China and the Commercial Space Race

China's rocket company OneSpace was the first private company of the country to launch a rocket designed to go into space. The OS-X rocket was launched from a secret location and reached a hight of 40 kilometres before coming down to earth some 270km away from the launch site. According to the accepted definition of outer space, the rocket only made it 40% of the way there and did not leave Earth’s atmosphere.

^{Image by OneSpace / Hongkong Daily News}

OneSpace is one of a number of Chinese companies participating in the commercial space race. They all want to grab a share of the growing satellite market which is estimated to grow to more than 300 billion dollars a year. The Chinese government recognised the financial potential of the industry. In 2014 they allowed companies in the heavily regulated Chinese market to start developing space technology.

The decision to privatise parts of the space flight market came after more than half a century of a state lead space programme. They realised that in the modern globalised economy it made sense to have private companies selling cargo space on rockets. There remains however the question of how viable this market will be for China. The U.S. government still regards any satellite as a potential weapon. It places severe export restrictions on them. It is unlikely that U.S. companies will be allowed to use Chinese rockets to launch their satellites. On the other hand, the satellite market is growing internationally and there will likely be plenty of customers from other parts of the world.

One of the major driver of the private satellite market is the growing interest in micro satellites. These devices are smaller than a shoebox and relatively cheap to build and launch. This makes it viable for medium-sized businesses and university groups to single handedly finance one of these devices. Something that was unthinkable only a decade ago.

OneSpace says that the launch of the 9 metre tall rocket was a demonstration of the company's capabilities to develop rockets that will carry small satellites into space. It claims that it designed the rocket from scratch. This claim seems questionable. Experts in the field say that it takes at least about 10 years to develop a functional rocket from group up. It is unlikely that OneSpace pulled it off in only four years. In addition the rocket launched last week looks very similar to existing Chinese missiles. So it appears that OneSpace had some help from the Chinese government. This ties in with the fact that OneSpace was created with financial support from the Chinese State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense. Reportedly last week’s flight was even paid for by the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation.

Nonetheless, the launch of the OS-X rocket shows that Chinese companies are on their way to become a part major players in this growing industry.