Reusable rockets are all the rage now, apparently—and China seems to be hopping on the trend. According to SpaceNews, Liu Bing, the director of the general design department at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, confirmed that the country's newest rocket, the Long March 9, will feature a reusable first stage booster.
The announcement was big enough to get a reaction from Chief Twit (and SpaceX founder and CEO) Elon Musk, who tweeted:
As SpaceX has proven, reusing rockets can slash launch costs by millions, allowing funds to be directed toward research, innovation, and (of course) more launches. Critics of NASA’s Space Launch System, which is set to debut whenever the hell Artemis I ends up launching, argue that the agency should have invested in building reusable rockets and launch systems, or at least sourced them from private companies. SpaceX and Blue Origin have made their rocket launches partially reusable, and others are beginning to follow suit. SpaceX’s Starship, which it hopes to one day use to ferry people to the moon, Mars, and other parts of the solar system, will likely become the first of its class to launch successfully as a fully reusable system
ADVERTISEMENT
China’s lurch into reusability is its most aggressive step yet in trying to dethrone American hegemony in space. The most recent model of China’s Long March 9 has been redesigned with reuse in mind, with large engines being swapped for clusters of smaller ones. SpaceNews reported that the rocket will be ready for a test flight by 2030.
The ultimate goal, however, is total reusability—a goal that seems so far only within SpaceX’s grasp. Starship could launch on its first orbital flight test as soon as next month. But it remains to be seen whether that launch actually proves successful—especially given how many spectacular failures we’ve seen from the first several prototypes.
