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Falcon-9 first landed in 2015 and was regularly landing within a couple of years. So being 10 years behind means "almost ready to go". suborbital Yuanxingzhe

Falcon-9 first landed in 2015 and was regularly landing within a couple of years. So being 10 years behind means "almost ready to go". suborbital Yuanxingzhe-1 landed may 2025, and orbital Zhuque-3 was really close to landing in December. Long March 12A also tried in December although it wasn't as close to success. So if China is 10 years behind, they've caught up. We won't know if they're 10 years or further behind for a couple years more, though. And while China may be 10-15 years behind on their Falcon-9 equivalents, they're likely less than 10 years behind on their Starship equivalents.

pie_flavor 8mo ago
The first rocket may take off sooner than 2040. But Starlink is not just a rocket, it is a complete business process, with a launch regularity and price. A Starlink satellite's worth of space on a Falcon 9 costs 500k-750k. With about ten thousand satellites, which last about five years, this means maybe a billion and a half per year spent on the space arm of the business, not counting ground stations. If they had to spend, say, ten times this, Starlink wouldn't be profitable today. And that's pretty much reality: the Ariane rocket costs ~$100m to Falcon's ~$15m (nobody knows what Zhuque-3 costs); I think cost per kg is 5000 vs 900. You could get it down to ~1.5B a year by narrowing it to just the latitudes overhead the EU, but then you cut the potential revenues too and have the same problem.
- IshKebab 8mo ago
  Sure but the Chinese military can easily afford that.
- jopsen 8mo ago
  > but then you cut the potential revenues too and have the same problem. How many starlink clones are there really customers for? Many people have fiber, and in an urban area you'll probably prefer 5G, if you can't get fiber or wired internet. Starlink is great if you live in the middle of nowhere, but few people do. Even if you could do a competitive launch cost, the number of customers is limited.
  - db48x 8mo ago
    Starlink is equally great no matter where you live :) But you’re right, in urban areas it should be possible to do better. If you can get 1Gbps symmetric fiber then get the fiber. Sadly in the US it is not always possible to do better than Starlink, even in urban areas. It’s gotten better in the last decade, but many cities are still stuck with really bad options due to bad choices in the past.
  - kolinko 8mo ago
    All the airlines, all the trains, and other government-supported entities may have a strategic interest to use a local version of Starlink. But everyone else? I don't think anyone will buy a service that will be 10x more expensive, 10x slower and 10x more energy hungry than Starlink -- this first mover advantage may be hard to beat.
sigmoid10 8mo ago
China also had made industry espionage their way to go in these things. They are not even hiding it anymore. It's almost comical how much they copied SpaceX. And I'd be surprised if they hadn't supply-chained themselves into some level of access in all the big aerospace corpos by now. But Europe? Developing this kind of stuff from scratch in a few years without an unregulated messy startup ecosystem and no army of state sponsored hackers? No chance.
- Liftyee 8mo ago
  Curious - Any sources? Looking at publicly available details and copying them might be intellectually dishonest if it was a piece of coursework, but this isn't an academic research project. Taking features from something that's known to work is the fastest way to get to something working. If there's actual smuggling of designs or trade secrets going on, I'd be more interested. But if it's just "the rocket looks the same on the outside", that's hardly "industrial espionage".
  - buckle8017 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - bryanlarsen 8mo ago
      Sure, they're trying. But there's no evidence they've succeeded in stealing anything other than open source intelligence from SpaceX. There's a lot of open source intelligence about SpaceX rocket designs available.
    - throw310822 8mo ago
      Be serious, do you think defense industry normally respects other nations' industrial secrets?
  - mwambua 8mo ago
    Bloomberg's podcast "The Big Take" has been running an interesting series on Chinese industrial espionage called "The Sixth Bureau". Here's a link to the Youtube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38L5UzLwt-s&list=PLe4PRejZgr0M83kAtNrxUARmTF8WFOK65 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38L5UzLwt-s&list=PLe4PRejZgr...
standardUser 8mo ago
China is a full blown superpower and it should surprise no one when they catch up to or surpass the West in technical feats.

pie_flavor 8mo ago

The first rocket may take off sooner than 2040. But Starlink is not just a rocket, it is a complete business process, with a launch regularity and price. A Starlink satellite's worth of space on a Falcon 9 costs 500k-750k. With about ten thousand satellites, which last about five years, this means maybe a billion and a half per year spent on the space arm of the business, not counting ground stations. If they had to spend, say, ten times this, Starlink wouldn't be profitable today. And that's pretty much reality: the Ariane rocket costs ~$100m to Falcon's ~$15m (nobody knows what Zhuque-3 costs); I think cost per kg is 5000 vs 900. You could get it down to ~1.5B a year by narrowing it to just the latitudes overhead the EU, but then you cut the potential revenues too and have the same problem.

IshKebab 8mo ago
Sure but the Chinese military can easily afford that.
jopsen 8mo ago
> but then you cut the potential revenues too and have the same problem. How many starlink clones are there really customers for? Many people have fiber, and in an urban area you'll probably prefer 5G, if you can't get fiber or wired internet. Starlink is great if you live in the middle of nowhere, but few people do. Even if you could do a competitive launch cost, the number of customers is limited.
- db48x 8mo ago
  Starlink is equally great no matter where you live :) But you’re right, in urban areas it should be possible to do better. If you can get 1Gbps symmetric fiber then get the fiber. Sadly in the US it is not always possible to do better than Starlink, even in urban areas. It’s gotten better in the last decade, but many cities are still stuck with really bad options due to bad choices in the past.
- kolinko 8mo ago
  All the airlines, all the trains, and other government-supported entities may have a strategic interest to use a local version of Starlink. But everyone else? I don't think anyone will buy a service that will be 10x more expensive, 10x slower and 10x more energy hungry than Starlink -- this first mover advantage may be hard to beat.

sigmoid10 8mo ago

China also had made industry espionage their way to go in these things. They are not even hiding it anymore. It's almost comical how much they copied SpaceX. And I'd be surprised if they hadn't supply-chained themselves into some level of access in all the big aerospace corpos by now. But Europe? Developing this kind of stuff from scratch in a few years without an unregulated messy startup ecosystem and no army of state sponsored hackers? No chance.

Liftyee 8mo ago
Curious - Any sources? Looking at publicly available details and copying them might be intellectually dishonest if it was a piece of coursework, but this isn't an academic research project. Taking features from something that's known to work is the fastest way to get to something working. If there's actual smuggling of designs or trade secrets going on, I'd be more interested. But if it's just "the rocket looks the same on the outside", that's hardly "industrial espionage".
- buckle8017 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - bryanlarsen 8mo ago
    Sure, they're trying. But there's no evidence they've succeeded in stealing anything other than open source intelligence from SpaceX. There's a lot of open source intelligence about SpaceX rocket designs available.
  - throw310822 8mo ago
    Be serious, do you think defense industry normally respects other nations' industrial secrets?
- mwambua 8mo ago
  Bloomberg's podcast "The Big Take" has been running an interesting series on Chinese industrial espionage called "The Sixth Bureau". Here's a link to the Youtube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38L5UzLwt-s&list=PLe4PRejZgr0M83kAtNrxUARmTF8WFOK65 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38L5UzLwt-s&list=PLe4PRejZgr...

standardUser 8mo ago

China is a full blown superpower and it should surprise no one when they catch up to or surpass the West in technical feats.