Oh boy the cope is strong. The reality is that China is indeed falling behind hard, they have less internet satellite coverage than Oneweb for heaven's sake. And unlike every other field that China is catching up in, once SpaceX has filled LEO with hundreds of thousands of sats, it's not gonna to easy to catch up in, since it's not like LEO has infinite amount of space for satellites. They're gonna to be joustling for space in LEO before long, and China has a shitty hand for negotiations when they have 1/100th of the launch capacity.
Trying to sugar coat and white washing the problem is how China got into this fucking mess in the first place. If China had actually listened to the critics and actually modernized her rocket fleet back in the 90s, they wouldn't be in this position today. Basically everyone was screaming at China since her rocket program was founded to stop dropping toxic spent rockets stages onto villages, but no, China stronk, China doesn't need listen to the evil western critics, they're just jealous that the LM-2 has a cool orange cloud that will kill you within seconds and China is delivering it to chinese villages for free. No, continue with hypergolic rocket program and don't build coastal launch sites or modern cryogenic rockets until the mid-2010s, fuck those stupid westerners telling us what to do. And look at how it worked out?
Clean cryogenic fuels are not a new technology, the V2 rocket was using Ethanol and liquid oxygen in the 1940s and the first orbital class rocket, the rocket that put Sputnik into space, used kerosene and liquid oxygen. Same for coastal launch sites, not a new concept. It's only China, in her infinite wisdom, that held off developing this technologies until the mid 2010s, for stupid reasons. Despite everyone giving China shit over their toxic rockets being launched inland over populated areas. Which is the main reason why China is struggling to develop reusable rockets today. And other basic infrastructure like launch sites. How could they develop reusable rockets within a reasonable amount of time? They have only a decade experience with cryogenic fueled rockets, compared to America's decades.
If any of you braindead worshiping fanboys were in the 90s, you probably would be cheering China's decision to not listen to all those pesky westerners that constantly criticized China for dropping hypergolic rockets onto villages and encouraged China's decision to hold off modernizing their rockets and launch infrastructure for decades more. In fact, in this very thread, I have had people actually say that China clinging exclusively onto hypergolic rockets for so long was a good thing because they were cheaper, as if they didn't hamper development into the very important field of modern rocketry.
Reminds me of the Jai Hind Indians. So utterly nationalistic and delusional that they cannot accept criticism and think that their country can do no wrong. Well, the reality is that rocket development in China has been a list of stupid mistake after stupid mistake for the last 30 years, ignoring basic development of core technologies and infrastructure despite lots of people telling them that they were dumb until SpaceX finally woke them up with a kick the balls. Stop trying to paint valid criticism as "evil fake new western propaganda"
No country can develop if they ignore all their problems. And if China had actually listened to international criticism on their practice of dropping spent toxic rocket stages inland and acted on their entirely reasonable advice to stop doing it, they would have retired their hypergolic rockets and build modern coastal launch sites 20-30 years ago, and the country would have been much better for it.
