China has unveiled the design of a new reusable shuttle to take cargo to and from the country's space station.
The Haolong space shuttle is being developed by the Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute under the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC). It is one of two winning projects stemming from a call for proposals from China's human spaceflight agency, CMSA, to develop low-cost cargo spacecraft.
China currently uses its robotic Tianzhou spacecraft to send cargo to the Tiangong space station. But, taking a leaf out of NASA's book to encourage commercial resupply options for the International Space Station, CMSA wanted new, low-cost ideas that can also return experiments and other cargo to Earth, unlike the Tianzhou, which burns up on reentry.
Haolong will launch atop of a rocket and land horizontally on Earth on a runway. The space shuttle measures 32.8 feet (10 meters) long and 26.2 feet (8 m) wide, and weighs less than half of the Tianzhou capsule, which has a mass of up to 31,000 pounds (14,000 kilograms). The winged spacecraft is now in the engineering flight verification phase, meaning its design and systems are under review before being built.
(Update: the video seems not to work for me, but I found the right video on youtube showing how a flight would work.)
Hopefully it works better than the US Space Shuttles and Buran. I'm sure being not being crewed would help.
The Buran's fatal flaw had a very large birthmark, this doesn't seem to have that weakness
the Buran was awsome ... and I am so glad the birthmark no longer exists
Buran was probably the best and safest way to built a side-mounted reusable spaceplane. Still not a great idea overall, but Buran's engineers made the least-stupid vehicle possible with that layout. Aside from the basic exterior shape of the shuttle which was always going to be similar due to aerodynamics, Buran was completely different from the space shuttle internally. It was not a "copy" as some jingoistic American space historians like to call it.
There were plans to develop Energia into a fully reusable vehicle, but then 1991 happened and R&D funding for that dried up. Energia was a really flexible rocket too. Because the main engines were on the fuel tank section and not the shuttle section, Energia was a proper independent rocket and could operate without Buran to lift heavy payloads solo. A lot of R&D work went into making a very smart autonomous guidance system for Energia so that it could basically lift anything that would fit on top or on the side without having to do a lot of wind tunnel testing and one-off guidance computer programming.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
it's design is very similar to that of the currently operating X-37, so it should be fine. it has neither of the US Space Shuttle's fatal flaws.
It's on top of the stack in a fairing, not strapped to the side where shit can fall on it.