China's Space Program Thread II

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tiancai8888

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CrazyHorse said:
I’m curious as to why these engines aren’t using a staged combustion cycle. The yf-100 series are of that type, while the engines on the LM 12 instead operate on a less advanced gas generator cycle. Do they not think the yf-100 would be capable of relighting?
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IMO the reason is to reduce the cost including the refurbishment cost
 
Blitzo

Blitzo

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Blitzo said:
Some thoughts on CZ-12B, recent medium lifters, and other PRC rocket engines and the future.

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CZ-12B is said to have started development in September 2024 with its design approved in March 2025, and even though it is a somewhat conservative kerolox design, the speed of its emergence, and using relatively new engines (YF-102 is somewhat recent even if it's not cutting edge SOTA), and in a relatively mature fitout including landing legs and gridfins, and all in a clean sheet rocket fuselage/diameter (different to CZ-12, CZ-12A), does point to a fair bit of design and industrial capacity that exists if other bottlenecks can be met.

With various other reusable medium lifters flying or due to fly (and if even only a fraction of them achieve high cadence launch/recovery), that will likely prove a solid foundation for the next step of progressing to proliferation of heavy and even super heavy lifters.

Needless to say methalox FFSC engines are the future, and afaik there are three major efforts ongoing at the moment, all in the 200t+ thrust class

- YF-215, by CASC, also the intended engine for CZ-9's first stage that has been seen pretty consistently for last couple of years. While CZ-9 is intended to fly post 2030, the engine itself may be a different matter. 200t+ class
- BF-20, by landspace, and landspace have indicated a desire to develop a super heavy of their own using BF-20 circa 2030, 220t
- FY-200V, by JZJY (who have developed LY-70 that is used on CZ-12A), which is a 300t class engine

Which are three methalox FFSC in the 200t+ class by pretty credible entities (not including a couple others by startups lacking in detail or record).



What this means, is that CZ-9 probably isn't the only heavy/super-heavy to expect in the next half decade or so (even if one considers its status as "not fully funded" which in PRC space parlance can mean lots of things), and we can probably expect the various 200t+ methalox FFSC engines being developed to end up having applications on other rockets that could emerge somewhat briskly without excess leadup time in the way CZ-12B did.

For example we know CASC has looked at a 7m, reusable 50t LEO rocket powered by 13x methalox FFSC engines in the 200t class (likely YF-215), in addition to a 10m, reusable 100t LEO rocket powered by 30x such engines (basically CZ-9, if not directly CZ-9) itself.
(Picture at bottom)

So overall, I wouldn't be too surprised if a handful of heavy or even super heavy rockets emerge on a faster "turn around time" than CZ-9 in future, in terms of "public being aware of its consideration/initial investigations --> first launch"... and it will be entirely depend on the "commoditization" of the upcoming generation of methalox engines.


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TheRathalos said:
List of recent and upcoming new Chinese launch Vehicles as of June 2026.

This list isn't 100% exhaustive, some redundant variants are excluded, as well as projects that we haven't heard news of in more than 12-18 months. But it should give an idea of the more than 80 launch vehicles projects in China.

index.php
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Some additional thoughts on top of these two posts (the excellent chart there being some good examples to keep track of)...

One of the pertinent points on the PRC launch industry a while back in private conversation with someone whose opinion I respect (and who many here know of, and who is technically still on this forum), is that the PRC actually has quite a breadth and variety of launch providers in terms of state institutes, companies, expertise/human resources, and none of them are quite big enough to suck up all of the resources that dominates the industry yet.

In the near term (recent past to now), it means there is no single hugely dominant player like SpaceX, but it does offer lots of other players to simultaneously grow, especially when facilitated by commoditizing of things like engines and infrastructure.

In the US, while there are of course other companies that compete or intend to compete with SpaceX, the degree of existing vendor lock is not insubstantial.

Lack of clear dominance in the PRC by a single player also does offer some ability for multiple to grow at once. (And this isn't just excusing overall PRC industry backwardness, after all the whole industry until recently had not even mastered non-hypergolic liquid first stages)

Given the ambitious plans by various players, as summarised well by Rathalos' chart, as well as high demand for launch capacity (given mega constellation projects), and a pace of new reusable medium lifters emerging in recent months, I suspect it may not be too long until movement on heavy lifters become more visible.


It is probably too extreme to compare the trajectory with electric vehicles, but it wasn't too long ago that Tesla was the single most dominant EV player in the world in terms of technology, finish, marketing, and scale, while most PRC auto players were middling with rather backwards EVs at best.
However mastery and proliferation of key technologies enabled a large scale groundswell among many diverse players to credibly arrive, even though Tesla had about a decade of near unchallenged dominance in its product category.

The same situation probably won't duplicate in the same manner for space launch, but the emergence of multiple credible launch providers alongside continued high competitiveness of SpaceX and some other US launch providers, may occur.
 
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