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Comment by standardUser | Hacker News Reader

China is currently building TWO competing starlink-type systems. Given the trajectory of China in recent years, I no longer say "nobody is anywhere close to competing with..." about pretty much anything.

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China's constellations are roughly where Starlink was in early 2020, except that their launch costs remain much higher. Yes, they move fast, but SpaceX is one of the few US companies I'd bet on to compete with them.

Also, I wonder how receptive the world will be to Chinese ISPs given their history of internet censorship at home.

SpaceX is ultimately still an American company operating at American scale vs PRC. Last year spaceX had fleet of 18 F9s doing more than 50% of global launches, 80% including starlink. SpaceX stans fixate over 50% and 80%, but ignore that 18 rocket cores is rookie numbers. 7/145 US space launches in 2024 was Non SpaceX. That means US in aggregate build ~25 rockets (i think less since some SpaceX are older cores). Versus PRC 68, about ~80 tyhis year (missing keep missing goal of 100). So we can already see there's a 4-5x difference in total launch vehicles production. When/if PRC sorts out reusables, they get both cadence x volume, and no telling how far they can extend the gap, if anything like auto, fast enough that they can overtake SpaceX in historic payload within a few years. Assuming payload enough demand, which I doubt... outside space weaponization arms race.

I think the world, well mainly govs, many of whom who are already running Huawei network gear would appreciate PRC willingness to accomodate local filtering (censorship) rules with how world is trending towards cyber soveignty.

That said, I can see SpaceX being elevated to Boeing tier strategic asset to compete, assuming Musk badblood doesn't interfere.

SpaceX is absolutely capable of building 80 rockets, if they needed to. Don't forget that they built 132 F9 second stages last year, plus thousands of satellites and millions of user terminals. But they don't need to build 80 first stages because their first stages are getting reused 30 times. Why would they waste time building first stages they don't need? China needs to build 80 full rockets because theirs explode after each use.

Meanwhile the Starship factory is looking like it will be quite productive once the design is locked down.

Upperstage stage 1/6 weight with simple merlin engine. SpaceX might need to build 80 first stages if PRC reusable ends up building 80 first stages that's also reusable 30 times. Whether SpaceX can actually build and operate 80 first stages (very likely), and their associated second stages (more questionable) or realistically 100, or 200, we don't actually know, but we know basically in any mature industry PRC can outscale US capabilities, sometimes dramatically, i.e. 200-300x in shipbuilding.

The low build rate is a consequence of success not an indicator of failure. Falcon 9 gets 30+ flights per core, you don’t need to build 60+ rockets.

The point is once PRC figures out reusables and operates a 100/200/300 fleet of reusables, is SpaceX which is more or less entire American space industrial base able to match. Or it it going to go the way of EV or any other PRC high capacity industry where US can't.

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