Rockets, the Chinese race to catch up with Musk and Bezos' successes

A failure can be the prelude to a great victory. A phrase that comes very close to an oxymoron, but which represents well what happened to Landspace, the private Chinese space company that, a few days ago, tried, unsuccessfully, to launch a launcher and bring the first stage back to Earth, to reuse it.

Zhang Changwu, who heads Landspace, is thus the first non-American to attempt to break the monopoly of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. The other Chinese private individual who will soon try this with his Space Pioneer industry is Kang Yonglai; they are definitely little-known names in the West compared to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, but things may soon change. The two companies we have just mentioned are still a long way behind SpaceX, owned by Musk, and Blue Origin, owned by Bezos, but China has taught us, in recent years, not to underestimate it and, as far as technology is concerned, to make giant strides with a speed unknown in the West, just think of the invasion of Chinese cars that we have been seeing, since the beginning of the year, on our streets.

The maiden flight, the maiden launch from Mongolia, of LandSpace's Zhuque-3 ended with a first stage explosion on the return leg, while the second stage performed as expected. It has been firmly affirmed for SpaceX that we learn from mistakes, and for their SpaceShip, the world's largest carrier rocket, there have been plenty of them; therefore, we can adopt the same criterion for the Chinese venture.

But the two private entrepreneurs are only the spearhead of the more than 400 private companies, in the Chinese sense, that have literally sprung up like mushrooms in China in the promising space field since the State Council admitted private initiative in the rocket and satellite sectors 11 years ago. The number, to be clear, also includes the many prestigious universities and research institutions, which are also active, albeit with different tasks, in the upstream, midstream and downstream fields. In fact, underpinning each segment is the substantial contribution of a dense network of academic institutions, national laboratories and funding bodies that contribute to satellite design, materials science and communications research and development. A further peculiarity of this participation, both academic and research, is that technology spin-offs are formed, also in partnership with state or private operators, thus ensuring that scientific progress remains linked to the development of national capabilities.

Basically, in the eleven years of this particular liberalisation, dozens and dozens of initiatives have been developed, about which little or nothing is said in the West, with sometimes positive and sometimes not, and in any case, today there is a large number of companies that flank the powerful Casc, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, which is Nasa's real rival in the race for the Moon and Mars.