Can China's electric rocket launcher make Elon Musk's chemical rockets obsolete?
On July 10, China’s Long March 10B placed its payload into orbit before its first-stage booster returned to Earth and was captured by a net on an offshore platform. It was China’s first controlled recovery of an orbital-class rocket booster, making it only the second country after the United States to achieve the feat.
The recovery brought China closer to the reusable-rocket model pioneered commercially by Elon Musk ’s SpaceX . But another Chinese experiment points to a more radical ambition: reducing the need for rockets to burn vast quantities of fuel during lift-off.
The recovery brought China closer to the reusable-rocket model pioneered commercially by Elon Musk ’s SpaceX . But another Chinese experiment points to a more radical ambition: reducing the need for rockets to burn vast quantities of fuel during lift-off.
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