It’s not the best choice for an high-budget high-performance expendable multi-stage rocket. Using kerolox/SRBs in the first stage and hydrolox in the second stage gives better overall performance.
Metholox is better for re-use, using the same engine in multiple stages lowers costs and complexity, and you can produce the fuel on Mars.
LandSpace, the company behind Zhuque-3, might be the most advanced Chinese rocket startup.
They said they are even designing a larger rocket with 10m diameter, which is more than Starship (9m). My question is though where they are planning to get the required money from. Unlike the organization behind the Changzheng ("long march") rockets, which is already developing a 10m rocket as well, LandSpace is not state funded. And they don't have a billionaire at the top like Blue Origin and SpaceX.
On the other hand, they were only founded in 2015, and it's impressive what they have achieved since then, no doubt with quite limited funds. They also have some experience with designing methane engines.
Hold up—where do you get the assessment that LandSpace "is not state funded" and that these startups have "quite limited funds"? My understanding is the diametric opposite. Here's WSJ:
> "At least six Chinese rockets designed with reusability in mind are planned to have their maiden flights this year. In November, the country’s first commercial launch site began operating. Beijing and local governments are giving private-sector companies cash injections of billions of dollars."
> LandSpace raised 900 million yuan ($120 million) in December from a state-owned fund focussed on advanced manufacturing, while in 2020 it raised 1.2 billion yuan ($170 million), Chinese corporate databases showed.
They need to raise a lot more if they want to build a Starship-class rocket. Small government injections like the $120 million last year won't move the needle much. I somewhat doubt the "billions" of dollars WSJ is reporting, unless they include state-owned rocket companies like CASC, or non-rocket companies, like military companies.
This is truly sad. Despite having, collectively, a larger GDP than the US, Europe has not been at the forefront of too many technologies, compared to the US and China. [Pharmaceuticals might be the main exception.]
Sadly, I think the disadvantages will compound. Europe doesn't have a Google-type company with expertise building data centers, and are now behind on AI scaling. Without cheap access to orbit, they have missed out on building Starlink-like LEO constellations.
They make the best photolithography machines, for me, it is simply the most advanced piece of tech humanity has created, look it up, everything about EUV lithography is insane.
In a sense all modern tech goes back to them, including AI. They make the machines that make the chips that make AI.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw
I suspect that Europe is much more "reasonable", in this sense, than the US and China.
You’d expect the “unreasonable man” of Europe to be behind but stable and decent, whereas these days much of Europe can’t maintain living standards or political stability.
There’s also an argument to be made that China is putting in a very solid performance in a very reasonable manner. See: methodical capture of global EV+energy markets, soft power expansion into the global south, cold-eyed deflation of financial bubbles, 5 year plans, and so on. At this rate, I’m not sure that the freedom and unreason loving “man” that is the US will be able to compete either.
> whereas these days much of Europe can’t maintain living standards or political stability
Those are the side effects of Europe trying to offset its fertility rate with immigration, yet failing to explicitly address the enculturation tension.
It's remarkably how people so smart in one area (demographic issues and solutions) can flounder so badly in another (addressing cultural friction with immigrants).
Especially considering history has "a few" examples of exactly this same thing, although possibly Americans have more experience in modernity.
The cultural friction is not a real issue except for the extreme right. The real issues are the same as everywhere: standard of living is going down for younger people while wealth is being concentrated in fewer individuals. Those wealthy individuals are the ones who benefit from promoting this immigration/cultural friction theory.
It is a real issue, because it's human nature. Groups don't like outsiders.
Pretending that isn't human nature is why anti-immigrant parties keep attracting surprising support in elections.
And that tension shouldn't be swept under the rug and ignored via the 'it's just the far right' excuse.
It's a thing. It needs to be addressed. Which doesn't necessarily mean implementing anti-immigrant policies, but does at least mean some form of address (e.g. government support for enculturation, advertising benefits of immigration, etc).
i mean the building data centers is kind of a bummer, yeah. but if Europe misses out on AI and space travel, well, so be it. i could name 20 more important issues than these buzzhypes.
This is obviously subjective, but I think both AI and space launch are hugely important technologies.
AI unlocks a new class of automation that will lead to productivity increases. In some cases, it literally saves lives, as Waymo-class autonomous vehicles are much safer than human drivers.
Cheap space launch unlocks LEO constellations like Starlink, which Europe is already trying to build. Even without fanciful uses like space datacenters and asteroid mining, access to space gives us a host of communications, imaging, and location services.
I think the EU dropped the ball on reusability. But Ariane 5 was an excellent expendable heavy-lift launcher and Ariane 6 follows on the same track.
Not great for mass commercial launches, but good enough for sovereignty and science missions. Why compete with SpaceX? They can already provide more than what the market demands, so much that they have to create their own demand in the form of Starlink.
Europe could join the space race but it is an extremely expensive endeavor and the EU has other priorities. Now the question is which ones. As a French, I am all for nuclear technology, for which France was at the forefront and it seems to get back some traction after decades of neglect.
Ariane 5 wasn't excellent. It was a bad rocket strategically. Ariane 5 grew far bigger then the original designers wanted, because they had dreams of launching the Hermes space plan. But once Hermes was dead they didn't reevaluate the project.
so Ariane 5 was far to big, and while for very large GEO multi sat launches that was ok, they had a very low launch rate and couldn't compete for many missions.
Arianespace always launch more Soyuz then Ariane 5s. To me, if your European launch provider launches more Russian then European craft, its not good.
Ariane 5 was lucky that Progress and other Russian rockets were so mismanaged. They basically didn't have competition.
And Ariane 6 is just a slightly punched up Ariane 5 and in relative to market terms, its even worse. Basically everything that has been learned in the market for the last 15 years is ignored on Ariane 6.
> but good enough for sovereignty and science missions.
Ariane 6 was designed EXPLICITLY WITH STRONG FOCUS ON competing with SpaceX.
Its only now after the 5 billion EUR were spend that people way 'it was all about sovereignty'.
If sovereignty was the only goal, other ways to go about it would have been better. No need to give European Tax $ to Amazon just so they launch on European rocket. They didn't want to give money to SpaceX, so instead they are giving it to Amazon.
I agree with you, Europe should have just embraced SpaceX (or whoever does the launch cheapest) and invested into sats and innovation like space nuclear. That would have actually made sense.
For the cost of Ariane 6 they could have built a reusable nuclear tug and a nuclear reactor for moon/mars.
Yeah it doesn't seem worth it to try and compete with SpaceX at this point, at least in countries allied with the US. Makes more sense to take the future NASA approach and focus on specialized payloads, not launchers.
It isn't a race. EU can't do everything and so it is best to see what several others are doing and take that as a sign to do something different. If only one party (or only your enemies) then yes you should, but it seems there are plenty of players and the EU is smart to sit it out.
The space race ended 50 years ago, all that is left is those who didn't win to finally cross the finish line. Dropping out is your best bet. The only reward was bragging rights, so you need to find something else to brag about. If indeed you need to brag, there is nothing wrong with modesty. Even if you do need to brag, it isn't clear what you can work on today that will get bragging rights - you might finish at the same time as something else and that something else gets the rights.
Their own internet megaconstellation, called Project Kuiper until earlier today when they renamed it to Project Leo.
It's actually the current biggest commercial launch customer, Starlink is internal to SpaceX, but Kuiper/Leo has bought many launches with ULA, SpaceX and Arianespace (and Blue Origin, of course).
Even if you exclude Starlink SpaceX is overwhelmingly dominant. The stuff they don't launch is mostly China and Russia and Europe they can't compete for.
Starlink prints money, SpaceX is absolutely launch mass constrained right now. They literally spent $17 billion on spectrum to make Starlink better and more efficient because of how constrained they are on the launch side until Starship is fully operational and reusable, which may not be until 2027 even for Starlink launches.
It doesn't seem that atypical when extremely high capex and proprietary R&D are moats. Off the top of my head, the semiconductor industry looks broadly similar right now and the fusion industry might end up looking similar for a while.
Only small parts of the semiconductor industry at the very cutting edge even remotely resemble that. And that’s technology with outcomes (I.e. process nodes) that are genuinely new and have never been done before. What’s being accomplished now in space are outcomes that were accomplished before PCs existed, so the idea of it being insurmountable R&D doesn’t hold. It’s very telling that the only “commercially viable” launch providers are billionaire trophy assets with induced demand from a heavy slice of government sponsorship and self dealing.
Saying there's no market demand for cheaper launchers, when the company with the cheapest large launchers has cornered the market makes no sense. That was my only point.
Meta point: why does that matter? They launch 90% of the demand for payload to orbit. Some of that demand is from a vertically integrated part of the company. It is still part of industrial demand, given that Starlink is profitable already.
The launch count of SpaceX per year compared to the rest of the world is quite large.
SpaceX in 2025 has launched 134 times. Everyone else in the entire world has launched 115 times combined, including other US companies. SpaceX launches a lot of stuff very often.
EDIT: Originally meant to do 2024 but accidentally read the wrong bar. Regardless, this holds for most years.
They're booked out years in advance only in the sense that bookings are sorted out years before the payload is ready to fly. SpaceX has emphasized that they're capable of swapping out Starlink launches with a commercial payload if needed on short notice.
F9 launches are available anytime a customer wants them. SpaceX will bump down a Starlink launch to accommodate a paying customer, All they would really need would be the payload assembly time?
A bit early to say that given BO has had two launches 11 months apart and SpaceX has had 142 launches and landings in the same timeframe. With most of them in reused boosters.
No one doubts the technical prowess of SpaceX or the skill of the team. So I'm unsure why you felt the need to write that?
What's in doubt is a wanker CEO who may, or may not, do something strategically ridiculous - perhaps because an advertising executive looked at him the wrong way.
I don't care if the alternative is a Soviet jalopy propelled to the sky with compressed fart power.
