Interesting. But if the private players prove their worth and become very reliable and competent wouldn't it cause a conflict of intrests with state companies who have a quasi monopoly on launches so far?
Afterall, no company likes unwanted competition much less helping that competition thrive. Its like China mobile and UNICOM being told private players will be allowed in their industry to compete with them, im sure rhey wont be happy about that as their market share will reduce.
Afterall State launch companies like CASC/SAST etc all have commercial arms they have set up to compete and keep their market share. I think private players will be more in demand or have more opportunities with private projects launches like Geely space constellation for example. State projects might be more harder for them to compete with more established state players. Since this are more strategic for the government.
Anyway, competition is always good since it also pushes state players to up their game and innovate even faster and take more risks.
Don’t interpret it blindly. China’s commercial rocket companies are basically the second-tier or third-tier teams of China’s national team, all with a state-owned capital background. The sources of funds basically have no money from private enterprises.
The core reason why China develops commercial rocket companies is that too many engineering talents have been cultivated in China’s aerospace field, and they have already overflowed. State-owned enterprises need to refresh their staff, letting some capable people go out (upper-level positions are limited, and a large number of people cannot be promoted for a long time, which is easy to trigger negative emotions), and at the same time, absorb a batch of fresh blood who master new technologies and new methods and have low personnel costs into the system.
In addition, since 2015, the United States has a national policy intended to promote commercial aerospace enterprises to occupy the resources of extraterrestrial bodies (actually, it is private enterprises staking out land, and then the state using administrative means to safeguard the interests of private enterprises, achieving de facto occupation of resources of extraterrestrial bodies, and evading some existing international legal constraints; this is the real goal of the Artemis program). China’s aerospace recognized this very early and is very alert. Therefore, China also wants to gain an advantage in this game. So they made the layout very early.
So fundamentally, there is no competitive relationship of the kind you think (for high-level Chinese strategists, this is a matter of one being a biological son and the other being an adopted son raised by oneself; in ancient Chinese history, the existence of an adopted son was to serve as a credible tool person to better assist the development of the biological son), although it is true that most ordinary people who do not understand national strategy indeed guess blindly. Seeing a bunch of so-called enthusiasts on Weibo blindly talking nonsense about this kind of competitive relationship.
The Chinese government wants to create a bigger market cake, a larger and fairer income distribution mechanism and competition mechanism, survival of the fittest, to promote the healthy development of technology.
The Chinese government is almost the only government on this planet that possesses a millennial historical perspective and can plan and execute on a long-term cycle of a 50-100 year scale.
On this time scale, SpaceX's kind of localized leadership is fundamentally meaningless.
The reason why I have consistently said that SpaceX is no threat, and is even the tragedy of American aerospace, is that I observe and think about the future from the same perspective as the Chinese government's technology strategy. You and many others focus only on local advantages and immediate advantages, and simply cannot see the world layout 10-20 years from now. The problem with SpaceX is that many of the things he is doing now will be errors 10-20 years from now. You just have to look at his long-term planning to see clearly.
Let me say it again, many people look at the future from the current perspective and feel that SpaceX's achievements are unclimbable mountains. For example, SpaceX's reusable rocket technology maturity is very high now, capable of launching over 170 times a year. While China has not yet achieved a single VTVL rocket reuse. It will take a cycle of about 10 years to catch up with SpaceX. And then they scream that China has lost, that China is doomed, that China should surrender.
I will just smile. Aerospace is a human industrial development direction that will exist for decades, hundreds, or even thousands of years in the future. What does a short-term lead of 10-30 years count for? Only the old monsters that can survive in the long river of time count as true success.
SpaceX has a pile of troubles, just look at its current valuation and the funds it wants to raise to know.
Think about a few pieces of information.
Now the valuation for its IPO is 1.5 trillion USD, and it requires raising more than 30 billion USD (releasing 2% equity in the IPO). Remember that half a year ago its valuation was still 400 billion USD. In 2023-2024 it was just over 120-180 billion USD.
Isn't SpaceX very profitable? Why does it need financing of more than 30 billion USD? Do you know how many billions of funds he got in a single financing before? Why is it that every time he finances, the equity released is basically 2-3%? Now the outside world all knows that the US stock market is probably going to have problems...
