China's commercial aerospace "takes advantage of the momentum"|decoding commercial aerospace

In recent years, driven by multiple factors such as national policies, technological innovation, market demand, and capital injection, the mainland's commercial aerospace industry has begun to take shape, injecting new momentum into accelerating the development of new productive forces. This year, "commercial aerospace" was written into the government work report for the first time, and its importance as a new growth engine for the mainland's economic development has been further highlighted. Today is the "China Aerospace Day", and from now on, "China Electronics News" will open a column of "Decoding Commercial Aerospace" to gain insight into the growth logic of the core links of the industrial chain and explore a new path for the high-quality development of the mainland's commercial aerospace.

Hainan commercial space launch site under construction

In Yizhuang, Beijing, a two-kilometer radius is home to several private rocket companies with the highest valuations in the Chinese market, where the construction of "Rocket Street" will soon be launched to build a shared manufacturing plant; in Wenchang, Hainan, the No. 2 launch station of the Hainan International Commercial Space Launch Center has not yet been completed, and a number of leading domestic commercial aerospace companies have begun to queue up for launch; in Hebi, Henan, on the satellite production line of the Science and Technology Innovation City, researchers are analyzing the data transmitted back by remote sensing satellites at an altitude of 528 kilometers...... Recently, from rocket launches, satellite manufacturing to application services, the entire commercial aerospace industry chain in mainland China has been driving towards the "fast lane" of development at full speed.

According to the data, in 2023, the number of new enterprises in the mainland's commercial aerospace field will be 113,000, a year-on-year increase of 29%, and private rocket companies will launch 13 times, a year-on-year increase of 160%. This year, "commercial aerospace" as a "new growth engine" was written into the government work report for the first time. In this global "interstellar race", China's power "took advantage of the momentum".

Build satellites like "cars".

Walking into the satellite factory of Time and Space Daoyu in Taizhou Bay New Area, Zhejiang, the flexible robotic arms rotate rapidly, and the production line is non-stop around the clock. It is China's first commercial satellite gigafactory with complete supporting capabilities, and it is also the birthplace of Geely Automobile.

The robotic arm on the production line of the space-time Daoyu satellite factory works flexibly

Liu Yong, deputy general manager of the company, introduced that the factory draws on the large-scale mass production and manufacturing mode of the automobile industry such as intelligence and automation, which can flexibly meet the assembly, integration and testing of different types and specifications of satellites, and the whole process from the order to the satellite factory is controlled in 28 days, and 1~2 satellites can be shipped every day after mass production, with an annual output of up to 500 satellites, and the production cost has decreased by about 45%.

Such satellite manufacturing strength is approaching the world's leading level.

In 2019, Space X (SpaceX) in the United States began to reduce costs through a production model similar to that of an automobile assembly line. At present, the monthly production capacity of the satellite factory in Redmond has reached 120 satellites, and the European One Web company has borrowed from the Airbus aircraft manufacturing line to improve the mass production capacity of commercial satellites, with an average production capacity of 8 satellites per week, and the future goal is to produce 2 satellites a day.

In the development of commercial aerospace, "satellite manufacturing" is the first hurdle to be passed, and the development and production need to meet the characteristics of large quantities, low cost, and short cycles. In recent years, mainland satellite manufacturing enterprises have used the domestic industrial system to develop commercial supply chains and build flexible intelligent satellite production lines, which has greatly reduced the cost of satellite manufacturing, and satellites have changed from "scientific research products" to "industrial products" in the past.

Galaxy aerospace technicians are developing flat-panel satellites

Galaxy Aerospace (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd., the "unicorn" of China's commercial satellite manufacturing, has changed the configuration and adopted the flat stacking type to achieve layer-by-layer stacking launch, which greatly improves the effective use of space for the rocket fairing and reduces the launch cost of a single satellite.

In the view of Wang Runfu, Secretary of the Party Committee and Deputy Director of the 510 Institute of the Fifth Academy of Aerospace Science and Technology Group, it is also necessary to consider the design, manufacturing, testing, and testing of satellites and products from the perspective of multiple satellites and even constellations, which should not only highlight the functional, modular, and intelligent design, but also coordinate the quality and schedule requirements, and build a new commercial aerospace satellite industrialization development system.

The relevant person in charge of Galaxy Aerospace told the "China Electronics News" reporter that the company is developing a next-generation satellite that looks like a "space flying carpet", all of which can form a phased array antenna of more than 100 square meters to realize broadband communication between satellites and mobile phones, while improving signal reception and transmission gain, so that the satellite is more functional when transmitting signals.

In order to overcome the problem of slow microwave data transmission link speed in constellation networking, the Changguang Satellite technical team has fully mastered the high-speed laser communication technology of satellite-to-ground and inter-satellite after several years of research. "If the traditional microwave communication return rate is compared to a single lane, then the use of laser communication means can expand the single lane to ten lanes, or even 100 lanes. Xing Sirui, director of the Changguang Satellite Information and Communication Technology Research Office, said. On the premise of ensuring that the performance indicators of the satellite do not decline, some of the company's satellites have been reduced from 400 kg to 20 kg, and the development cost and launch cost have dropped significantly.

Create "flight-based" transportation capacity

According to the data, the total number of orbital-class space launches on the mainland in 2023 will reach 67, setting a new record, accounting for 30% of the total global launches, ranking second in the world. However, private rockets were launched 13 times, accounting for only about 20% of China's total launch missions. In contrast, the United States, which is in the first place, has launched a total of 116 rounds, of which Space X has launched 98 rounds, and the launch payload mass is about 1,200 tons, accounting for about 80% of the global launch mass.

If the transportation capacity determines the stage of space activities, then the controllable cost is the basic requirement for high-frequency rocket launches.

On April 12, Space X's Falcon 9 set a new world record for rocket reuse

Space X is a model student of cost control. Sun Meiyu, director of the Aerospace Information Research Office of the Institute of Radio Management of CCID Think Tank, said in an interview with a reporter from China Electronics News that Space X emphasizes the reuse and generalization of key components. 80% of the components of the Falcon-1 rocket are designed based on reuse, and at the same time, the follow-up products are common in terms of power system selection, rocket body design, navigation control, etc.

The commercial prospect of the recyclable rocket is broad, it can fly freely between the earth's surface and space, and even stay in orbit for a long time, which is the key to the realization of manned spaceflight and cargo spaceflight, and is also an inevitable choice for environmentally friendly development.

In terms of promoting the launch of reusable rockets, the mainland commercial rocket companies have recently "reported frequent successes" and promoted rockets to become "flight-oriented" carriers.

Vertical recovery is the mainstream practice of commercial rocket companies after the launch of reusable rockets, and Space X and Blue Origin have taken this route. In 2013, the Space X "Grasshopper" rocket successfully achieved vertical take-off and vertical landing, lifting 744 meters into the air during the test and accurately landing on the launch pad. Ten years later, in 2023, the Interstellar Glory Hyperbola-2 reusable liquid oxygen methane verification rocket carried out flight tests at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the mainland, with a second test flight altitude of 343.12m and a lateral displacement of 50m, and the rocket landed smoothly and accurately.

Interstellar Glory Hyperbola-2 vertical take-off and landing and reusable flight test

"Overall, the continent's commercial rocket technology is about 10 years behind Space X, but the relative rate of progress has been aligned with Space X, and we are even a little 'ahead' in some aspects. Jiang Yi, deputy general manager of Interstellar Glory, told the China Electronics News.

To achieve rocket reuse, liquid fuel is a technical choice that cannot be bypassed, and it is the general direction of the development of "reusable" of commercial rockets. In April 2023, Beijing Tianbing Technology Co., Ltd. successfully launched its first liquid-engine launch vehicle, in July, Blue Arrow Space Technology Co., Ltd. successfully launched the world's first liquid oxygen methane launch vehicle, and also tried to use stainless steel as the rocket body material for reusable rockets, which is rare in the world, and in November, Interstellar Glory successfully developed and verified a liquid oxygen methane reusable rocket engine.

"China's commercial rocket industry is about to complete the first decade of the 'from 0 to 1' stage, and 2025 will be a big watershed, and the next step is the era of competition for hard power. Zhang Changwu, chairman and CEO of Blue Arrow Aerospace, said. His company's Suzaku 3 rocket, which is a reusable launch vehicle fueled by liquid oxygen methane, is expected to have its first flight capability in 2025, and its first substage can be reused up to 20 times.

Jiang Yi revealed that the company is making every effort to tackle the medium and large reusable launch vehicle - "Hyperbola 3", and the goal is to achieve the first flight in 2025. Currently, the rocket is undergoing detailed design and production work, and ground tests of various systems will be completed this year. The design index of the number of reuse is not less than 20 times, and the launch price is expected to drop to 3,000 US dollars/kg in the case of repeated use.

According to the vision of Musk, the founder of Space X, if the company's heavy-duty fully reusable rocket "Starship" is successfully put into the market, the launch cost can be reduced to $2 million each time, and 100 people can be sent into space each time, just like a rocket "express". However, not long ago, the "Starship" lost contact after its third successful test flight. This means that the rocket wants to be a space tourism flight plan, there is still a certain distance.

The trillion-yuan application market can be expected

In low-altitude orbits 200 to 2,000 km from Earth, a fierce "battle for the stuck position" is underway. As of April this year, Space X's "Starlink", which has a total of 42,000 satellites, has successfully launched more than 6,000 satellites, successively serving 72 countries and regions, and the number of users has exceeded 2.3 million. According to Musk, Starlink began to make a profit at the end of last year, and the "Kuiper Project", Amazon's satellite Internet project "Kuiper", which plans to deploy more than 3,200 satellites, is also preparing for launch, and the first batch of mass-produced satellites is expected to be launched in the first half of this year.

The space capacity of low orbit is limited, but the commercial space of satellite Internet is unlimited. According to data released by the World Bank, more than 70% of the planet's geography is still covered by 3 billion people without access to the Internet. However, the traditional terrestrial communication backbone network is difficult to lay in harsh environments such as ocean, desert and mountainous areas, and has high operating costs. Therefore, commercial space is not only a commercial activity, but also promotes the implementation of national strategies through commercial operation.

According to Chen Shanzhi, deputy general manager and chief engineer of China Information Technology, the current single-satellite downlink communication capacity of low-earth orbit satellites is about 20G bits per second, and the commercial value is not only to provide connection services for residents in remote areas of the world, but also to serve all walks of life.

In an interview with the reporter of China Electronics News, he said that in the future, with the expansion of industry application needs, low-orbit satellites are expected to provide strong support for industry exploration, environmental monitoring, low-altitude economy, scientific investigation, maritime border defense, disaster early warning, emergency and rescue communications and other industry application scenarios. According to his statistics, on the mainland alone, there are more than 20 million users of fishermen, herdsmen, forest rangers and other people in the border areas who have a need for low-orbit satellite Internet.

This situation also calls for the acceleration of the construction of the Chinese version of "Starlink". As early as 2021, a new state-owned enterprise, China Satellite Network Group Co., Ltd., was established and planned a "GW constellation" plan, that is, about 12,900 satellites will be networked by 2035. The G60 industrial base in Songjiang, Shanghai, has a planned satellite Internet plan with a total of 12,000 satellites, and plans to launch and operate at least 108 satellites in 2024 to provide initial commercial services, all of which will meet the demand for a global broadband network.

In January this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other seven departments issued the "Implementation Opinions on Promoting the Innovation and Development of Future Industries", proposing to lay out research on key technologies such as 6G, satellite Internet, and mobile phone direct connection to satellites, and build a new digital infrastructure that is high-speed and ubiquitous, integrated and interconnected, intelligent, green, safe and efficient.

China Telecom Satellite Corporation and industry chain partners have been launching nearly two years of technical research on mobile phone direct connection satellite products, and the service was officially launched for commercial use in September last year, which is the first time in the world. Since then, Huawei, OPPO, Honor and other mobile phone manufacturers have successively launched two-way satellite communication functions, opening up the integration of terrestrial 4G/5G mobile communication networks and Tiantong satellite networks.

The pace of satellite communication "getting on the bus" has also begun. Changan, Zeekr, Geely Galaxy, Xiaomi and other automobile companies have also reported progress in on-board satellite communication technology achievements or the latest patents.

Satellite Internet Passenger Car ZEEKR 001

The relevant person in charge of China Telecom told the "China Electronics News" reporter that the next step will focus on the application of key products such as "5G + satellite base station" and "5G IoT + satellite" to provide customers with intelligent comprehensive information services that integrate heaven and earth, cloud network integration, and interconnection of all things.

The rise of the satellite application market means that in addition to policy and capital, the endogenous driving force of commercial aerospace development has been activated. Liu Baiqi, chairman of Galaxy Power, has calculated that assuming that the country launches 10,000 satellites, the current average domestic cost of low-orbit communication satellites is 30 million yuan, and the hardware investment has exceeded 100 billion yuan. According to the empirical "10 times theory" in the industry, the application market size formed by satellites is usually more than 10 times the hardware investment, so downstream applications can theoretically easily achieve a "trillion-level market size".

However, this market space has not been fully released. According to Gu Xingfa, a researcher at the Aerospace Information Innovation Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the scale of the current commercial aerospace industry chain is like a "dumbbell", with upstream manufacturing and downstream applications at both ends, and the service transformation in the middle is relatively weak, which restricts the development of downstream applications. Now commercial aerospace out of the circle more rockets, launch pads and satellites, which shows that the development of the "raw materials" have, in order to fully play its commercial value, but also should simultaneously build satellite data popularization and other information value-added service industry chain, release the downstream market space, the dumbbell shape into a trumpet shape.

It needs the support of policy and capital

Two months ago, Shanghai Yuanxin Satellite Technology Co., Ltd. completed a round of financing of 6.7 billion yuan, setting a financing record for China's commercial aerospace industry, reflecting the confidence and expectation of investment institutions in the future development of China's commercial aerospace industry.

In the past two years, the entrepreneurship and financing of the commercial aerospace track have continued to rise. According to the data, the number of new enterprises in the commercial aerospace field in 2023 will be 113,000, a year-on-year increase of 29% compared with 2022, and the financing amount of the commercial aerospace track in 2023 will be 10.3 billion yuan, and the number of financings will be 66.

"Commercial aerospace is an industry with a relatively long R&D cycle and large capital investment, which requires a large and continuous capital investment. At the same time, it is also necessary to integrate upstream and downstream high-quality resources and technological innovation to absorb more R&D talents. Jiang Yi told reporters.

Commercial aerospace has become a "sweet spot" for high-value financing, which is also closely related to the support of national policies and the development trend of the industry. The 2023 Central Economic Work Conference proposed to build a number of strategic emerging industries such as biomanufacturing, commercial aerospace, and low-altitude economy. During the two sessions of the National People's Congress this year, commercial aerospace was written into the government work report for the first time as a "new growth engine", proposing to "vigorously promote the construction of a modern industrial system, accelerate the development of new quality productivity, actively cultivate emerging industries and future industries, and actively build new growth engines such as biomanufacturing, commercial aerospace, and low-altitude economy".

Mi Lei, founding partner of Zhongke Chuangxing, found that most of the investors in commercial aerospace since 2024 are "national prefix" funds and local government industrial funds. In the early stages, the capital that supported commercial space was mainly venture capital funds.

As one of the key parks of Hainan Free Trade Port, Wenchang International Space City undertakes the task of "building a major scientific and technological innovation base in the aerospace field." In the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of High-tech Industries in Hainan Province", Hainan proposed that Wenchang International Space City will aim at international standards, take aerospace science and technology as the leading, and focus on the development of space launch and supporting services, aerospace high-end product research and development and manufacturing, aerospace big data development and application, international aerospace exchanges and cooperation, and other "aerospace +" fields.

The government industry fund runs into the market. In order to build a 10-billion-level aerospace satellite industry cluster, in March, Zhengzhou Airport Economic Comprehensive Experimental Zone issued an announcement on the public solicitation of sub-fund management institutions of Zhengzhou Airport Industrial Investment Guidance Fund, mentioning that industrial sub-funds will set up various industrial investment funds around aerospace satellites and other industrial fields and their subdivisions in principle.

Shanghai G60 Satellite Internet Industry Base

The "Shanghai Action Plan for Promoting the Development of Commercial Aerospace and Building a Highland for the Space Information Industry (2023-2025)" clearly proposes to improve the industrial ecology from special funds, industrial funds to support policies. Establish multi-structure industry funds and improve relevant industrial support policies.

From the point of view of objective laws, the rocket research and development process will inevitably experience ups and downs and even failure, I hope that the society will have a certain tolerance and patience for innovation and failure, rather than staying away after the launch failure, the change of thinking is the need for the vigorous development of the industry.

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