This rocket launch might be the end of the beginning for SpaceX's dominance.

CCTV Wenchang, China July 10, 2026 B Opinion This rocket launch might be the end of the beginning for SpaceX's dominance. David Fickling Climate and energy columnist CCTV July 10, 2026 Not into the ocean. Not as wreckage. It was caught by wires on a sea platform. That matters because recovering reusable boosters is the trick that made SpaceX so hard to beat. An expensive bit of equipment comes home gets refurbished and flies again. It's how SpaceX's Falcon 9 cut launch costs by almost 90%. SpaceX China's version is not a copy, though. SpaceX lands boosters on legs. China is trying to catch them in a sort of net cutting out landing gear and potentially freeing up more weight for cargo. SpaceX wants to go one step further with Starship, which would reuse both its boosters and the spacecraft itself. Bloomberg SpaceX Has Spent More Than $15 Billion on Starship Rocket But it's having some issues. It's slated for commercial operations later this year, but it has suffered failures on every one of its 12 test flights. The bigger warning for Elon Musk is not China's one rocket. It's the pattern. Right now, China's space industry looks a lot like its electric vehicle industry did 10 years ago: a chaotic alphabet soup of companies all of which seem well behind Musk's cutting edge. Then competition, state backing and manufacturing scale turned them into global threats competing with Toyota, GM, Volkswagen and Tesla. Reusable rockets may be next. SpaceX is still the company to beat. But China Inc. has entered the race.