Various companies, including the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation plan on launching reusable rockets in the coming years. CASC’s announcement was made yesterday. Before then, I believe they only had plans to make the Long March 9 superheavy rocket reusable in the 2030s? Or maybe I missed some news a while back. China’s space industry is very convoluted. I should probably make a master post about it sometime for everyone’s sake.
Long March 10 (the 5m one in the article) isn’t a Starship/Super Heavy competitor, it’s a Falcon Heavy competitor. I.e. it’s only barely considered a super-heavy and depending on the reuse penalties, it might only be one if it’s launched as expendable. I’m guessing most of the specs on Wikipedia are very out of date so it’s hard to tell exactly.
They’ll probably go through the same process of getting the core and boosters reusable but not bothering with the second stage and just push Long March 9 development instead. Obviously they have to walk before they can run but at this rate they’re still about ~8-10 years behind.
Long March 9 or 10? My understanding was that 10 is closer to Falcon Heavy, will not be reusable (maybe this changed for the first stage??), and will be ready to launch in a few years. Meanwhile 9 is closed to Starship, will eventually be reusable, and still has like a decade to go.
CZ-10 has a diameter of 5 meters so maybe CASC is talking about it here, or maybe there’s a new rocket being developed.
Oh sorry, to clarify: The 5m one in the article is almost certainly Long March 10. They seem to have decided to make the first stage reusable, contrary to previous statements. It’s not clear if that means just the boosters or the boosters and the core but I would guess all three like falcon heavy does. It’s also, at least for now, the rocket they plan on sending people to the moon with before 2030 with an Apollo-style lander.
The smaller 4 meter one seems to be for a commercial rocket.
Long March 9 last I saw was still not planned to be reusable until the 2040’s but if this recent space push actually turns into a race I’m sure they’ll accelerate that.
Thank you, I fully understand now.