{"id":594847,"date":"2025-11-26T11:07:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T11:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/594847\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T11:07:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T11:07:20","slug":"explainer-why-chinas-commercial-space-sector-is-grabbing-attention-including-from-elon-musk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/594847\/","title":{"rendered":"Explainer | Why China\u2019s commercial space sector is grabbing attention \u2013 including from Elon Musk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">On Saturday, the Beijing-based start-up LandSpace reportedly plans to conduct the maiden launch of its Zhuque-3 rocket \u2013 a reusable launch vehicle that could significantly boost China\u2019s space industry by lowering the cost of lifting equipment such as satellites into orbit.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The prospect of China mastering reusable rockets \u2013 a technology pioneered by US-based SpaceX \u2013 has attracted significant attention from aerospace experts, and even drew comment from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk last month.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">In this explainer, the Post breaks down the current state of China\u2019s commercial space industry, how close it is to rolling out reusable rockets, and how the technology would benefit the country\u2019s space programme.<\/p>\n<p>How far has China\u2019s commercial space industry come?China\u2019s commercial space sector has <a target=\"_self\" class=\"e1yy41x40 ef9u0v01 css-1ankfgb ecgc78b0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/economy\/china-economy\/article\/3307880\/shanghai-launches-plan-lead-development-chinas-commercial-space-sector?module=inline&amp;pgtype=article\" title=\"\" data-qa=\"BaseLink-renderAnchor-StyledAnchor\" rel=\"noopener\">grown at a rapid pace<\/a> over the past few years. As of Monday, the country had more than 90,000 space-related companies, nearly 60 per cent of which were founded in the past three years, according to the Chinese corporate database Qichacha.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Saturday, the Beijing-based start-up LandSpace reportedly plans to conduct the maiden launch of its Zhuque-3 rocket \u2013&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[3801,1395,187006,187007,187005,55315,295,187008,10224,56363,169754,93843,108671,70,413,1603,16,15,187009],"class_list":{"0":"post-594847","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-beijing","9":"tag-china","10":"tag-china-5g-industrial-internet-conference","11":"tag-china-centre-for-information-industry-development","12":"tag-chinese-corporate-database-qichacha","13":"tag-citic-securities","14":"tag-elon-musk","15":"tag-falcon-1","16":"tag-falcon-9","17":"tag-guowang","18":"tag-hubei-province","19":"tag-landspace","20":"tag-ministry-of-industry-and-information-technology","21":"tag-science","22":"tag-space","23":"tag-spacex","24":"tag-uk","25":"tag-united-kingdom","26":"tag-zhuque-3-rocket"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115615684664774674","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}