Overnight, China successfully launched a new medium-class rocket to orbit — Long March 12B. Looks like they gave no airspace notice (!), and carried suspiciously Starlink-shaped satellites to orbit... all on their first try. China's space industry is catching up to ours, fast.

(The landing legs were reportedly just decoration for this vehicle, so they didn't attempt to land the booster, but the rocket/engines were designed to be reusable.)

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literally same shape as falcon haha

both rockets are: ‣ reusable* ‣ kerolox fuel ‣ single core ‣ 2 stages ‣ 9 engines first stage, 1 engine second stage ‣ ~20,000 kg to LEO * they have to prove it first

ctrl c; ctrl v don't mess with success

Impressive they did this with only 12b params

my personal agi benchmark is "one shot to LEO"

Fast - sarcasm? 16 years after the first Falcon 9 achieved orbit.

honest question: would they share the video if it failed? I think I recall seeing videos of failed launches from China in the past

yeah, lots of glorious failure videos escape China

How reusable is it

only theoretically reusable, so far

awwww! What a cute little rocket!

20,000 kg to LEO, roughly as much as Falcon 9

Fair enough. It just looks so tiny lol

Literally temu falcon 9

Stealing IP and design schematics via 3D imaging after thousands of successful launches from American soil doesn’t count as their “first try” guy They launched a temu-brand falcon 9 Big whoop

Carried twenty (plus?) satellites for their Qianfan constellation, which is one of their domestic Starlink alternatives

Gonna be fun when they have thousands of starlink copies in the sky by provide zero data on their location or speed to the rest of the world

It makes no sense for China to reinvent the wheel. They just wait for America to do all the r&d, make all the mistakes, then copy/paste and iterate on what works.

Innovation of original ideas ideas can never be caught up with. The Chinese education and political system is premised on discouraging and ostracizing dissent and novel ideas - as they are a threat to it. It is easier to copypasta others to avoid that risk in China domestically.

'Starlink-shaped' in deployment/trajectory characteristics that can be observed? or can we actually see details of their shape when in orbit?

Literal shape. Reports that it's also flat-packable, with one big unfurling solar array.

Well, no one sane of mind ever imagined it would be otherwise. Once SpaceX showed reusable rockets were a possibility, it was only a matter of time before many people copy it. It took only 10 years.

They didn't do anything new here. They didn't recover/land anything. This is the same old China rocketry - burn cash and hope that's enough to catch up.

They launched an unreusable rocket. Something US has been doing for near a century. Wow they're catching up so fast

Fast? Not sure how you quantify fast unless you exclude SpaceX.

Interessant ist das sich die chinesischen Raketen nicht selbst in die Luft sprengen, kann also nicht von den USA kopiert worden sein.

The problem for China is it will not be trusted as a global carrier for data and voice, for fear it is listening to or exfiltrating data from clients.

"China's space industry is catching up to ours, fast."

Is you think China is “catching up” to SpaceX you are deluded.

LMAO They aren't even close

As fast as copy and paste!!

Why do you say overnight? This has been known and on radar of anyone following the industry for at least a few years.

I believe they are already head Just a matter of time

No airspace notice is so “China”

The seriously only important thing is extent of reusability. Anyone can launch a rocket today. But: 5x cheaper means u can do dominate an industry (F9). 500x cheaper means u can transform a civilization (Starship).

Good job. Better than landing on a village!

i just wanna say this. GDP used in space economy: - Italy 0.1% - France 0.1% - USA 0.27% - China 2.7%

You mean they are copying up fast? Lol

Comparable F9 v1.1. Expendable only. No stated GEO capability. That puts LM-12b 10-12 years behind SpaceX once they get this in actual service. This is literally an order of magnitude behind Starship / Superheavy, which is in a similar stage of testing but with 10x lift.

You could have just used the headline "China did a satellite launch."

China is a formidable competitor in addition to a thief of IP. 😂 they shouldn’t be underestimated.

Didn’t they have a rocket like this blow up in a mountain a year or two ago?