[Guns N' Coffee]

Zhuque-3 is an active, two-stage, medium-to-heavy partially reusable launch vehicle made of stainless steel and powered by liquid methane fuel. It is the third in a series of orbital-class launch vehicles developed by LandSpace, a Chinese commercial space launch provider based in Beijing.

The maiden flight of Zhuque-3 occurred on 3 December 2025. LandSpace's attempt to achieve first-stage recovery during the rocket's maiden flight proved to be unsuccessful; recovery was achieved on 18 August 2026, when the booster successfully landed downrange during the rocket's second flight.(Wikipedia)

[kellyhound]

Elon Musk famously switched Starship's primary material from carbon fiber to cheap, heat-resistant stainless steel in 2018. LandSpace applied this exact economic and thermodynamic principle to Zhuque-3.

Methalox aka liquid Methane & Oxygen and this is the fuel of the next generation of spaceflight. SpaceX (Starship) and Blue Origin (New Glenn) proved early on that methane is ideal for reusability because it leaves virtually no soot inside the engines.

The use of deployable landing legs and steerable grid fins is visually and functionally identical to the recovery system of the Falcon 9.

They did build the TQ-12 engine on their own. It uses an open gas-generator cycle. This is a simpler, highly reliable,and traditional engine cycle where a small amount of fuel is burned to power the pumps and then dumped overboard as exhaust.

The TQ-12 outputs roughly 80 to 95 tons of thrust per engine. By comparison, the SpaceX Raptor produces well over 230 to 280 tons of thrust. The Raptor operates at world-record-breaking chamber pressures (over 300 bar). The TQ-12 operates at a much lower pressure profile, typical of a first-generation gas-generator engine.

Roughly 70% of the upgraded TQ-12B engine components are 3D-printed. This specialized laser-welding and additive manufacturing workflow was developed specifically for LandSpace's production facility in Huzhou to cut down component counts by 30%.

They often use espionage to bypass billions of dollars in research and development and shave decades off its developmental timeline and then put upgrades to it. (Same with russia btw)

When SpaceX publishes papers, files patents, or when Elon Musk talks openly about using 300-series stainless steel for Starship, Chinese state and commercial entities use their massive domestic engineering workforce to immediately dissect and implement those ideas.

In 2009, Dongfan "Greg" Chung, a Chinese-born engineer working for Rockwell and Boeing, was convicted of economic espionage. He had hoarded over 300,000 pages of sensitive documents detailing the Space Shuttle, the Delta IV rocket, and military transport aircraft, which he passed to Beijing.

In 2022, Chinese intelligence officer Xu Yanjun was sentenced to 20 years in a US prison. He spearheaded a multi-year Ministry of State Security operation specifically aimed at stealing jet and rocket engine fan blade technologies from GE Aviation and Safran.

Cyber intelligence operations frequently target Western space institutions. A major state-sponsored cyber campaign breached networks belonging to NASA, defense contractors and critical infrastructure to exfiltrate technical data.

Elite russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev was scheduled to fly on the SpaceX Crew-12 mission. He was abruptly banned and thrown off the flight after investigators caught him secretly photographing classified SpaceX engine documentation and using his phone to export the restricted files back to russia.

European intelligence agencies (such as those in Sweden and Finland) have issued formal warnings that russian operatives are highly active in the West. They actively target civilian camera and laser innovations to repurpose them for russian rocket guidance and satellite systems.

Also russia has deployed specialized military spy" spacecraft, such as Luch-1 and Luch-2. These spacecraft have repeatedly performed highly dangerous orbital maneuvers to shadow and park directly next to vital European and UK geostationary communication satellites.

Western intelligence agencies report that russia is using these close-proximity maneuvers for signals intelligence, attempting to intercept unencrypted data streams and tap into Western orbiting assets.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/.../131406278.cms

If China's space program had to rely solely on original domestic research, it would likely be 15 to 20 years behind where it is today.

Also everyone remembers the Soviet Buran shuttle. Soviet intelligence systematically stole thousands of pages of technical data regarding NASA's Space Shuttle design. While Soviet engineers made internal design modifications, the aerodynamic shape and physical layout of the Buran were an intentional, stolen carbon copy.

[Faust]

I watched that yesterday on the projector with the sound set at -30dbm

Really felt like I went into space and landed safely