Yes but that will take a lot of time. You can't rush this. China doesn't even have any operational reusable rocket yet(not even a small/medium one) . So to talk about a super heavy fully reusable rocket is too far fetched as of now.. Gotta learn to crawl before walking. One thing at a time.
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- Thread starter tphuang
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China would still gain efficiencies with the reusable like $ savings and higher launch rates.
Yeah, even without Starship, Falcon 9 greatly outclasses anything China has for getting stuff into LEO. They launched 134 Falcon rockets last year while the Long March family launched 49. SpaceX has consistently increased their launched cadence every year and will do so again this year with the goal of hitting 180 launches.
I think the US also has superior launch infrastructure. Canaveral, Vandenberg and Kennedy are the three busiest launch facilities in the world. Vandenberg scaled from one launch in 2020 to 47 in 2024.
On the other hand, Chinese orbital launches have been stuck around 60 some odd launches per year for the last several years. I am not sure if they are struggling with building more infrastructure, rockets or both.
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I haven't followed the China Space thread all that closely on this Forum, but from what I can somewhat tell, there's a lot of testing, planning, and prototyping. IMO, the current state of the Chinese space program feels roughly like China's naval program in the early 2000s. On the precipice of exploding out of control in just a 3-5 years.