China recovers orbital rocket booster with net catch for first time
SpaceX's monopoly on recovering orbital rocket boosters is over. China's Long March 10B first stage returned from today's Hainan launch and was caught by a net on a sea platform, per CCTV. China is now the second country, and rocket designer CASC the third company, to pull it off
Reusability is the single biggest reason SpaceX launches cost less than everyone else's. As of today, that advantage is no longer exclusively American. China launched its Long March 10B rocket from the Hainan commercial spaceport on Friday, and the first stage flew back and was caught by a net mounted on an offshore recovery platform, according to state broadcaster CCTV. It is the first time China has recovered an orbital-class booster, making it the second country to do so after the United States. The rocket's designer, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, becomes the third organization to demonstrate the capability, after SpaceX and Blue Origin. The recovery method itself is notable. Instead of landing legs or a catch tower, the booster used landing hooks to snag a net: an approach CALT engineers say simplifies the rocket's structure, cuts mass and tolerates larger landing-point deviations. Bloomberg reports the milestone set off a rally in Chinese space stocks, with China Spacesat shares hitting their 10% daily trading limit. Recovery is the hard prerequisite for reflight, and reflight is what turned SpaceX into the price-setter of the global launch market. A working Chinese recovery system challenges pricing and cadence assumptions across the industry, from commercial satellite operators to Western defense customers who counted on a durable US cost advantage. CCTV says the research team intends to optimize the system and refly the first stage by the end of this year. Per CCTV, Bloomberg and SpaceNews.