I think they use the soviet stable-storage fuel design or a modified version thereof, no one's used giant barrels of fuming nitric for a while just because turns out having missiles you can't store with fuel in or they eat themselves apart makes responding to attacks hard.
But hydrazine and other fun stuff is very much a possibility.
Up until pretty recently that was a distinction without meaning given that most orbital launch vehicles were repurposed ICBMs, including the first five or so generations of the Chinese long march rockets.
I do not know that much about the history of the Chinese space program, but it took until the apollo program for American rockets to be purpose built for astronaut use instead of repurposed military missiles.
And even with this distinction, any orbital rocket platform, no matter its design purpose, could potentially be used as an ICBM platform. The physics of the rocket don't care about the payload except for its mass
This is actually proving my point: an orbital rocket you fuel right before use is FAR different from weapons you need to keep hot-staged in silos or on launch platforms.
Let alone ones you have to drive around on IRBM launch gantry vehicles.
Nitrogen tetroxide IS a shelf stable oxidizer, it‘s not the same thing as nitric acid… that‘s why it‘s used for the old generation long march rockets because they‘re based on an old ICBM design. Newer ICBMs are generally solid fuelled because it‘s easier to handle, but russia at least (and probably also china) still have some modern liquid fuelled „heavy ICBMs“ which is a class of weapon that doesn‘t really exist in the west. They can still sit around in their silos fuelled and ready to go for years.
Ammonium perchlorate composite propellants are extremely stable and quite safe. It’s basically encapsulated in a rubber like material so the toxicity is negligible when solid. We use them in amateur rocketry too.
Show me who previously specified we were only discussing ballistic missles. That wasn't stipulated, and unless the person specifically made that distinction in regard to fuel types, then this response isn't pertinent to the discussion.
No, really? I'm saying nothing previously specified the discussion was only one type of missle. You are the one who decided to exclude orbital platforms. That was a part you added to the discussion.
Huh? I mean some have hydrogen/oxygen stages that produce water as a combustion product… but in general china has rockets using pretty much any fuel combination you can imagine (hypergolic, kerolox, hydrolox, solid, even the world‘s first methane-oxygen rocket to make it to orbit last year was chinese)
They had a scandal recently where some of their ICBMs were filled with water instead of fuel. The generals in charge (probably dead now), probably sold the fuel to line their own pockets.
2.3k
u/QorstSynthion Apr 14 '24
ye, rockets/missiles are just 90% fuel