Is China’s commercial rocket now cheaper than Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9?

A Kinetica-2 Y1 carrier rocket, also known as the Lijian-2 Y1, with three satellites onboard blasts off from a launch centre in northwestern China on Monday.

Photo: Xinhua China’s commercial space sector has reached a cost milestone as its new rocket debuts for less than the ticket price of the latest SpaceX Falcon 9 reusable launch vehicle.

The Kinetica-2 Y1 carrier rocket, also known as the Lijian-2 Y1, took off on its inaugural flight on Monday before delivering three satellites into orbit, including a prototype commercial cargo spacecraft and a satellite to function as a mini-orbiting space lab.

The rocket developed by Chinese commercial space firm CAS Space – established by the Chinese Academy of Sciences – was launched from the commercial innovation pilot zone at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwestern China.

It cost 30,000 yuan (US$4,350) per kilogram of payload capacity to launch the Kinetica-2, according to Yang Haoliang, the firm’s vice-president and chief commander of the rocket.

Yang said on Monday that the craft’s current non-reusable launch cost was about the same as Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 reusable rocket at US$5,000 per kg, according to Star Market Daily, a financial news subsidiary of the state-owned Shanghai Media Group.

This figure refers to a recent Falcon 9 ride-share price, a retail model in which multiple customers split the cost of a single flight to launch their payloads.

SpaceX does not disclose its internal cost per launch.

However, the price for Falcon 9’s small satellite ride-share programme rose to US$7,000 per kg this year, according to the latest base entry price on SpaceX’s website.

In 2023, SpaceX said the ride-share cost was expected to rise by US$500 per kg a year to account for inflation, according to SatBase, a US-based global spacecraft marketplace.

On its website on Monday, CAS Space said “driving down the cost of access to space remains a central pillar” of its mission. “To achieve this, our space pros are actively advancing an integrated, bundled booster recovery scheme that will enable the reuse of all Kinetica-2 first-stage boosters.” Yang said Kinetica-2’s cost to launch per kilogram could be further halved if the rocket became reusable, with rocket recovery tests planned for later this year.

The 53-metre (174-foot) tall liquid-fuel rocket is China’s first launch vehicle to use a common booster core configuration, a modular structure in which the rocket’s main body and its side boosters ha

原文链接: 南华早报