By Dr (Prof) Nishakant Ojha
The story of China’s launch industry as it pursues what almost all launch companies are striving for at the moment – launching, landing and reusing Rockets. Rocket reusability is not a new concept. One of the emblematic examples of this was the American space shuttle retired in 2011 with the shuttle landing horizontally and the solid rocket booster is being refurbished. But it’s fair to say that the real surge in the popularity of Rocket reusability is linked to the success of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 coupled with a growing market for large satellite constellations.
This reusability fever picked up very quickly in China around 2014-2015 coinciding with SpaceX’s historic achievement of the first vertical Landing of the Falcon 9. At the time, China had started opening its space sector to commercial companies with new policies, with regulations and white papers supporting private and basically what we could call non-state-owned Enterprise entrepreneurial initiatives. The consequences would materialize very quickly and in the case of launch with over a dozen Chinese commercial launch companies founded between 2015 and today- all striving for a piece of the commercial launch market. The pattern for a new commercial launch company would very often be the same.
A group of senior Engineers from Chinese state-owned Enterprises or the Chinese Academy of Sciences would lead their jobs to establish their own rocket company. And then they would soon announce a family of rockets assemble a team, aided by seed money raised from local venture capitalist funds and often supported by Municipal and Provincial Governments, eager to attract high-tech talent to their territory and Implement National Policies pushing for commercial space.
Now, as we move into the late 2018– 2019, what seemed to be a blurry landscape of undistinguishable companies, became increasingly clear. Many of the early startups had begun with designing LightLift solid-fuelled Rockets. First of all, to start out small with a simpler design and because solid fuelled engines could be purchased off the shelf from state-owned providers.
The Chinese company i-Space founded in 2016, succeeded the first Chinese orbital launch of a commercial rocket in July 2019, with its Hyperbola – 1 rocket capable of putting 300 kilograms into sun synchronous orbit. This was soon followed by another company Galactic Energy founded in 2018, which performed the maiden launch of the Series 1rocket in November 2020. Other companies on the other hand weren’t as lucky. Both Land Space and OneSpace for example failed the launch of the Zhuque-1 and the OS-M rockets respectively, following which Land Space halted solid field developments and OneSpace seems to have pivoted away from launch Services altogether.
And this brings us to a new trend in the early 2020s.they started to have on one side launch companies that believed in the market for small solid-fuelled rockets. This included i-Space and Galactic Energy naturally. But there were also some newcomers like Caspace and Orien Space which believed in heavier versions of solid fuelled rockets. In general, all these companies envisioned these Rockets as complementary to larger reusable liquid-fuelled Launch Vehicles.
Then they had the other faction composed of companies like Land Space, Deep BlueAerospace and Space Pioneer which decided to focus exclusively on liquid-fuelled rockets. This is in part due to the difficulties to source solid-fuelled engines from state-owned enterprises but also due to the increasingly crowded and more limited market for solid-fuelled Launch Vehicles. Now, the core part of any rocket is it rocket engines and this is where Chinese commercial launch startups started taking very different paths.
The companies founded earlier say before2018 generally decided to develop their own engines. At the time there wasn’t much of a choice anyway. And over the past five years we’ve seen repeated hotfire test runs of the Jaudian engines from i-Space the Tiantria from Land space, Hong Chung from Galactic Energy, The Town was from Space Pioneer. They get the idea. Some were fuelled by liquid methane and liquid oxygen While others were fuelled by kerosene and liquid oxygen, but regardless these engines were generally all developed with reusability in mind with features like multiple ignitions high thralling capabilities thrust vectoring and more generally the ability to be refurbished and reused on multiple Rockets. So that’s the first group.
Then they had this other group of Rocket companies generally those found at a later stage, which decided to take a shortcut and buy engines off the shelf. By the time these companies were founded around 2020 and 2021 China’s commercial launch industry had grown in maturity and there were startups focusing exclusively on building engines and providing them to rocket manufacturers.
These were for example Jojo and Jen based in the city of Beijing, providing engines to companies like Rocket Pie andSpace Epoch and more recently China’s State-owned company AALPT has announced and developed three engines the kerolox fuelled YF-402 and YF-102v and themethlox fuelled YF-209 which are dedicated specifically to the commercial launch market.
Now, as we can imagine as funding these commercial launch companies ramped up the development of their liquid fuel Launch Vehicles, this required massive rounds of funding, way beyond the initial seed money that these rocket companies were receiving. We’re talking hundreds of millions of Chinese yuan per round.
This money mainly came from two sources- on the one hand, they had high profile VCfirms like Sequoia capital China MatrixPartners China or Schwinn Way Capitaland sometimes some more specialized Aerospace VCS like essential capital. And then on the other hand, they had local governments play an important role with for example Longcho cities Non-cha District or Sujo’sJunkyard Gong which are big investors in respectively Caspace and Space Pioneer. In general, all companies benefited from a mix of both sources of money with some like LandSpace leaning strongly towards the VC side while others like Caspace mainly getting their cash from local government funds.
Now let’s fast forward to 2022. This is when things really started tomaterialize. On July 2022 Caspace successfully launched into orbit the lead Gen 1, a solid-fuelled rocket able to put two tons into the Earth orbit. And While this rocket is expendable, it was the first time a Chinese commercial company in China had reached this kind of capacity.This was soon followed by Xbase and China rocket, which successfully sent into orbit for the first time the Kwai Joe 11 and the Jalong 3 Rockets – both Rockets having a similar payload capacity of roughly 1.5 tons into LEO. But this was still all solid fuelled. The real step towards reusability was elsewhere.
The first historic moment was on December 14th2022 when Land Space attempted the first ever Chinese commercial launch of a liquid-filled rocket.We’re talking about the Zhuque-2. This two-stage launch vehicle capable of putting six tons intoLow Earth Orbit (LEO) and using the in-house developed TQ-11 and TQ-12 methloxengines.The launch went well all the way to after stage separation, but an issue occurred with the TQ-11 Vernier engines causing the second stage in the end to fail.
The Milestone of China’s first successful commercial liquid fields launch vehicle would not be crossed that day.However, four months later, anotherChinese commercial launch company managed to claim this trophy. On April2nd 2023, Space Pioneer successfully launched the Tianlong 2 rocket from the Jiuquan satellite launch Centre, making a thunderous entry into the market of medium lift launch Vehicles.
Now at this stage,it doesn’t mean that China has reusable Rockets.One of the reasons is that Land Space and Space Pioneer were able to launch first, before all of their domestic competitors, because they decided to develop their Zhuque-2 andTianlong-2 as Expendable Rockets.As they can see on these pictures both Rockets have an absence of control surfaces Landing mechanisms and with a low number of engines on the first stage, which is not optimal for re-entry and LandingBurns.
However, both Rockets should be adapted to be reusable in the future. Land Space for example is currently upgrading its first and second stage engines to make them more reusable friendly – basically improving the throttling capability and enabling multiple engine ignitions. Similarly, Space Pioneers Tianlong 2 rocket will also likely be adapted in the future possibly with the addition of grid finsand landing legs as is shown on the company’s website.
The Rocket’s first stage composed of three YF-402 enginest oday is said to be replacing the future by seven Tihua 11s and these are in-house developed stage combustion care locks engines developed with reusability in mind. However, it’s unclear when reusability will be achieved for these two companies as they’ll probably want to fly their rockets multiple times reliably before making the modifications into a reusable version.
Which leads us to the next question – who will effectively launch China’s first reusable launch vehicle? Well, in my opinion, there are several candidates. The most promising one is probably Deep BlueAerospace. These guys have performed multiple flights last year with their small seven-meter-tall Nebula M demonstrator using a small electric pump for care locks engine to perform increasingly higher altitude hops. DeepBlue Aerospace is now building a full size is first stage prototype of their orbital nebula one rocket and they are theoretically aiming for a maiden launch from the Hainan commercial launch Centerat the end of 2024. And so in many ways,the Nebula 1 is a sort of mini Falcon9 with a payload capacity of 1.4 tons toLow Earth Orbit.
Another promising company is i-Space they’re developing the Hyperbola 2 reusable medium lift launch vehicle capable of putting 1.9 tons into Low Earth Orbits and they’re using their self-developed geodeanmethlox engines, they’ve built the Hyperbola 2z first stage of vertical takeoff vertical Landing demonstrator which was spotted in Jiuquan last year and the Maidenlaunch is also scheduled for 2024. This Is a company that’s raised an impressive amount of funding nearly 300 million US Dollars over the past seven years, however, this is also a company that’s faced some reliability issues with. For Example, the Hyperbola 1 solid fueled rocket previously failing three times in a row and each time for different reasons.
But the recent successful six launch attempt of this rocket in April2023 may just have reassured investors. And the final very serious looking Contender is the Chinese company Galactic Energy founded in 2018. Similar to i-Space, they have already in service a small solid field rocket the Ceres1 and they’re now developing the medium lift liquid fuelled Palace 1 rocket using the in-house kerolox fuelled TangChung series engines.Now just like the Nebula 1 and the Hyperbola 2,thePalace 1 rocket is clearly marketed as being reusable.
The Maiden launch is also scheduled for 2024 although I haven’t seen any information on a hypothetical single stage demonstrator so we’ll have to see if the Palace 1 is really reusable from day one. But I think the most remarkable asset about this company comparatively to others is that it has this fantastic track record, I mean Land Space failed the maiden launches of the Zhuque-1 and Zhuque-2. i-Space consecutively failed three launches in a row of the solid fuelled Hyperbola 1.But Galactic energy on the other hand has succeeded in all five launches of their Ceres 1 rocket since 2020 and they’re planning to ramp up the launch frequency to 8 to 10 annual launches.
Now there are other fish in the world of Chinese commercial launch with similar launch vehicles in mind.Caspase has the PR-3 series in mind,Orien Space is planning the Gravity 2and Gravity 3,Link Space is developing the smaller New Line 1 and Space Epochis developing the Yin Shinju etc.But quite a few of these are PowerPoint Rockets or still in very early stages of development so any reusable rocket launch from these companies would have to come at a muchState-owned reusable rocket efforts later stage but China’s space industry has predominantly been state-owned and state-led even to this day so what are state-owned companies doing with regards to reusable Rockets?
For a long time China’s state-owned Space Program on reusability mostly focused on horizontal Landing.Amidst the space plane craze in the 1970s and the 1980s, during which the U.S designed the Shuttle and the Soviets Braun, China had also explored lift generating Concepts the 1980s for its crude space flight program within the framework of the so-called project 863.
But in the end they decided to go forward with a more conservative design which is today’s Shenzhou spacecraft and Long March 2F rocket.Then in the 2000s China initiated tests with a space plane demonstrator called ShenLong and similar initiatives exist today with CASC including a space claim that is believed to be similar to the Boeing X37B and that was launched in August 2022 and just landed a couple of weeks ago in May 2023. CASC’s sister conglomerate,the more military-focused CASIC is also developing a space plane.Its the Tanya two-stage to orbit spacecraft that would launch and land horizontally, but just like CASC this remains a pretty low-key secretive business for which there are few solid documented facts.
For vertical take-off vertical landing on the other hand the first initiatives from state-owned companies came at a much later stage, I’d say around the mid-2010s. The first Glimpse was at the China International Industry Fair in 2018 during which Long March 6X a reusable variant derived from the Long March 6 was unveiled.Shortly after, there was also the Long March 8R, a reusable version of the Long March 8, which would land vertically on a drone ship. But these projects now seem to be at a standstill.And I think one of the reasons could be the lack of proper engines.
For Falcon 9 like vertical landing, they generally want to cluster a lot of lower thrust engines on the first stage and use only a small number of them during the landing process.In terms of engines China’s main workhorse today is the kerolox fuelled YF-100 producing a mighty 120 tons of thrust which is likely too powerful to make a medium lift reusable launch vehicle.TheLong March 8 are sort of circumvented this problem by Landing with its boosters attached increasing the dry Mass when landing.And Long March 6X was envisioned to have two lower thrust sea level YF-115s on the first stage in addition to the YF-100s.
But both solutions are still believed to be sub-optimal and are likely discontinued. However, there are some newer state-owned reusable rockets on the drawing board.The first one is the Long March 10 lunar rocket with the maiden launch scheduled in 2027. With its heavy launch capacity of 70 tons Lower Earth Orbit and 27 tons to translunar injection this sort of Falconheavy equivalent rocket is ideally suited for the YF-100 engine and more specifically the reusable variant theYF-100n.In its most powerful three-stage version, it would have two strap-on boosters and both boosters and the core stage would be equipped with seven engines, delivering a total of2680 tons of thrust at liftoff.
First stages and strap-on boosters would then land vertically on a drone ship using this tethered system rather than the landing legs on the Falcon 9 or the chopstick approach of super heavy. Smaller two-stage version would also be developed for launching astronauts into Lower Earth Orbit. Now for lighter reusable rockets, the Shanghai Academy of Space Technology has announced that it plans to develop a series of new generation launch Vehicles which will likely use the latest slider lift YF-102 and YF-209 engines from China’s state-owned engine manufacturer AALPT.
Not much is known about these Rockets, but some of them are understood to be reusable and a maiden launch of the smallest member is scheduled for mid-2024 at the new commercial launch Centre in Hainan.Now just two final points China is also exploring making its much older Rocketsalong Shooter 4 partially reusable and China is also developing the super heavy Long March9 in the 2030s which will first be partially reusable and then potentially fully reusable with a starship-like design around the 2040s.
The author is Advisor -Cyber Aerospace Security & Counter Terrorism-(West Asia -Middle East.
Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal and do not reflect the official position or policy of Financial Express Online. Reproducing this content without permission is prohibited.