Time Observation: Commercial spaceflight's "trial and error" is indispensable; the growth potential is worth safeguarding

Securities Times reporter Zang Xiaosong

Recently, after Tianbing Technology’s Tianlong-3 suborbital I private commercial launch vehicle ignited and took off, an anomaly occurred, and the flight test failed to fully achieve the predetermined mission objectives. This setback puts the public in front of the reality that commercial spaceflight carries high risk and high difficulty. At a time when the industry is entering a dense period of technical tackling, on the one hand, timely lessons and reflection are indispensable; on the other hand, the public should also show greater tolerance for the necessary “trial and error,” leaving more room for growth for the high-quality development of China’s commercial spaceflight industry.

Today, the entire commercial spaceflight industry has moved from the early stage of validating flight to a concentrated campaign period with higher technical complexity—such as higher launch capacity and reusability. In this stage, the scale of systems integration has expanded significantly, and the degree of engineering coupling has increased markedly. Against this backdrop, in the past two years, several mainstream private rocket companies have encountered failures during their development or launch processes.

Setbacks are not scary. More important than “a successful first launch” is establishing an efficient technical iteration mechanism—accumulating data, exposing problems, and optimizing solutions through repeated flight test(s), and ultimately forming a mature technical system adapted to the needs of China’s space industry.

Looking globally, technical trial and error is a common rule in the development of commercial spaceflight. Before SpaceX achieved large-scale success with the Falcon 9, its early Falcon 1 had failed to launch three times in a row. As the next-generation heavy reusable rocket, Starship also experienced multiple explosions during its test flights. Even so, founder Elon Musk still publicly affirmed the phased results, defining them as “successful failures” and emphasizing that test data and technical progress go hand in hand.

From a more macro perspective, it is necessary to maintain strategic resolve in the face of technical setbacks in the development of commercial spaceflight. Commercial spaceflight is an important component of China’s space “new infrastructure,” shouldering key missions such as high-density, low-cost launches of tens of thousands of satellites in the future. 2026 is the first year for initial flights of reusable rockets. From April to December, multiple companies such as Blue Arrow Aerospace, Galaxy Power, and Interstellar Glory will conduct initial flights and reusability verification in a concentrated manner, with domestic private commercial spaceflight having a clear plan to carry out 22 to 27 launches. In this process, the necessary “trial and error” should receive greater tolerance, and the industry’s room for growth is worth safeguarding. Only by facing risks squarely, embracing trial and error, summarizing lessons from experience, and continuously optimizing and improving can commercial spaceflight move from “able to fly” to “reliable and scalable,” achieving a capability leap on higher dimensions.