Chinese pseudo-company launches satellite
The Chinese pseudo-company Ispace today launched what is only described as a “prototype recoverable experiment spacecraft” by another Chinese pseudo-company, its Hyperbola-1 rocket lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China.
China’s state-run press now routinely makes no mention of these pseudo-companies. In the past China would tout them in an effort to make the rest of the world believe, falsely, that it had its own competitive and growing space industry. Now it appears the Xi government has decided it doesn’t like the growing and somewhat independent success of these companies, and is making it clear to all that, in the end, everything they do belongs to the government.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
91 SpaceX
61 China
17 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 104 to 61, and the entire world combined 104 to 96. SpaceX now trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 91 to 96.
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Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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The Chinese pseudo-company Ispace today launched what is only described as a “prototype recoverable experiment spacecraft” by another Chinese pseudo-company, its Hyperbola-1 rocket lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China.
China’s state-run press now routinely makes no mention of these pseudo-companies. In the past China would tout them in an effort to make the rest of the world believe, falsely, that it had its own competitive and growing space industry. Now it appears the Xi government has decided it doesn’t like the growing and somewhat independent success of these companies, and is making it clear to all that, in the end, everything they do belongs to the government.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
91 SpaceX
61 China
17 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 104 to 61, and the entire world combined 104 to 96. SpaceX now trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 91 to 96.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
“All your base are belong to us!” – PRC
As in the automotive sector, strong Chinese competition now appears to be building up in the commercial space transport sector, which may eventually lead to dominance.
Questioner,
Every single one of these PRC pseudo-“space enterprises” is an affiliate of one of the PRC’s state-owned space organizations – CASC, etc. There is a veneer of entrepreneurialism for these entities based on the PRC government’s granting them the right to raise non-governmental funds on the PRC’s equivalent of a capital market. To a fairly considerable degree, these faux companies seem to exist in order to provide a way for the state-owned players to do a bit of experimentation without losing face when any of these experiments goes wrong. The various solid-fueled “private” rockets are pretty obviously modestly modified versions of extant military missile hardware. The much-touted “first ever methalox rocket to reach orbit” – Landspace’s Zhuque 2 – is a methalox conversion of the venerable CZ-2 and CZ-3 hardware that runs on hypergolics. None of this is indicative of actual competition – certainly not for SpaceX, anyway. As for dominance? It is to laugh.
The Chinese auto sector isn’t setting the world on fire either. There is essentially no foreign market for PRC gasoline-powered cars and the foreign market for PRC battery EV cars has proven disappointing, especially in Europe. Even in the PRC home market, the only maker to show consistent profit from battery EVs is Tesla. BYD made some modest money on its battery EVs a year or two back but has slipped back into the red recently. All of the other PRC EV makers have yet to make a dime on their wares – something they have in common with legacy automakers in the West. The only potential bright spot for PRC EV makers in future is that some of them seem much more open than their legacy Western counterparts to adopting Tesla manufacturing techniques.