China is catching up to Elon Musk’s reusable rockets
China’s state-owned space company successfully launched a Long March orbital rocket and landed the booster on a seagoing recovery vessel, making it the second country to achieve the feat.
The demonstration on Friday shows that China’s Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) is poised to match the advance that catapulted SpaceX to the top of the heap: reusing the same booster again and again to drive down the cost of launching spacecraft. CASC said it would attempt to reuse the booster, which can carry about as much payload as SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9, by the end of the year.
Instead of unfolding landing legs to settle onto a floating platform, as the Falcon 9 does, China’s approach uses netting strung across a large frame onboard a recovery ship to capture the descending rocket. The ability to get the rocket back to the ship in a controlled flight, however, depends on...
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