As Menem imagined: China is planning stratospheric flights to different parts of the world

China plans by 2045 to be able to offer point-to-point travel on Earth, going into space, and thus reduce the duration of traditional trips known to date. These are suborbital flights, and they offer to connect – for example – the cities of Shanghai and New York in four hours, a journey that on a commercial flight takes 15 hours.

The initiative recalls the proposal of the former president Carlos menem, which in 1996 proposed “space flights that would return to the stratosphere” and that in an hour and a half, he said, we could be in Japan.

“A space flight system will be put out to tender, through which from a platform that could be installed in the province of Cordoba. These spaceships, with all the guarantees they have and should have, are going to leave the atmosphere, they are going to return to the stratosphere, and from there choose where they want to go. So that in an hour and a half we can be from Argentina to Japan, Korea or anywhere in the world, ”he said at the time.

China announced plans for this type of flight years ago, and although it is in the research and development stage, it aims to make it a reality by 2035 to be able to carry cargo. Passenger transport, meanwhile, has been set as a target for 2045.

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At a Space Day event in Nanjing, China, employees of CATL – China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology – video presented the main points of the initiative, which is based on two concepts.

In the first case, it is a spaceship with a rocket very similar to that of SpaceX, from Elon musk, and what it offers with Starship. In addition to having a similar shape and appearance, it has two stages: the first detaches from the second when it reaches a certain altitude, and returns to the ground for reuse.

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In the second case, meanwhile, the project involves a spacecraft closer to those of Virgin Galactic. While it’s unclear how they would put it into orbit, the idea is to launch it with an electromagnetic catapult, which would allow the spacecraft to accelerate on rails before leaving Earth’s surface.

After reaching a certain height, it would trigger its thrusters to climb into Earth orbit. The landing would be horizontal, like a traditional airplane.

ag / ds