Dear friends and followers, fellow space enthusiasts, As you may have noticed, China Aerospace Blog has been rather inactive over the past year, going from one blog post per month in 2018-2020 to barely one article over the past year. The main reason is the time I have had to invest into China space/aviation blogging has increasingly shrinked, and I have had to prioritize. Therefore I have decided to definitely discontinue China Aerospace Blog as a blogging platform. ¨Previous posts will remain for another year or two (I’ll leave the website as is). If you are interested in further China space ..read more

Introduction You may have heard of Beidou, the Chinese satnav constellation and rival of the American GPS, Russian Glonass, and European Galileo. 2020 marked a major milestone for Beidou, with the completion of the constellation deployment on June 23 2020, on board a Long March 3B rocket. This deep dive article discusses the development of Beidou over the past 20 years and its strategic importance for China. Fig. 1 – The characteristic puff of orange smoke (Nitrogen Tetroxide) during the lift-off of a Long March 3B on June 23rd (credits: Global Times)Historical perspective The idea of having a ..read more

In one of the most influential entrepreneurship books of the last 10 years, The Lean Startup by Eric Ries describes the necessity to test, iterate, and pivot until ultimately reaching a product that fits the market. Chinese tech companies have shown us that they excel at this practice (see the history of a company like Meituan [1]), and it increasingly seems like Chinese NewSpace companies, notably constellations, have adopted this type of flexibility. The Lean Startup, a highly recommended read A year ago, I wrote an article on (the many) Chinese constellation projects out there, discussing t ..read more

Earlier this month, my friend Blaine Curcio and I had the opportunity to interview Lan Tianyi, the CEO of Ultimate Blue Nebula and SpaceKey, two Beijing-based firms focusing on space/satellite industry consulting. Having worked in the industry from within the state-owned apparatus (CAST), the startup perspective, and now as a consulting company, Tianyi is really a wealth of knowledge on Chinese space. And fortunately for us and the followers of the Dongfang Hour podcast, Tianyi accepted to discuss Chinese satcom constellations with us. In a previous article published a year ago on China Aerosp ..read more

Introduction In June 2020, CAAC drew an annual portrait of China’s aviation industry, through its annual Aviation Industry Report, covering commercial, cargo, and general aviation. In this blog post, we’ll focus essentially on commercial passenger transportation. While published in 2020, this report is based on figures of 2019, thus drawing a very different and positive picture of an industry that has recently suffered dearly during the past 6 months of Covid-19. The report remains nevertheless useful to appreciate the dynamics of the post-epidemic aviation market. Also, the flow of passengers ..read more

Regular followers of China Aerospace Blog may have noticed it over the past month, a new “Dongfang Hour Podcast” link has appeared on the navigation bar. After weeks of working on the project and recording the first episodes, I am pleased to officially present the project to China Aerospace Blog followers & visitors. In a nutshell, Dongfang Hour is a podcast dedicated to the Chinese aeronautical, space and technology industries. It is co-hosted by Blaine Curcio, founder of Orbital Gateway Consulting in Hong-Kong and affiliate consultant at Euroconsult, and myself. The format of the podcast ..read more

This article is the second and final part of a two-piece blog post by China Aerospace Blog on Chinese spaceplanes. The first part discussed China’s historical approach to reusability, and more specifically to spaceplanes. This part extends the discussion by reviewing current Chinese spaceplane projects, and provides a map. Mapping Current Chinese Spaceplane Projects Below is a map of all Chinese spaceplane projects, including abandoned projects and ones currently under development. Both private and state-owned company initiatives were examined, as well as unconfirmed secret programs. For the l ..read more

This piece is the first of a two-part blog post on Chinese spaceplanes. It sets the context of spaceplanes in China, and goes over past attempts to make such vehicles. Part 2 will provide an analysis of current projects under development from Chinese state-owned and private companies. Table of Contents 1 – Introduction to spaceplanes 2 – China’s take on the matter: spaceplane, boosters, capsule? 3 – China’s Early Space Industry and Project 863 4 – The 2000s and 2010s: hints of a renewed interest towards spaceplanes Introduction to spaceplanes A spaceplane is defined as a reusable spacecraft us ..read more

Note: the figures in this blog post come from FutureAerospace’s latest Commercial Space Investment Race report. In this article I have translated and commented on them. Original report in Mandarin is readily available on the web, for example at [1] or [2]. Yes, China’s NewSpace is growing. But Who is Backing Them? Space industry observers are generally aware that a very significant amount of investment has been pouring into China’s New Space, which consists currently of anything between 50 to 100 companies depending on the definition of “NewSpace”. In 2018 alone, 2.1 billion RMB was invested i ..read more

This is the second and final blog post of a 2-part article series on Beijing’s new Daxing International Airport. While Part 1 was a general overview of the airport and its integration into the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei metropolitan area, Part 2 focuses on the impact on Chinese airlines. Beijing: Air China’s Home Base Fig.1 – Boeing 747-400 landing, during a Beijing-Shenzhen flight (Credit: © Jay Lee 2019) Although there are over 30 domestic airlines in China, the landscape is dominated by 3 large state-owned airline groups: Air China Group, China Southern Group, and China Eastern Group (see a pre ..read more