2016, early design The CZ-9 was initially designed as a three-staged rocket, with a first-stage core diameter of 10 meters and using a cluster of four engines. Multiple variants of the rocket have been proposed, with
CZ-9 being the largest: this 'base variant' has four additional liquid-fuel boosters strapped onto the core stage (each individual booster would be up to 5 meters in diameter) and it is this variant that has the aforementioned
LEO payload capacity of 140 tons. In addition to the base variant, there is the
CZ-9A variant, which has only two additional boosters and an LEO payload capacity of 100 tons. Finally, there is the
CZ-9B, having only the bare 10-meter diameter core stage and an LEO payload capacity of 50 tons. The expected payload capacities of the Long March 9 place it in the class of the
super heavy-lift launch vehicle. The rocket's development program was formally approved by the Chinese government in 2021. The new design was seen as being more suitable for first-stage reuse, and was a response to
SpaceX's Starship, while the 2011 design for LM9 was seen as matching the NASA's
Space Launch System. In October 2022, Long Lehao once again disclosed the new design of the Long March 9. The diameter of the first and second stages of the new version changed back to 10.6 meters, the diameter of the third stage became the same as the first and second stages, the total length increased to 114 meters, and the first stage power was changed to twenty-four of 240 tons kerosene/LOX engine. The payload capacity is 100–160 tonnes to LEO, and 35–53 tonnes to TLI.
2023 During a presentation at the
Nanjing University of Science and Technology in March 2023, Another presentation on the same month shows a planned fully reusable, 2-stage version of the Long March 9 to be developed during the 2040s, in a configuration similar to the
SpaceX Starship. == See also ==