China’s New Heavy Lift Rocket Looks a Whole Lot Like SpaceX’s Starship
China is about to get a big new rocket, and it bears a striking resemblance to a certain American competitor’s design.
Last month, a picture surfaced of the long-anticipated Long March 9 (LM-9), a gargantuan rocket capable of delivering more than 140 tons of cargo to low Earth orbit. That makes the LM-9 comparable to the most powerful rockets in the world, the United States’ Space Launch System and NASA’s erstwhile Saturn V, though even those are significantly outdone by SpaceX’s Starship, which is projected to launch a staggering 100 metric tons to orbit.
But the Chinese rocket appears to borrow from Starship’s design. The images of the LM-9 depict a stainless-steel-skinned rocket, similar to Starship, and equipped with multiple engines, though its engines will use chemical propulsion unlike the SpaceX Starship’s fully reusable, methane-fueled engine. That’s not necessarily a surprising detail—in general, SpaceX isn’t shy about adapting its existing ideas, and even though it’s designed by China, the new rocket does show that engineers and scientists from different countries are converging upon a similar conclusion, based on the common design principles for launching cargo into space.
For example, the large reusable first stage on the Long March 9 and its smaller upper stage are clearly similar to the SpaceX Starship’s concept of the upper stage sitting atop a bigger stage that will help launch and return back to Earth to be reused. This similar structure is what enables the design for launching extremely large payloads into space and brings significant cost benefits by lowering the launching price. This is a fundamental change for rocketry, since for many years now, rockets have primarily relied on non-reusable technology, discarding the majority of their structures, resulting in hefty launch costs.
It’s important to note that, for now, the LM-9 is only being officially touted as capable of lunar exploration, putting astronauts on the Moon, and eventually taking astronauts to a future space station.
Still, it’s no coincidence that China, a fast-growing space power, is building a large launch vehicle. These capabilities will give the nation the ability to move heavy equipment and people across long distances and into orbit. And as the space race heats up, you can expect to see many more innovations coming from China in the coming years.
What else might China have up its sleeve?
Though the space agency’s long-term aspirations remain unclear, the nation is rumored to be developing other interesting technologies and exploring the feasibility of various ventures that can be applied to other planets, like developing technologies and tools that will be needed for a sustained human presence on the Moon, and for a lunar outpost, perhaps as an initial stepping-stone for a Martian colony. While the Moon remains a tempting goal, the US and Chinese space programs have their sights set on a larger prize, the red planet Mars. There’s increasing speculation about what China is planning to do with the new technologies it is building, like what technologies the LM-9 might deliver to Mars, and how the lunar outposts would be implemented.
The first LM-9 flight is projected to take place within this decade. In that timeframe, a fully developed LM-9 may make more clear its real-world capabilities, the challenges in its deployment, and exactly what Chinese engineers have in store for the next leap into the stars. Will the LM-9 serve a crucial role in fulfilling ambitions for more long-term goals? We’ll have to wait and see. This is just the beginning.
