Market Context: Crucially, China’s commercial space sector operates independently from the U.S.-dominated global market. As China’s commercial launch industry emerged several years later, there’s no urgent risk of SpaceX monopolizing its domestic demand. This structural isolation eliminates any need for rushed development timelines.
Conclusion: The perceived "slowness" of China’s clean rocket transition reflects neither technical lag nor mismanagement, but rather the inherent complexity of aerospace system evolution and deliberate strategic pacing within a self-contained market ecosystem.
I am not so sure that this was all part of the plan. For example there is the target of 100 launches in 2024 that was missed by quite a wide margin. Even if we chuck that up to lack of launch pad availability only it still speaks to the fact that they clearly want/have set a goal to launch more and for whatever logistical/economic/technical reasons failed to. That doesn't seem like deliberate strategic pacing but there being an actual unplanned/unforeseen bottleneck. If that can happen in launch pad availability why not elsewhere?
New Development Roadmap: China’s updated approach for 3-4m VTVL rockets involves abandoning the YF-100 and developing new 65-100t engines tailored to 3.35m stages. Engine development cycles (5+ years) dictate that flight tests will likely emerge between late 2025 and 2030. With over 35 commercial rocket companies now active in China, progress appears assured.
Given the announced numbers of satellite constellations and their timelines this makes it seem like reusable rockets design/production is behind. Perhaps if we see test flights in 2025/2026 and significant scale deployment in 2026/2027 that would be fine but if we only start seeing significant deployment of reusable rockets in 2030 then the timelines for satellite constellations would be well behind. Thousand Sails is supposed to be at 15,000 satellites in 2030 (
), if reusable rockets are only coming online by 2030 that is obviously not possible. For that matter I don't really see how they're going to make it to their target of 648 satellites in orbit by this year. Again this doesn't seem like part of the plan, just them being behind on their timeline.
