  Once the payload is in orbit, the insertion stage, being small, burns up in the atmosphere when it renters.

The Chinese apparently decided to dispense with multi-stage design philosophy.     There is only one single big core stage.  It goes directly from ground all the way into orbit with the payload.   The only things it sheds are 4 strap on boosters that helps it clear lower atmopshere.   It can’t change its launch profile to fall ballistically back to earth, because if it does, there is nothing on top of it to push the payload into orbit.

So the drama is likely to be repeated as they send up the other major components of the space station.

So, they've gone from not giving a shit if a failed launch kills their own people, to not caring that the potential cost of reparations to other countries is cheaper than development costs to keep it from happening.

They're going to potentially give millions of people a great light show. That's reparations enough.