Thread by @DongFangHour

#Landspace is going to attempt the launch of the ZQ-2 rocket (aka Zhuque-2). This is China’s 1st liquid-fueled commercial rocket, one of the first methalox-fueled rockets globally, and this could be a turning point for Chinese launch.
Let's recap the situation in a thread 🧵

First, some context: At least 15+ commercial launch companies have been formed since 2014.
Although this seems like a excessive number, a consolidation has not taken place (yet) as most companies are still early stage and supported by VC money & local governments.

Regarding actual commercial launch capacity, we’re starting to see regular launches of solid-fueled rockets. There are no less than 7 rockets at the moment: The Kuaizhou-1A & 11, Jielong-1 & 3, Lijian-1, Ceres-1 and the Hyperbola 1.
3 of the 7 were put into service in 2022 alone.

Yet the pivoting moment is going to be the arrival of liquid-fueled medium-lift rockets.
China is experiencing a launch bottleneck atm, the launch manifest of Long March rockets is packed with the national space program, despite increases of launch capacity year after year.

There have been some Long March launches dedicated to commercial 🛰️, but most commercial payloads have had to piggyback existing launches.
New commercial launchpads are in construction to hike up launch capabilities (Wenchang, Xiangshan, Jiuquan, Haiyang).

CN commercial companies are developing liquid-fueled rockets for this purpose. Many are close to launch: Landspace (ZQ-2) on 14/12, Galactic Energy (Pallas-1), Space Pioneer (Tianlong-2), RocketPi (Darwin-2) in 2023, and iSpace (SQX-2), Deep Blue Aerospace (Nebula-1) in 2024 (?).

Most of these rockets are meant to be reusable. Some are designed to be reusable from the start (DBA, iSpace, …) which others (Landspace) want to modify the rockets at a later stage to do so.
Linkspace & DBA (and iSpace soon) have conducted "hops" with single stage prototypes.

Landspace’s launch in Dec could be a turning point. If the ZQ-2 is proven to be reliable, the rocket & its dedicated launch site (Jiuquan) could grab a significant piece of CN commercial launches.
Their production of 4xTQ-12/mo would enable the assembly of ~9 rockets/yr in theory

But reliability is going to be key, esp. since all of these liquid-fueled rockets come of age roughly at the same time.
We’ve seen investors react not too kindly to iSpace’s repeated launch failures of the Hyperbola-1 (and #iSpace has reportedly had to cut its workforce by half).

Competition will also come from State-owned companies. While traditionally more focused on national programs, there's now talk of adapting the Long March 5B (25t to LEO!) for the deployment of constellations, & using the LM7 for regular payloads to LEO.

SoE commercial spin-offs like Expace and especially China Rocket will also represent formidable competitors due to their affiliation to CASIC and CASC (CALT).
In any case, the Chinese launch sector is going to be SUPER interesting to watch in the coming 12-24 months.

For more detail on Landspace's Zhuque-2, I break down the architecture & capabilities of the rocket in the video below 👇