SpaceX yesterday completed one launch while China had two launch failures
There were three launches attempts yesterday, though the two by China were both failures.
First, China’s Long March 3B rocket attempted a launch from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China but the rocket failed at some point. All that China’s state-run press said was that “an anomaly occurred during its flight” and “the cause of the failure is under investigation.” We therefore do not know when the failure occurred, or where any of the rocket stages crashed, inside China or elsewhere.
Next, China’s pseudo-company Galactic Energy attempted the first launch of its new Ceres-2 rocket, lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. Once again, China’s state-run press provided little information, stating merely that “an anomaly occurred during its flight.”
The Ceres-2, like its predecessor the Ceres-1, is a solid-fueled rocket, though its final stage upgrades the rocket with liquid fuel. Both are based on missile technology, which is why this pseudo-company is “pseudo,” as everything it does is closely supervised by the Chinese government.
Finally, SpaceX placed a National Reconnaissance Office classified satellite into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its 2nd flight, landing back at Vandenberg. The two fairings in turn completed their 13th and 30th flights respectively.
The 2026 launch race:
7 SpaceX
4 China
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
There were three launches attempts yesterday, though the two by China were both failures.
First, China’s Long March 3B rocket attempted a launch from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China but the rocket failed at some point. All that China’s state-run press said was that “an anomaly occurred during its flight” and “the cause of the failure is under investigation.” We therefore do not know when the failure occurred, or where any of the rocket stages crashed, inside China or elsewhere.
Next, China’s pseudo-company Galactic Energy attempted the first launch of its new Ceres-2 rocket, lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. Once again, China’s state-run press provided little information, stating merely that “an anomaly occurred during its flight.”
The Ceres-2, like its predecessor the Ceres-1, is a solid-fueled rocket, though its final stage upgrades the rocket with liquid fuel. Both are based on missile technology, which is why this pseudo-company is “pseudo,” as everything it does is closely supervised by the Chinese government.
Finally, SpaceX placed a National Reconnaissance Office classified satellite into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its 2nd flight, landing back at Vandenberg. The two fairings in turn completed their 13th and 30th flights respectively.
The 2026 launch race:
7 SpaceX
4 China
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The Ceres-2 failure was completely expectable, it being the first flight of a new vehicle.
The surprise was the failure of a venerable – and generally reliable – Long March 3. Perhaps just the Gods of Statistics catching up accounts, but if we see a second failure of any of the PRC’s “old reliables” in the coming year, that could be an indication that some Russian-style rot may be creeping into the PRC program as well.
There has been some politically-motivated churn in PRC space program circles over the past year or two – overshadowed by the far greater politically-motivated churn in the PRC military. But if either or both sectors – which, in the PRC, have a hierarchical relationship with space subordinate to the military – are starting to see the effects of prizing managerial loyalty to Pooh Bear over competence, then that will be a good thing – for us.
Confusion to the enemy.
Rough day for the Chinese, obviously.
But then again, they’re at least in a position to *have* a day with two orbital launch failures, which is more than you can say for some other major space players who are not playing nearly as much as they should be, like, you know, Europe. And, as Mr. Eagleson rightly points out, you get a certain Mulligan credit on the first launch attempt of a new vehicle.
“loyalty to Pooh Bear”
Best satire I ever saw was a plastic bottle containing a Winnie the Pooh doll. If you know a little Chinese, you can get the joke:
Xi Jin Ping
Xi – you know who, sometimes satirized as Pooh
jin – verb meaning “to enter”
ping – noun meaning “bottle”
Not the same characters as his name; a lot of Chinese jokes and puns are based on homonyms.
Richard M,
A salient point anent the relative launch cadences of the PRC vs. Europe. Even with all of the new European rockets likely to enter their shaky-start early days this year or next, it is unlikely the Euros will be seeing two launch failures in the same month, never mind the same day.
There is also the consideration that, even if the PRC program is starting to show some banana spots, it has already reached such a high cadence that it likely won’t fall to anywhere near Russian levels during the time remaining to the PRC before it collapses as a going concern and takes its space program down with it.
Andi,
Thank you for the delightful lesson in cynical Chinese wordplay/meme-ery. Pooh-in-a-bottle – wonderful.
Russian black and passive-aggressive humor under the commissars was a well-known thing even before the USSR’s demise. Once the PRC has also fallen, I hope someone makes it a project to collect and preserve for posterity the equivalent corpus of arch wit of the Chinese from the years under Mao and his heirs – along with suitable explanations, such as your fine example here, for the edification of we round-eyed types who don’t grok any version of Chinese in either written or spoken forms.
Gloom, despair and agony on Xi ….ohh
Dick Eagleson.
Russian humor has always been a special thing.
Oh the parables Russians have told me with some humor. Even good things about being an engineer in the gulag. But I have met several from the camps of Cambodia and have never heard any hint of humor. But maybe China some day.
If a German company could track 10 years behind Rocket Lab then at least they will be supporting a generation of engineers. That is the way I look at it.
Deep dark depression, excessive miser-Xi?
Verifying some video footage of the Long March 3B stage crashing in a neighborhood. I want to make sure this is not old footage.
“Even with all of the new European rockets likely to enter their shaky-start early days this year or next, it is unlikely the Euros will be seeing two launch failures in the same month, never mind the same day.”
Yeah, that’s the thing: to be failing that often, you have to be launching that often. The Europeans waited far too long to get going in this market. And even now, it’s fairly paltry.
From a year ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/1i94ivy/long_march_3b_rocket_stage_lands_in_a_residential/
Jeff Wright & A. Nonymous,
Thank you for the Hee-Haw flashback, though I always watched that show for the Hee-Haw Honeys more than for the music – Roy Clark excepted.
Jeff Wright,
Thanks for what I hope was a useful assist to Jay in doing his due diligence on the recent LM-3 failure.
George C,
There wasn’t any of the later style of cynical Russian black humor during the Revolutionary and the various Purge and Great Terror periods that followed during the first couple of decades or so of the Soviet Union either. That sort of thing only started showing up once Stalin was gone. Up to that time, such japery would have landed one in a gulag.
Which explains the corresponding such lack in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge regime only lasted long enough for Revolutionary and Great Terror periods before being overthrown. The sort of wearily cynical black humor we now associate with Soviet Russia only emerges in a mature totalitarianism once it has passed out of the hands of its founders and into those of the careerists. The Soviet Union lasted long enough for this to happen. Not so much the Cambodian crazies.
The PRC is also, now, a mature totalitarianism. The PRC may well have rather less of this sort of black-humorous stuff in total than the Soviet Union did because a lot of the Soviet Stuff was about shortages and privations – something the PRC has only been experiencing again quite recently. As with Stalin in the USSR, one did not joke about such things during the Mao period in the PRC. Still, I hope someone in a position to do so manages to collect what there is of such to preserve it for Western posterity. Given PRC/China’s completely terminal demographics, there isn’t going to be any Chinese posterity.
Dick Eagleson observed: ” . . . more than for the music – Roy Clark excepted.”
Roy Clark may be one of the most underrated musicians in all of music. There has been at least one Evening Pause, and I have written about Mr. Clark’s virtuosity. The man was smart, and more talented than should be legally allowed.