00:00Yu Yansong is Director General of the Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization.
00:05Welcome. Just how significant is this achievement?
00:10Well, this is groundbreaking and historic.
00:13I think, as we know, this is a commercial company that is achieving the recoverable launch vehicle.
00:22This, of course, is following the successful landing of the Long March 10.
00:30On the tethered recovery system on the ocean.
00:34Also, this is the second attempt by the company.
00:39And the company has, of course, had a failure at the first attempt.
00:44And land space is recovering quickly.
00:48And this is a great success.
00:50And it's also covering all the news.
00:52And we know that this is technically different from what we're well known by Elon Musk,
00:59which is the Falcon 9.
01:01And this is a Juchia 3, which is using methane instead of kerosene oxygen.
01:07So methane is more available in interplanetary missions.
01:12If you go into other planets, methane would be easily available in comparison with kerosene.
01:18So this is meaningful for interplanetary species if we are exploring the future.
01:25And to what extent does the ability to return, recover and reuse a booster make China's space exploration more commercially
01:37viable?
01:39We know there are more than 30 types of launch vehicles commercially available in China now.
01:46All of them have successfully inserted satellites into orbit.
01:50And this is, of course, the first commercial company that has achieved hard landing on the surface of the land,
02:00the territory.
02:01And this, of course, is the prelude of the series of lowering down of cost for the launching services.
02:09And by that, it has a significant impact and implication that future missions will be cheaper and easier to access
02:17to space,
02:18would make commercial space more prosperous, in particular satellite industries.
02:26If they see cheaper launching opportunities, they would put more satellites into orbit,
02:31which in turn have a greater prosperity in the future for space applications.
02:35And what does all this do for the competition?
02:38I mean, I wonder how high a bar does land space now set amongst its rivals?
02:44We know that the company has great achievements.
02:49And this, of course, is one of the four companies that has been subsidized by the China National Space Administration
02:56to conduct such recoverable activities and campaigns.
03:00And all of these subsidized companies are using methane instead of kerosene.
03:07As you know, the kerosene would have charcoals on the engine, which would be difficult to clean once it's landed.
03:14And it takes longer to reuse for the launch vehicle.
03:19But the methane is much clearer and it burns very clean.
03:23So it can be quickly reused once it's landed.
03:27So this is, of course, is the very beginning, of course, is the first attempt.
03:31We're not certain that in the future we will have more issues and hiccups.
03:36But this certainly is a good start for the companies to run on these methane technologies
03:44and to compete to each other.
03:46And this, of course, set a very high bar to all the companies to follow.
03:50Obviously a significant milestone, as you say.
03:54What's the next chapter?
03:55What next?
03:58Well, the next would be continuing the reliability test.
04:03Of course, it's going to conduct more flights.
04:06And the accumulation of the flights would have provided more data and more algorithms
04:12and more information as far as to improve the reliability and to, of course, lower down the cost.
04:18Then the future step, of course, is to reuse those rocket stages, the first stage,
04:23which comprises of a number of engines, and that is valuable.
04:27And then we can have quick refueling and quick reuse of the launch vehicle that will radically reduce the cost
04:35of launching a space object and satellites into orbit.
04:38And in the future, of course, this will be a planetary mission initiative where we have future missions to the
04:47moon,
04:48to Mars, and where the in situ resources will be explored and exploited.
04:53And then we can have quick reuse of locally available resources and volatiles for refueling rockets
05:02and to travel into deeper space.
05:05And, of course, this is a very promising step.
05:08Xu Yensong, great pleasure to talk to you and great to have you on the program.
05:12Thanks so much for your time.
05:13Xu Yensong, the Director General of the Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization.
