Recently, the Zhuque-3 carrier rocket developed by Blue Arrow Aerospace made its first flight in the Dongfeng Commercial Aerospace Innovation Test Zone. The second stage of the rocket successfully entered the predetermined orbit. Although the first stage recovery test failed, it laid an important foundation for subsequent technical optimization.
Zhang Yujiao, Secretary of the Board of Directors of Blue Arrow Aerospace,Its core goal is to reduce the launch cost per kilogram to less than 20,000 yuan, to promote commercial aerospace cost innovation.
As a reusable liquid oxygen methane launch vehicle, Zhuque-3 uses a stainless steel rocket body and self-developed Tianque series engines. Nine Tianque 12A engines are connected in parallel in the first stage and one Tianque 15A vacuum engine in the second stage.
The total arrow length is 66.1 meters, the take-off mass is about 560 tons, and the low-orbit carrying capacity for one-time missions reaches 21.3 tons.A sub-level design must be reused no less than 20 times.
Zhang Yujiao introduced that the reuse cost of Zhuque-3 is characterized by “high investment in the early stage and diminishing margins in the later stage”.
Reused 5 times, the single cost is about 45% lower than the first flight; reused 20 times, the cost is basically marginal cost, mainly including second-level manufacturing costs, first-level maintenance fees, etc.
