China's Space Program Thread II

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Despite having a good percentage of global orbital attempts, China remains massively behind the US with actual up mass.

IMO, orbital attempts doesn't really mean much while the more important metric would be actual up mass. China right now has a huge amount of small/medium lift rockets while the US is launching consistently reusable heavy lift rockets at a higher cadence.

I'm unsure to whether China will be capable of catching up by even the 2030s as US is still rapidly scaling larger reusable vehicles like NG and Starship while China still lacks a single mass usable reusable heavy lift rocket in 2026.

The things is there are nothing actual holding China back they are just slow with reusable rockets for some reason. I don't think China will catch up either to usa by 2030 usa is launching reusable rockets way faster while China is launching reusables 1 to 3 per year for something important as reusable rockets there seem to be no urgency to get up more and to get more spacesail satellite to compete with and rival starlink/starshield

 

[NoetherSpudCharge]

View attachment 173829
Despite having a good percentage of global orbital attempts, China remains massively behind the US with actual up mass.

IMO, orbital attempts doesn't really mean much while the more important metric would be actual up mass. China right now has a huge amount of small/medium lift rockets while the US is launching consistently reusable heavy lift rockets at a higher cadence.

I'm unsure to whether China will be capable of catching up by even the 2030s as US is still rapidly scaling larger reusable vehicles like NG and Starship while China still lacks a single mass usable reusable heavy lift rocket in 2026.

I don't think you need to be overly worried at this point/ about this. After all, according to your graph, China's tonnage to orbit last year (between 200 and 250 tonnes) is in the same range as the US tonnage for 2018/2019 (just before the Falcon 9's rapid increase in cadence over the last few years). Also, I suspect that the large spikes (due to STS 51-L and 107 failures) in the US tonnage figures between 1981 and 2011 likely includes the masses of the Shuttle orbiters (about 78 tonnes dry for each mission).

If the CZ-10B/C, CZ-12A/B, ZQ-3E (+ other commerical players) succeed in recovery, reuse, and flight rate increase over the next 3 to 4 years, you should also see a rapid geometric ramp-up in Chinese payload tonnage after 2030 (it took SpaceX about 5 years to start really hitting the gas pedal on F9 after initial recovery success). And when both the partially and fully reusable CZ-9's come on line between 2030 and 2035, China should be competitive with US regardless of what Starship does (assuming that the tonnage claims for Starship bear up in reality). The key here for all the players is get those initial successful first stage recoveries.

(Think the Soviets' Soyuz and Proton were quite impressive in consistenly putting up a fairly high payload number year after year, though their failure rates left something to be desired.)

 

[meedicx]

The things is there are nothing actual holding China back they are just slow with reusable rockets for some reason. I don't think China will catch up either to usa by 2030 usa is launching reusable rockets way faster while China is launching reusables 1 to 3 per year for something important as reusable rockets there seem to be no urgency to get up more and to get more spacesail satellite to compete with and rival starlink/starshield

You should visit Wenchang to get the scale of how fast Chinese commercial space launch is scaling up. There was a good post earlier with pictures:

China's Space Program Thread II

Also his suggestion of scheme changing "Y~ to X~" is likely another mistake. Letter Y is used because it is the first letter in Pinyin of 遥, not because Y has any meaning in Chinese language. The launch would be disignated as 长征十号乙遥一. X is not initial letter of any Chinese words that may be...

www.sinodefenceforum.com

With 2 launch pads, HICAL first launch was 2024 Nov and then made 9 in 2025 and is aiming for 30 this year. There are two more launch pads being built that should be operational by end of year.


There is also a massive complex of satellite gigafactories being built right beside the launch center. You can see a forest of cranes right now building this. Once complete, there will be a complete supply chain of satellite manufacturing, testing and launch all in Wenchang.

 

[NoetherSpudCharge]

You should visit Wenchang to get the scale of how fast Chinese commercial space launch is scaling up. There was a good post earlier with pictures:

Totally agree. The reality of the ramp up is really quite impressive and bodes well for the future.

If you're an average Joe (or Jane) living in the "West", and unless you're in the business of observing Chinese Space developments, you'd likely have little exposure to news about the subject; and when you do hear some reporting on Chinese Space, it'd usually have an undertone of surprise (with a hint of 'we've done it already!') or it would be outright fear-mongering (what US Congress folks normally do). So it's easy for many here to have rather low opinions of China's capacity to compete with the US in this sector (this is not the case for reputable reporters and some enthusiasts). You can't really blame most folks (especially the older ones) since they've been subjected to decades of subtle (and not so subtle) indoctrination and cultural bias to fear and devalue all things Chinese and to overestimate the worth of their own nations. It's the same kind of thing as what happens in the defense sector where you'll still see videos which claim that new WS-10 series engines are only bad copies of Russian engines with comically short lifetimes or that US and European fighters have sensor suites that are far superior to anything that China has to offer despite all evidence to the contrary. This state of affairs probably will only change with the passage of time.

Regarding comparisons of China with SpaceX, I think it's a useful yardstick to judge China's progress; what we shouln't do is to place blind faith in the invincibility of Musk's company like what some "tech-bros" are wont to do. To use a baseball analogy, it's only the third inning in the first game of a double-header; who comes out ahead (if there's such a thing) at the end is far from certain even if you're playing against the defending world champion.

 

[Dude_CCK]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2046911743679742286

congrats!

I'm wondering when are they going to select astronauts with Taiwan origin?

 

[dingyibvs]

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Despite having a good percentage of global orbital attempts, China remains massively behind the US with actual up mass.

IMO, orbital attempts doesn't really mean much alone while the more important and direct metric would be actual up mass. China right now has a huge amount of small/medium lift rockets while the US is launching consistently reusable heavy lift rockets at a higher cadence.

I'm unsure to whether China will be capable of catching up by even the 2030s as US is still rapidly scaling larger reusable vehicles like NG and Starship while China still lacks a single mass usable reusable heavy lift rocket in 2026. Ideally they'll scale up as soon as 2027 with reasonably high launch cadence of reusable LVs with competitive payload.

Hard to tell until China actually starts ramping. Right now it's like watching a race where the first car has a handicap and has started the race while the other car is still waiting for his green light. We really don't know if the speed of the first car is impressive or not until the second car starts moving.

 

[taxiya]

Yes that's obvious given the construction work ongoing at Wenchang and its development is listed as a national 5YP goal. It's a bit of a "boy who cried wolf" situation, since CASC and CNSA have been talking about the CZ-9 for 15 years now, it feels a bit unreal that its full development is actually going ahead now.

However formal approval is probably a couple years away: remember that CZ-10 was only "formally approved" in 2023, for example, even though there's been hardware developped for it since at least 2018.

This way of working is not limited to aerospace IMO but also military program. There is not always a clear-cut date/event/symbolic act that is "formal approval". Or such "approval" can be different types of critical milestones.

What happens is that, the top decided to have a rocket of this size and capability. CASC started doing everything to that goal, they just keep going until either it is cancelled because it is not needed, or job is done. Top leader is constantly being updated of the progress and giving feedback. There is no real need for saying "now we start" because that "go ahead" has been given long ago. There is a term "立项" which sounds like "establish program" but IMO it is not really about approval of the program to go ahead but rather approval of the detailed design which is just one of many milestones that will be passed sooner or later. So IMO the true "approval" is when pre-study of such large rocket was ordered by CPC leadership more than 10 years ago.

It is not like how US works where there is yearly budget approval, milestones that the congress must see and say "go ahead" or "stop". In this way of working, everyone need a "formal approval" for essentially every milestone and every year.

In short, CZ-9 program as a whole (about 150t LEO and 50t LLO and missions) has been approved long ago. What we are looking to is the approval of a specific/technical design of CZ-9 presumably single stick with specific engine confurations, dimensions etc.

 

[TheRathalos]

Yes that's obvious given the construction work ongoing at Wenchang and its development is listed as a national 5YP goal. It's a bit of a "boy who cried wolf" situation, since CASC and CNSA have been talking about the CZ-9 for 15 years now, it feels a bit unreal that its full development is actually going ahead now.

Following a month of competition, AVIC CAPDI was awarded a 1.59B RMB contract by CALT on April 17th for the construction of the Wenchang Rocket Base Project (Phase I), the scale and timing of the project, including 380x182m integrated production plant, >100m "individual stage asssembly building", and a completion expected before April/May 2028 (similar construction were previous announced to be completed by March 2028) all point toward it being for CZ-9

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On the afternoon of April 22, Liu Bing, Deputy Secretary of the Municipal Party Committee and Mayor (of Jiaozuo), led a delegation to the Tianbing Technology Rocket Engine Intelligent Manufacturing Base for on-site inspection. He held discussions with Chairman Kang Yonglai on accelerating the implementation and construction of the Tianbing Technology full-flow rocket engine project.

Space Pioneer is still working on their FFSC engine

Yu Guobin, Deputy Director of the Commercial Space Department of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), delivered a presentation entitled "Accelerating the High-Quality and Safe Development of Commercial Space" on behalf of the CNSA, there was an interesting remark

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"Commercial space entities participating in major national missions.

We will strongly support commercial space entities in participating in major national missions.

In terms of space intelligent computing power, a major special project for a space intelligent computing constellation is currently under feasibility study, aiming to guide and support commercial space enterprises in advancing new space infrastructure.""

Could it be a hint at a Guowang/Xingwang-style constellation that would coordinate private and public orbital datacenters efforts? There's a lot of interest right now in china.. (

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)

 

[Taiban]

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Chinese Space support to Iran
Latest status of Guowang, Qianfan & Jilin Constellations

 

[Michael90]

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https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2046919885029048621

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I wonder if they could extend the rotation stay to up to 2 weeks, since that was already unintentionally proven during the SZ-20/21 rotation...

Zhuque-3 Y2 is on its way to Jiuquan, it will reportedly arrive in a few days.
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Does Pakistan have a space industry/national space company? Never knew that.