Last month, LandSpace – China’s commercial SpaceX rival – launched a Zhuque-3 rocket and landed its booster stage safely back on Earth. The mission was a first for China, but the country has yet to actually use a booster more than once – something that SpaceX has routinely done hundreds of times. Can China catch up in the reusable rocket race?
China’s 15th Five-Year Plan sets out the country’s ambitions to become a “space power” by 2030, including developing reusable rockets that will be crucial to its goals to put Chinese astronauts on the moon and build a Starlink alternative. Zeno Leoni at King’s College London says space is of growing importance for militaries and economies, and a stormy geopolitical climate means that nations need their own ability to cheaply and quickly put things into orbit or risk being shut out by others. SpaceX’s Starship will orbit Earth for first time during next flight “If you look at previous speeches from [Chinese President] Xi Jinping, there is the idea that if you are the leading technological power, then you also are the leading geopolitical superpower,” says Leoni.
The country has an ambitious list of areas it wants to master by the centenary of its founding in 2049 including AI, quantum, fusion and space, and while Leoni says it will overtake the US in some of these, it can’t hope to master them all. Kevin Sagis at the University of Texas at Austin says the benefits of reusable rockets are simple: they’re cheap. The SLS is about $5 billion.
It’s just not sustainable,” he says. Sagis sees strong parallels between the unfolding reusable rocket space race, and the cold war space race between the Soviet Union and the US. China has many of the same advantages now that the Soviet Union had then: a one-party government that can coral huge resources and single-mindedly chase a target unswayed by election cycles and changing leaders, a strong motivation for success and loose regulation.
SpaceX is often said to be taking a new, extremely capitalist approach – testing fast, failing often and rapidly reiterating – that’s more like Silicon Valley than traditional aerospace. But Sagis says that while this is an advantage, it’s also a return to the bold Apollo days at NASA. And he believes that it’s an approach that is paying off for SpaceX.
Their talent and their expertise is exceptional. If you look at their track record, every mission is better than the previous one. I’d be shocked if we don’t look back at this and assess it as a success,” says Sagis.
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