Car-Plane-Go
China has shown off a reusable shuttle that it intends to use to ferry cargo to and from its Tiangong space station.
As Space.com reports, the project — dubbed Haolong — recently won the state-owned Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute a government contract to develop a low-cost space station cargo spacecraft.
The country’s human spaceflight agency selected two proposals last month as part of its efforts to regularly resupply its three-year-old space station.
And because China is looking to greatly expand its space station in the coming years, the Haolong shuttle could provide the country’s space program with an important and financially feasible way to keep it in orbit.
Haolong Will It Take?
Not unlike NASA’s retired Space Shuttle, the winged spacecraft would launch atop of a rocket and land much like an airplane on a runway. It measures 32 feet long and 26 feet wide.
“With a blunt-nosed fuselage and large, swept-back delta wings, it combines the characteristics of both spacecraft and aircraft, allowing it to be launched into orbit by a carrier rocket and land on an airport runway like a plane,” Haolong chief designer Fang Yuangpen explained in a video by state-owned broadcaster CCTV.
According to Space.com, it weighs less than half of China’s Tianzhou cargo spacecraft, which it’s currently using to resupply its Tiangong space station.
Despite some renders, though, Haolong is still far from taking to the skies as the project’s design is still under view.
Meanwhile, US contractor Sierra Space is working on a similar spacecraft called the Dream Chaser. However, the project has seen years of delays and has yet to be launched, despite being publicly announced over two decades ago. In July, its maiden voyage was delayed from September of this year to sometime next year.
China is hoping to use the Haolong spacecraft to keep its orbital outpost supplied as it’s being expanded from three to six modules in the coming years.
Whether its cargo space plane will be able to leapfrog Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser and beat it into orbit, though, remains to be seen.
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