About 10 years ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping said he dreamed of making China a 'space power'. Since then, China has sent a probe to Mars, built one of the two operational space stations orbiting the Earth, and now its private space industry aims to have a greater impact. For the first time in its history, Chinese companies have successfully recovered the first stage of a rocket, a vital step to reduce launch costs and open up a wide range of opportunities. At the same time, new private launch pads are set to be completed, new satellite factories will increase production, and a new government ministry will allocate more state resources to this industry. However, Chinese space companies still lag behind their foreign competitors. None of the 600 companies in this sector dominates the field, like American Elon Musk's SpaceX, despite the emergence of a group of entrepreneurs hoping to change that, most notably Zhang Changguo, a former banker, and Kang Yonglai, an engineer, who founded the launch companies Land Space and Space Pioneer, respectively. China conducted about 100 orbital launches last year, but its private companies were responsible for only 16 of them. In the same period, the United States conducted 180 launches, more than 160 of which were by SpaceX. American Dominance. The global space economy, which has grown from $300 billion to about $600 billion in the past decade and is expected to triple in size by 2035, remains under American control, even as China has made gains in a number of other advanced technology industries. However, China's commercial space sector shares advantages with other high-tech sectors: a large number of ambitious engineers and entrepreneurs, and a supportive government that sees it as a strategic necessity. Therefore, the question is likely when, not if, China will catch up. Cost Reduction. Despite the grand ambitions, almost all Chinese launches still rely on the Long March rocket series, manufactured by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. These company's rockets are reliable, but most of their capacity is used to meet the needs of China's civil and military space programs. As a government-run entity, this company avoids risks and thus has less incentive to reduce costs. On average, a client has to pay about $8,600 to transport a kilogram of cargo from a Chinese spaceport to low Earth orbit, which is easier to reach than higher orbits and is a good place for commercial satellites as it is closer to Earth, thus enabling faster data transmission. Meanwhile, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket can carry one kilogram to low Earth orbit for about a third of the Chinese price. The Falcon 9 is also large-sized, and a part of it can be recovered after use, refueled, and launched again. SpaceX gained experience in launching such rockets as early as 2017 and is currently testing a new, massive spacecraft called Starship, which can carry more satellites or larger satellites into orbit with each launch. Chinese companies have so far only produced single-use rockets, which are more expensive. Change. However, this situation is changing. In December, Land Space conducted a test launch of a reusable rocket. In both cases, the reusable part exploded before being recovered, but the second, non-reusable part successfully reached orbit. It is also expected that by 2026, Space Pioneer will test its reusable rocket, Tianlong 3, and other Chinese companies will likely test their reusable rockets as well. Jiang Lu, chief technology officer of the Beijing-based rocket company Artech, said, 'Rocket manufacturing is still very complicated.' From 'The Economist'.
