BEIJING, July 10 — The story of reusable rocketry is no longer a one-nation show. For years, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 has dominated the landscape, its boosters landing back on Earth with a regularity that has become almost routine. Now, China is writing its own chapter, and the debut of the Long March 10B marks a significant step in that narrative.
The Long March 10B employs a vertical takeoff and vertical landing architecture—the same fundamental approach that made the Falcon 9 a game-changer when it first achieved a successful booster landing in December 2015. At its heart, this is a story of technological convergence, but the details reveal two very different rockets on parallel paths.
The Falcon 9’s first stage is powered by nine Merlin 1D engines, while the Long March 10B uses a cluster of liquid oxygen/kerosene engines, believed to be from the YF-100 series. The payload capacities tell their own tale: the Falcon 9 can lift 22.8 metric tons to low Earth orbit in its expendable configuration, and 15.6 metric tons when flying reusable. The Long March 10B, by contrast, can deliver about 14 metric tons to the same orbit.
For those involved in China’s space program, the numbers represent progress, not parity. The Falcon 9 has completed over 300 booster landings as of July 2024.
The Long March 10B has one. That single landing, however, is a milestone that China’s earlier experimental rockets—including the Long March 8R and a reusable test vehicle launched in 2020—helped make possible. Both rockets use grid fins and landing legs to guide their controlled descent, but the Long March 10B’s landing system is built on the foundation of those domestic tests.
What unfolded next is a matter of endurance and ambition. The Long March 10B’s first stage is designed for up to 10 reuses. The Falcon 9’s first stage is certified for 15.
That gap, while real, is narrowing. China is closing the technology gap with the United States in reusable rocketry, and the Long March 10B is the most tangible evidence yet.
The stakes are clear: in the race to lower the cost of access to space, every successful landing matters, and every new entrant changes the calculus. The comparison between these two rockets is not merely academic. It highlights a broader shift in the global space industry, where competition is driving innovation at a pace few predicted a decade ago.
For the engineers at China’s launch facilities, the work is just beginning. The Long March 10B has proven it can fly and land.
The question now is how many times it can do so again.
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