Real Engineering has a surface level understanding
A popular eningeering channel has released a poorly informed video regarding China's space program.
A popular YouTube channel with 4.53 million subscribers going by Real Engineering has released a poorly informed video regarding China’s space efforts under the title “The Problem with China’s Space Program”.
This video already opens with an awful fearmongering-clickbait thumbnail with what appears to be a computer-generated Long March 8 first-stage falling from the sky. Given recent events this appears to be representative of the Tianlong-3 static fire accident, as Long March boosters fall engines first at an angle under ~18 degrees from vertical. Real Engineering is likely wanting to invoke recent memories of said accident for clicks.
Now for the video itself (embedded below if you haven’t seen it prior).
There are already problems with the opening of the video. First is using a video so wildly upscaled as backing footage to commentary about first-stage booster incidents that it takes a keen eye to realize it belongs to the private company Space Pioneer and not the state space program. Secondly, China hasn’t been building up its space efforts quietly, it has shared progress repeatedly online and via English-language China-based publications. Third, the space program is not riddled with “dubious engineering decisions” as is implied, this opinion has been increasingly coalescing online since the Tianlong-3 static fire accident as a way to disregard the country’s achievements.
Going into the section about launch sites, a highly uninformed error is made about said launch sites. China’s vast coastline is not suitable for building launch sites due to a mixture of both population density and how close other landmasses are.
The coast and eastern China is incredibly densely populated. Parts of the coast that aren’t would require overflying Korea or heading south directly over the Philippines. Hainan had its own set of challenges that took years to be solved before ground could be broken on the first launch site.
The in-land launch sites are still used due to the preexisting investment made by launch vehicle manufacturers and the need to launch satellites to assist China’s development. There is also still the very real threat of a U.S. first strike against the country, as China is set to surpass the country economically, threatening American global hegemony.
After briefly touching on the problems with launching from sites like Xichang, there is a hard pivot to the Intelsat-708 accident. Real Engineering states that the Long March 3B carrier rocket crashed into a nearby village, this could not be more wrong. The vehicle crashed into a mountainside 1.85 kilometers away next to already evacuated employee facilities. Mayelin village lies a little over a kilometer away on the other side of the mountain that the Long March 3B crashed into, with farmland and the already mentioned employee facilities in the most immediate area effected by a shockwave sent out by the vehicle. Six casualties is the two-week post-accident figure with 57 wounded, it is likely not much higher than stated given population growth in the almost three decades since.
Following this, there is a good explanation about rocket fuels along with what happens if it comes into contact with water. What isn’t mentioned is that the hypergolic-fuelled Long March vehicles do not have a pad deluge system that activates during launch, it activates a few minutes after to clean up the launch pad. Personel and people are also nowhere near the vehicles at launch and aren’t allowed back for a while.
Following this Real Engineering states that China is deliberately “crop dusting” its people with said propellants along with saying there are alternatives. China’s state space program has acknowledged, through policy, that hypergolic fuels are a problem and is actively moving toward using cryogenic propellants in their vehicles, along with launching more from Wenchang. Neither of these efforts can be done quickly as Wenchang’s launch sites aren’t large enough for frequent launches and newer vehicles need to prove out reliability along with their capabilities. If this is pushed through too fast more incidents like the Long March 6A’s upper-stage will occur, having then moved the problem somewhere else that is much more geopolitically problematic.
Real Engineering then misattributes what is put out by the launch vehicle manufacturer and launch sites, and relayed by local governments, to the “CCP”, along with cherry-picking out a sentence (which I’ve highlighted in bold). The full text reads:
Longguang Township Rocket Launch Area Evacuation Notice
To the general public:
According to notification from superiors, the Xichang Satellite Launch Center will conduct a launch operation at around 9 a.m. on November 23, 2019. Longguang Township, Longguang Bacun, Baqiu Village, Longlong Village, Longtuo Village, Nalian Village, Heji Village, Dawang Village, Nayin Village, Guojiao Village, Dongnei Village, Dugong Village, Tonghuai Village. The other fourteen villages are located in the area where satellite debris fell. At that time, please cut off the power 20 minutes in advance and go to a safe area to take refuge. If you see an object falling from the sky, please quickly adjust your position to avoid being harmed. If you find any debris, please do not approach or pick it up, as it may contain chemicals harmful to human health. If you find fire debris, please contact the village committee immediately and be sure to tell each other.
Contact number for rocket remnants: 0776-XXXX
Longguang Township People's Government
November 19, 2019
It is acknowledged that current launch regulations are quite limited as China is the largest developing country with many lackluster regulations from the Deng and Jiang eras. These regulations require local governments to acknowledge that they have received notice of the launch and then evacuate people directly in harm’s way. If the local government fails to do this it then moves into the legal system and the officials responsible for failing to do so are removed.
Incidents related to discarded first-stages are also decreasing each year. So far China has launched 46 times and had only one first-stage incident. This is thanks to improved tracking and prediction methods along with more timely evacuations. Law also dictates that people must be properly compensated should there be harm to persons or property.
Moving into the section about the Wenchang Space Launch Site, the video gets a lot right initially. Details displayed about the Long March 5 are laughably wrong. The second-stage has been misplaced to be with the first-stage’s liquid oxygen tank up to the actual second-stage’s liquid hydrogen tank. An interstage has been falsely placed at the intertank and booster connection point on the first-stage. Real Engineering then gets the first-stage right when talking about the Long March 5B.
Breakdowns of these vehicles is then followed by a spiel about the problems caused with placing the Long March 5B’s first-stage into orbit. Real Engineering speaks as if the Long March 5B is flown regularly with plans to increase flight cadence. No such plans exist with the vehicle only having flown four times, once to test the configuration and three times to build the Tiangong Space Station. Teams behind the vehicle are aware of problems the vehicle may cause and as such do not fly the vehicle regularly. China’s space agency’s tracks the first-stage of the Long March 5B constantly every time the vehicle is flown and provides timely updates on the stages’ whereabouts. The most likely parts of the vehicle to survive re-entry are small parts of the YF-77 engines, as they are the only parts designed to survive immense heat and pressures.
After this segment, the video then decides to talk about China’s BeiDou navigation satellite network. It is claimed that the two-way positioning system used on BeiDou allows for the “totalitarian” government to track users, and that the U.S. GPS system is better for not doing this. The U.S. system is of a less capable design and is operated by the military for civilian and military means. It is not out of the question that this capability exists on GPS but is not stated publically. BeiDou is also used across billions of devices, such as self-propelled transporters, mobile phones, ships, autonomous cars, and more. Tracking an individual using BeiDou would be a mammoth undertaking due to this.
The final part I want to address is the lack of news about China’s space efforts in the Western world. We receive a wealth of news about said efforts from many outlets and companies, it’s just not picked up as good news about a Western rival doesn't sell and hurts American foreign policy aims.
Throughout the video much of the backing footage about hypergolic-fuelled vehicles was showing off the new-generation cryogenic-fuelled vehicles. Anyone who doesn’t know better may now believe these new vehicles are also part of the problem. Also continuously throughout the video was simply referring to all efforts as “China’s space program” implying that the Central Government is somehow deeply involved in the day-to-day activities. The Communist Party does have many party cells within commercial and state-owned companies but these are to ensure workers’ rights are maintained and to properly carry out legal cases against any company’s legal wrongdoing.
But why am I even talking about this video? I’m aware it isn’t what China Space Updates usually covers but the amount of just wrong information stated was infuriating. This video could have been good and attempted to be by talking positively for a few minutes after spending most of the run time being wrong, as such the almost one hundred thousand people who saw it at the time of writing now have a worse understanding and perception. Real Engineering’s video needed to have its script reviewed by someone who has a more thorough understanding before going ahead with the rest of production due to the sheer number of people the video is served to. Recent policies passed in the U.S. also bring into question if the video was made nefariously, but we’ll likely never know for a few decades.
TLDR: Real Engineering’s video covers a vast amount of information on China’s space sector but goes as in-depth as a puddle in the Sahara, giving way for misinformation to rise.
If you would like to read a more political deconstruction of Real Engineering’s video, I recommend the article attached beneath.