{"text":[[{"start":7.95,"text":"Chinese engineers on Friday used a giant floating net to recover the booster from an orbital-class rocket, upping the stakes in its technological rivalry with the US."}],[{"start":17.6,"text":"State broadcaster CCTV showed footage of the booster of the Long March 10B rocket being caught within a net on a frame mounted on a floating platform at sea."}],[{"start":27.950000000000003,"text":"The Long March 10B, developed by the state-owned China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), was completing its maiden flight. The rocket had launched from a site in Hainan, a southern island province, and had launched a satellite into orbit, state media reported."}],[{"start":46.900000000000006,"text":"China is only the second country to demonstrate recovery of the first booster stage of a rocket, a crucial step in developing reusable rocket technology. Such technology has drastically cut satellite launch costs in the US, where Elon Musk’s SpaceX first landed its Falcon 9 rocket from an orbital flight in 2015."}],[{"start":68.65,"text":"“This mission . . . signifies a historic breakthrough for our country in the field of reusable rocket technology and will lay a solid foundation for accelerating the improvement of our country’s space-access capabilities,” CALT said in a statement."}],[{"start":82.2,"text":"In its latest five-year plan, Beijing has targeted building China into a “space power” by 2030, and has called space “an emerging pillar industry”. One obstacle for the industry has been the high cost of rockets, which China has allowed to fall back to earth or become space debris after use."}],[{"start":101.35,"text":"Friday’s launch was the third attempt by the country and the second by CALT. Late last year, a Beijing-based private company, LandSpace, failed on a booster recovery attempt with its Zhuque-3 rocket. The company is targeting a new attempt this year, according to state media."}],[{"start":119.14999999999999,"text":"Unlike SpaceX’s method for Falcon 9, which deploys legs to land, CALT used hooks to catch the rocket on a sea-based net, which the company said was a world first. It added that it expects the recovered rocket booster to be re-used by the end of the year."}],[{"start":136.29999999999998,"text":"SpaceX also uses mechanical arms to catch boosters for its larger Starship system."}],[{"start":141.89999999999998,"text":"Blaine Curcio, founder of Orbital Gateway Consulting, said that developing reusable rockets would help to unjam “a pretty big bottleneck” for China’s efforts to create satellite clusters to rival those of SpaceX’s Starlink. "}],[{"start":155.7,"text":"“We’ve seen over the last few years a lot of money going into these projects, a lot of top-level government support, but the deployment rate has been . . . still relatively unimpressive,” he said."}],[{"start":167.45,"text":"He added that while the US was still well ahead, China had progressed rapidly in terms of launch capabilities over the past 11-12 years."}],[{"start":176.7,"text":"“We’ll see how quickly they can ramp up,” he said. “You could imagine there being a pretty significant ramp-up of satellite launches probably within a couple of years.”"}],[{"start":192.89999999999998,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1783704284_4263.mp3"}