When Chinese space officials unveiled the design of the country’s first super-heavy rocket nearly a decade ago, it looked like a fairly conventional booster. The rocket was fully expendable, with three stages and solid motors attached to its sides.
Since then, China has been reviewing the design of this rocket, called Long March 9, in response to the development of reusable rockets by SpaceX. For two yearsChina had recalibrated the design to have a reusable first stage.
Now, based on information released at a major air show in Zhuhai, the design has changed again. And this time, the plan for the Long March 9 rocket looks almost exactly like a clone of SpaceX’s Starship rocket.
This looks familiar
Based on its latest specifications, the Long March 9 rocket will feature a fully reusable first stage, powered by 30 YF-215 engines, which are full-flow staged combustion engines fueled by methane and liquid oxygen , each having a thrust of around 200 tonnes. For comparison, Starship’s first stage is powered by 33 Raptor engines, also fueled by methane and liquid oxygen, each with around 280 tons of thrust.
The new specifications also include a fully reusable configuration of the rocket, with an upper stage that looks suspiciously like Starship’s second stage, with flaps in a similar location. According to a presentation at the air show, China intends to fly this vehicle for the first time in 2033, almost a decade from now.
On a related note, last week a quasi-private Chinese space startup, Cosmoleap, announced plans develop a fully reusable “Leap” rocket in the coming years. An animated video that accompanied the funding announcement indicated that the company was seeking to mimic the wand-based tower-capturing methodology that SpaceX successfully used during Starship’s fifth flight test last month.
Let’s be real for a minute. This is not the first time that Chinese rocket programs have imitated SpaceX, such as when Space Pioneer planned to develop a Falcon 9 clone. The company’s public rocket agency and private industries are copying SpaceX’s best practices in their quest to catch up. Right now, China’s launch industry is basically hanging out in SpaceX’s waiting room to see what ideas it should pursue next.
The real race begins to unfold
It is, of course, nothing new that Chinese industry seeks to copy – and in some cases, steal – the ideas of its Western competitors. Admittedly, China’s space industry recognizes that the future of spaceflight is entirely reusable, and even its state-owned enterprises are recalibrating towards such an outcome.
By contrast, U.S. policymakers appear determined to force NASA to continue building the ultra-expensive and expendable Space Launch System rocket for decades. This consumes a NASA budget that could otherwise be devoted to the kind of technological advances that could keep the U.S. civilian space program ahead of China.
NASA and Chinese space agencies are currently engaged in a second space race, with both countries building international coalitions to explore the Moon’s south pole region and potentially establish colonies there. Since land near the South Pole (especially near craters, where water ice is likely) is relatively limited, winning this race really matters for long-term space ambitions.
China intends to use a more conventional rocket for its first lunar missions, the Long March 10 vehicle. These first forays will only last a few days. The country is counting on the much more powerful and reusable Long March 9 to support more robust lunar operations.
If the ultimate goal is to develop lunar colonies, then the real winner is not the country or space agency that first sends astronauts to the surface. It is the first country to develop a fully reusable super-heavy rocket and to fund a program taking advantage of this revolutionary capability. The United States is currently ahead in this race given that Starship is flying.
But the race is by no means won, and the latest Long March 9 design indicates that China knows where the finish line is.
This story was originally published on Ars Technica.
