Bradley Perrett covered China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. He is a Mandarin-speaking Australian.
Before joining Aviation Week in 2006 he was a macroeconomics, politics and aerospace journalist with Reuters. Perrett holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Macquarie University, Sydney. He left Aviation Week in 2020.
BEIJING — The China National Space Administration says it will produce a space launcher called Long March 6 by 2013, around the time that it had been expected to deliver the Long March 5. The timing suggests that the new rocket will be a relative of the Long March 5. In unconfirmed reports, the name Long March 6 has been associated with a lightweight launcher based on the side-mounted booster for the planned Long March 5.
Comac has begun building the first C919, aiming to complete the main structure of the aircraft nose by the end of this year. Revealing a model of the A320-sized narrowbody airliner for the first time, the Chinese manufacturer says the standard version of the aircraft will seat 156 in a mixed business/economy configuration and will fly 4,075 km. (2,530 mi.). An extended range version will reach 5,555 km.
Michael A. Taverna (Paris), Neelam Mathews (New Delhi), Frank Morring, Jr. (Washington), Bradley Perrett (Beijing)
Three late-August failures serve as a reminder that more hurdles—technological and otherwise—remain to be cleared before Asia’s rising space powers can parlay their outsized political ambitions into global leadership in the space arena.
