Anyone feel like most of the private rocket companies are half-assing reusability? Deep blue aerospace is the only one that is developing their first rocket to be reusable. Everyone else is just developing an expandable rocket, trying to capture as much of the market as possible and going "we will eventually develop a reusable version... later" that you know will be pushed back and delayed, that's lots of manpower and money going towards what's basically an obsolete rocket before it even launches. Unless I'm wrong, only deep blue aerospace has conducted a landing test with an actual rocket engine at this point.
Yes, you could say that developing a small lift rocket as their first rocket to gain experience and gain some small income is smart, but most are taking it too far. And if that's the case, why not have their first rocket be a liquid fuelled rocket instead of a solid fuelled one, and why are they still launching so many solid fuelled expendable rockets? I don't think the experience of building/maintaining or launching a solid fuelled rocket is gonna to be the same as a liquid fuelled rocket. Or why set up a manufacturing line for them instead of using your money and time to rush towards an actual F9-tier workhorse rocket.
Just look at Landspace, they failed their first launch of a solid rocket, gave up. And started work on the Zhuque-2, but for whatever reason the Zhuque-2 isn't even designed for reusability in mind, they will have to basically redesign the rocket from the ground up to get it reusable, which is probably why it's going to take them until the end of 2025 to even get a test flight going.
Galactic energy will be launching the Ceres-1 more than a dozen times before they will launch the Pallas-1 in the 2nd half of 2024, and the first few launches aren't even going to be reusable. Ispace wasted so much time, effort and money on 3 failed launches of the Hyperbola-1 instead of just focusing on developing the Hyperbola-2, to the point where the 3 failed launches are probably gonna sink the company. Orienspace is also planning on a solid fuelled first rocket before suddenly pivoting to an all liquid fuelled lineup.
It's crazy how Galactic energy and Ispace haven't even launched a single liquid fuelled rocket yet, and they're supposed to be trying to achieve reusability in the next 2-4 years. And they are supposed to be the best funded and leading private rocket companies in China. And even then, their initial reusable rockets are gonna to be tiny, the Pallas-1 putting up 5 tons to LEO while the Hyperbola-2 is putting up a measly 2 tons to LEO. Yeah of course their first attempts at liquid fuelled rockets are gonna to be small especially when those two companies have been developing solid fuelled rockets for the last 4 years. This are the rockets that are supposed to be competing with the Falcon 9 and Starship...
Space pioneer seems to have the smartest development plan so far, developing a medium lift liquid fuelled rocket for their first launch, instead of a tiny little solid rocket and they're immediately dumping development of the Tianlong-2 in favour of a much more powerful Tianlong-3 which they hope to rapidly make reusable. They aren't trying to sell half a dozen flights of the Tianlong-2, which shows in their development speed. If they do launch the Tianlong-3 next year, that's only a year long gap between the two models, which is wayyyyy faster than any other Chinese private rocket companies.
