{"id":579252,"date":"2026-04-01T20:22:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T20:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/579252\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T20:22:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T20:22:12","slug":"is-chinas-commercial-rocket-now-cheaper-than-elon-musks-spacex-falcon-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/579252\/","title":{"rendered":"Is China\u2019s commercial rocket now cheaper than Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX Falcon 9?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Kinetica-2 Y1 carrier rocket, also known as the Lijian-2 Y1, took off on its inaugural flight on Monday before delivering three satellites into orbit, including a prototype commercial cargo spacecraft and a satellite to function as a mini-orbiting space lab.<\/p>\n

The rocket developed by Chinese commercial space firm CAS Space<\/a> \u2013 established by the Chinese Academy of Sciences \u2013 was launched from the commercial innovation pilot zone at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwestern China.<\/p>\n

It cost 30,000 yuan per kilogram (US$4,350 per 2.2lbs) of payload capacity to launch the Kinetica-2, according to Yang Haoliang, the firm\u2019s vice-president and chief commander of the rocket.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

01:23<\/p>\n

Chinese start-up starts taking advance bookings for its first commercial space flight<\/p>\n

Chinese start-up starts taking advance bookings for its first commercial space flight<\/p>\n

Yang said on Monday that the craft\u2019s current non-reusable launch cost was about the same as Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX Falcon 9 reusable rocket at US$5,000 per kg, according to Star Market Daily, a financial news subsidiary of the state-owned Shanghai Media Group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Kinetica-2 Y1 carrier rocket, also known as the Lijian-2 Y1, took off on its inaugural flight on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,77862,512,5225,284046,64204,163452,284041,284045,128,284043,82931,285,5437,57662,284042,284044,37335],"class_list":{"0":"post-579252","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cas-space","11":"tag-china","12":"tag-chinese-academy-of-sciences","13":"tag-commercial-cargo-spacecraft","14":"tag-falcon","15":"tag-jiuquan-satellite-launch-centre","16":"tag-kinetica","17":"tag-lijian","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-shanghai-media-group","20":"tag-shaoxing","21":"tag-space","22":"tag-spacex","23":"tag-tiangong","24":"tag-tianzhou","25":"tag-yang-haoliang","26":"tag-zhejiang"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}