China used a giant net to land a reusable rocket. Does the idea have legs?
China’s successful recovery of a reusable rocket has sparked debate among aerospace experts over whether its unconventional approach could actually cut the cost of reaching space.
On Friday, the country’s Long March-10B became the first orbital-class rocket outside the United States to return to Earth and be recovered intact. The rocket’s first-stage booster deployed four hooks as it descended and was then caught by a giant net on a ship waiting in the South China Sea.
SpaceX and Blue Origin do not use nets – they use what is known as landing legs to recover their reusable boosters.
The Chinese approach eliminates heavy landing gear, making the rocket lighter and allowing it to carry more payload into orbit, according to its developer, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT).
But neither the CALT nor state media have disclosed the cost of building and operating the vessel used to recover the rocket booster.
The advanced gear used by the 144-metre (472ft), 25,000-tonne Linghangzhe ranges from a high-precision dynamic positioning system that keeps the ship in place at sea to laser sensors that track the real-time position and orientation of the descending rocket.