China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
That's sort of why it isn't a big deal, because a first launch successful landing wouldn't really mean much except for bragging rights.
The fact that they attempted a landing for the first maiden launch of this new rocket (like for ZQ-3) was impressive enough, and it shows that they had both the urgency and the will to attempt it.
The rest of the other commercial and state players will all be making re attempts and first attempts over the next half year or more, and it's the cumulative effect knowing most of them will end up being successful eventually, which is more important.
CZ-12A was a bit of a "bragging right" rocket, kinda, there's a reason CZ-12B is being worked on in parallel, or why SAST and CACL rushed to build a new launch pad just to have a launch in 2025 when the Wenchang site suffered delays to its adaptation, and SAST clearly defined the goals as Launch and Landing success, so yes it failed.
Definitely surprised it went worse than Landspace however, it seems it couldn't even restart the engines for the landing burn.
Anyway, CZ-12B, CZ-10B, Zhuque-3 Y2 and maybe CZ-12A Y2 & Nebula 1 should have a landing attempt in the first half of 2026.
Definitely surprised it went worse than Landspace however, it seems it couldn't even restart the engines for the landing burn.
Anyway, CZ-12B, CZ-10B, Zhuque-3 Y2 and maybe CZ-12A Y2 & Nebula 1 should have a landing attempt in the first half of 2026.
It has been reported that 1/3rd of the rocket engines on the first stage of CZ-12A have failed to relight during the re-entry burn.
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Two payloads are being tracked, so the other stages succeeded as expected.
There should be some level of collaboration between these companies doing reusable rockets. Multiple space companies are all trying to individually do the same thing and you can’t have each one fail repeating the same mistakes. It just seems to waste time and resources when they are repeating each other’s mistakes. Some level of knowledge sharing so they can learn off each other will be better for China. The longer the delay for an operational reusable rocket, the further China will fall behind Starlink.
There's that Beijing Yizhuang Reusable Rocket Technology Innovation Center Co., Ltd. cooperation on RLV tech between CALT, CAS Space, Landspace and Galactic Energy, but ultimately you can't avoid some competition (even within CASC), and not all companies have made the same technical choices.
Edit: "Long March 12A first flight test fundamentally/basically/rudimentary successful" official confirmation
Official picture:
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Oh yeah, and I can't edit it, but this was the 89th launch attempt of 2025.