Why Does China Keep Copying SpaceX Starships?

They are planning to make a Starship rip-off to make a whole fleet.

July 2021 has been a phenomenal month for the billionaire boys’ club space adventures. In less than the span of a week, Richard Branson and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos have travelled to suborbital space in spacecraft made by their own companies. Not to be outdone, Elon Musk’s Starship program, which threatens to overshadow these tourism achievements, has already won a $2.6 billion NASA contract for developing the Human Landing System for the NASA Artemis project that will land people on the Moon. One country may be feeling left out of the space race with all these major accomplishments and has been incessantly copying the Starship program to follow their own space agenda. Can you guess who? It’s China, of course. Like Musk’s Starship program whose ultimate aim is to send people to Mars, China too has set some huge targets for the space race.

It even has its own SpaceX counterpart
The biggest resemblance to SpaceX’s Starship is China's very first project called LinkSpace, which was developed by Link Space Aerospace Technology Inc. LinkSpace is China’s first private rocket firm in Shenzhen. It was founded in 2014 andis led by CEO Hyu Zhenyu. Word has it that LinkSpace could be a stronger contender to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 in the near future. The company has claimed on its own social media that it will launch suborbital space flights 20 years from now. One of the ways LinkSpace proposes to achieve this is by using a reusable vertical take-off and landing rocket very similar to the Starship vehicle. News of the concept was launched on April 24th, National Space Day. Yes, China even has a dedicated space day now.

They are planning to make a Falcon Heavy rip-off
As if the Starship rip-off wasn’t enough, reports are out that China is also contemplating plans for a very large rocket, the Long March 9. This is a booster very similar to the design of SpaceX's Super Heavy booster, which will serve as the first stage of Starship. The reason why China may just be keeping its eye on SpaceX is perhaps due to the fact that it can avoid employing its own think tank or R&D team for new space concepts. All of SpaceX’s technology is consistent with China’s long term space goals, including trying to become a leading space power by 2045. That being said, the timeline might be a bit off by fifteen years or so, since Elon Musk has set his goal for Mars before 2030.

Why Does China Keep Copying SpaceX Starships?

sn20 toastybusiness china spacex sn17

[guzmano]

Answer - cause that’s how they do everything!

[themanhimself]

I think its somewhat unfair what you consider ripping off. For instance, noone has authority or rights to the industry of point to point transport. its a fundamental service that rockets will do well to provide

[themanhimself]

My question is why did the world need an entrepreneur and engineer like elon to kickstart this industry race? Maybe it only feels like that because media is speeding up and is monitoring space x so closely

[javedamin]

China is definitely saving ton of money, time & resources in R&D

[Schmitty]

I gave up counting the inaccuracies, there were too many.

[trevorgough]

Immittaion is the sincerest form of flattery...