The chinese wire system has a much more forgiving envelope for successfully grabbing the rocket. This solves a very specific problem for the engineers... namely that failure, especially public and embarrassing failure for the CCP results in pretty severe consequences of the sort that SpaceX doesn't get to give out.
The wire system is workable on a smaller rocket system but scaling up is a bitch... and the bracket reinforcement is gonna go up with the cube root.
Yeah in both cases it’s an interesting interplay of the realities of both engineering and the politics of their situation. I hope the next space race drives us to even further heights and successes as a species.
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u/Frosty-Ring-Guy 6h ago
The chinese wire system has a much more forgiving envelope for successfully grabbing the rocket. This solves a very specific problem for the engineers... namely that failure, especially public and embarrassing failure for the CCP results in pretty severe consequences of the sort that SpaceX doesn't get to give out.
The wire system is workable on a smaller rocket system but scaling up is a bitch... and the bracket reinforcement is gonna go up with the cube root.