HAINAN

China’s newest launch site is Hainan, a large but poorly known island to the south­east of China with a maritime border with Vietnam. It rose briefly to prominence when an American EP-3 spy-plane was forced down there in early 2001 and its crew interned. A sounding rocket site was built on its west coast in the mid-1980s, where it was used for five Weaver Girl sounding rockets over 1988-91, missions resuming in 2011.

First reports that Hainan might be used as a new, large-scale space base came in 2000. Hainan offered a location closer to the equator than Xi Chang and better communications, especially for outsized components such as the upcoming large Long March 5 rocket. Hainan promised a 7.4% payload advantage on Xi Chang, sea-based delivery of rocket stages, and launches out over the ocean, conferring a considerable safety advantage. The precise location selected was east of Wenchang, a city of 520,000 (small by Chinese standards) on the north-east of the island, 65 km from Haikou. The precise location was Longlou on the Tonggu Jiao peninsula

Taiyuan Launch Center

Guhecun

Technical Center Satellite Testing Faciity

Shentangpingxiang

Taiyuan launch center map, showing its two pads. Courtesy: Mark Wade.

jutting out from the north-eastern shore of Hainan Island on a site 19.658/19.678°N and 111.013°E. To clear the site, though, it is estimated that up to 6,000 people were relocated.

Hainan is a two-part operation. The three existing launch sites – Jiuquan, Xi Chang, and Taiyuan – were dependent on the railway system, which limited the girth of rockets to be transported to 3.35 m. The new Long March 5 was more than 5 m in diameter, which could not be transported on the railways. Instead, they required an even older system of transportation: the sea-going barge. It was decided to build the new rockets on the Chinese mainland in Tianjin in northern China just south-east of Beijing – already part of the grand canal of China – and then transport them down the coast to the new launch site on Hainan, in much the same way as the Americans transported large rocket stages and tanks from the southern states around the coast to Cape Canaveral.

The official soil-turning ceremony in Hainan took place on 14th September 2009 and was given much publicity in the Chinese press. Set picturesquely amidst coconut groves, the launch site was a 20-km2 area only 3,000 m from the coast. The new site was strongly promoted and part-financed by the Hainan regional government, which hoped to attract in foreign investment (e. g. Japan), high-tech industries, and tourism. The initial cost of construction was estimated at ¥7.4bn (€500m). Later, it was promised to build a visitor center and entertain visitors with a model lunar landscape. A museum would house the Shenzhou 1, 2, and 3 cabins. The island is potentially a major tourist resort, boasting white sand beaches, mangrove forests, and Confucian temples.

Substantial progress had been made by 2012. Construction was well under way for two pads, one for the CZ-5, the other for the CZ-7, the rockets to be transported there on a 2,800-m trackway from a double vehicle assembly building. The site buzzed with cranes, trucks, and cement mixers. Work had also begun on two island tracking stations, one at Tongguling, 5 km to the east, and the second in the Xisha Islands (also called the Paracel Islands), far to the south-east.

Simultaneously, construction began of a rocket manufacturing plant in the new industrial area at Binhai, near Tianjin. Ground of a 313-ha site was broken here on 30th October 2009, construction costing an initial ¥1.5bn (€180m) with a final completion cost of ¥10bn. Binhai will make 12 CZ-5s a year, its centerpiece being a 220,000-m2 workshop. The first spacecraft processing facility was completed in 2009 and up to 21,000 people were working there by 2011 [5].

For the sake of completeness, one should mention military rocket bases. The principal base is in Harbin, Manchuria (location: 45.8°N, 126.7°E), home of China’s main silo-based Inter Contintental BalUstic Missile (ICBM) strike force, dating to 1981. The base built up to a complement of four Dong Feng 5 A missiles by 1992 and 20 by the turn of the century, their present level. To prevent accidental launches, warheads are kept separate from these rockets, which are not fuelled – a system called de-alerting. In addition, China’s strike force comprises 10-15 solid-fuelled road-mobile DF-31As of shorter range, with the future prospect of one or two Julang (“great wave”) nuclear submarines, each with 12 Polaris-type missiles. China has two minor missile bases: Xyanhua (40.36°N, 115.03°E) and Luoning (34.23°N, 111.39°E). So much for the launch sites. Next we turn to China’s families of launchers.