Private companies key players in space exploration

The trial of Tianlong 3 — a two-stage kerosene-liquid oxygen rocket developed by Beijing Tianbing Technology — failed in Gongyi, Henan province, on Sunday. The company apologized on Tuesday for the accident.

Most private space enterprises were founded after November 2014, when the State Council started encouraging private capital to participate in space infrastructure construction for civil use and later stressed official support for commercial satellites. That's 13 years after Musk founded SpaceX.

Private capital has also caught up with the small satellite launching subsector since then. The OS-X6B suborbital rocket as a test rocket was successfully launched in February 2021, Hyperbola 1 sent a satellite into orbit in December 2023, while Tianlong 2, the model before the failed Tianlong 3, had sent a satellite into the 500-kilometer high sun synchronous orbit in April 2023.

It is good to see that State-owned enterprises and private enterprises can join hands in the march toward space and their achievements in the past eight years are there for all to see. The company is obliged to draw lessons from the failure, which should not hinder private enterprises' participation in the country's space cause.

Failures are almost inevitable in any nation or any company's march toward space. SpaceX itself has set many precedents. There is much that the private astronautical sector can learn from its US counterpart, such as talent flow and exchanges between SOEs and private enterprises, plus other measures that enable them to join their hands firmly for a flourishing future.