The rocket is quoted as having a cargo capacity of ten tonnes. How much do they think each launch will cost? If it's $1 million, then that is $100 per kg. Is there anyone willing to pay that much money for same day delivery?
There are four other Chinese companies who say they are close to launching reusable rockets too, and expect to launch in 2025/26 – iSpace, LandSpace, Deep Blue Aerospace, Galactic Energy – though the last is only talking about a reusable booster.
Also interesting – the publicly disclosed funding for this company is less than $100 million. I'm assuming they had more they did not disclose. If they managed to do this for $100 million, that seems very impressive.
China completes first sea-based vertical landing of reusable rocket
China's Taobao working with startup on deliveries by reusable rocket
A Chinese start-up has successfully launched and landed a reusable rocket for Alibaba's global 1-hour delivery goal.
byu/lughnasadh inFuturology
15 Comments
Yayyy now we can add onto the space litter with e-commerce!
Their plan is to launch a ballistic missile to deliver “cheap Chinese products” to the cities of the world in under an hour? That is the stupidest fucking idea I have ever heard of in my life. It is very obviously just a way to try to get the us market to pay for the missile program designed to kill them.
The US was doing this nearly 100 years ago.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_mail
Yeah we cook the earth super quick with green house gases if we do that. It’s just hype
There should be regulations about this. Who the fuck needs a 1 hour delivery ? Almost nobody, and if you do it means you planned poorly.
On the other hand who needs to be able to breathe clean air that hasn’t been polluted needlessly ? Everyone.
Who the fuck wants a rocket shot at their house from china with a temu payload 😂😂😂😂
Honestly as someone who lives in a remote country thats only double what it already costs.
And the current method takes weeks to months.
There defs would be a market in some places.
I’m not sure it’ll ever happen, but yes there’s a market. As an example I’m waiting for a part right now from China. Unfortunate series of events destroyed two in quick succession and the back up spare turns out to be faulty. The part’s £50k and weighs about 10kg. It’s costing us north of five grand a day in downtime so paying a grand to have it right now would be a no brainer. It’s costing a few hundred FedEx anyway.
On the bright side, if they actually got this to work, there’s no bright side.
We obviously can’t tell China not to do that, but what we can do is simply prohibit the landing of such “delivery” anywhere in our territory – and we simply should do that, because this is like the most environmentally stupid thing imaginable.
There’s obviously tonnes of issues to work out in terms of uh, I don’t want expensive shipments to end up in orbit or burn up on re-entry, but $100/kg is nothing. There’s plenty of applications for super-expensive and super-fast delivery. Does anyone think rich people wouldn’t fucking orgasm from the idea of paying triple just to be able to say that the fancy sushi they ate in NYC was auctioned in Tokyo the same morning?
If this shit works out I can see there being a whole new market for super-perishables becoming a prestige thing to consume outside of their production areas. Soft-shell lobsters, Cashew apples, Imbu fruit, Toddy palm juice…
For precious cargo I’ve been involved in handling, I’ve seen anything from $10kUSD+ for rush delivery of temperature controlled drug substances and $30kUSD+ fees for secured and insured shipments of gemstones/watches/jewelry, etc… to private charter jets for transporting human organs for transplantation. Don’t know what the last item will cost you currently but… a lot.
Even if they are successful in this. How many countries will allow a Chinese rocket into their airspace ?
I mean it’s start-up. 90% of start-ups is absolutely bullshit idea which cannot work but allows you to produce plethora of various patents which then can be sold for large sum of money.
100$/kg is viable if they are sending the newest iPhone,nand flash chips,,cpus,gpus, basically anything that costs like 3000+$/kg to buy.However cargo ship and normal cargo planes are a lot cheaper
Yeah sure, I want my 1$ chinese plastic kitchen tools to be sent by ballistic missiles at the cost of 10$. Awesome.