Die Rakete fällt, die Aktienkurse schießen in die Höhe.

The rocket failed again to stand safely on the ground.

At the end of 2025, first the new Chinese rocket Zhuque - 3 and then the Changzheng - 12A completed their main task of putting the payloads they carried into orbit. However, both then witnessed the disappointment of a failed booster stage recovery in front of everyone's eyes.

According to the conventional scenario, at this point the capital market should have sounded the alarm and investors should have withdrawn in large numbers.

However, in reality, an incomprehensible "counter - current" scenario played out. The aerospace sector, especially the stocks of companies in the commercial space sector, rose sharply collectively in the following weeks. Some stocks even doubled their prices within a few trading days.

Has the market now slipped into an irrational frenzy?

I think the exact opposite. This is a highly rational re - evaluation of value under new rules and clear expectations.

When Uncertainty Becomes the Surest Thing

The nature of capital is to avoid uncertainty.

But in the context of the Chinese commercial space sector, a new kind of security is being established - namely the "security of the technological iteration process".

In the past, spaceflight was a project about which people preferred not to talk about failures.

Each launch carried high national prestige and high financial costs. A failure meant incalculable losses and a long investigation period. This extreme pursuit of the "zero - error goal" has created reliability, but it has also increased the cost of failed attempts and slowed down the technological iteration process.

The introduction of the commercial space sector, especially the intensive participation of private capital, has fundamentally changed these rules of the game.

A "culture of rapid failure", which originated in Silicon Valley and was proven by Tesla and SpaceX, has been introduced. This means that one buys valuable failure data with bearable capital to accelerate the path to final success.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket experienced several spectacular explosions and crashes before its first successful soft landing.

These images and data of the "failures" were spread worldwide via the Internet and led to years of nationwide education on how difficult it actually is to develop a reusable rocket.

The market has thus gained an important insight: For reusable rockets, a failed recovery in the first or the first few attempts is a "standard setting" and a "required course" in the development process.

Success, on the other hand, is a low - probability surprise.

Therefore, the Chinese capital market did not see a black swan in the failed recoveries of the Zhuque - 3 and the Changzheng - 12A, but an expected intermediate result that conforms to the proven international development principles.

The pricing logic of the market has thus been fundamentally reversed.

It is no longer evaluated based on the question "Can it be successful?", which is full of uncertainties, but rather on the clear process "How does one go from failure to success?" A failure with detailed data and a transparent process can have a far higher value than a success with unclear causes.

Why? Because it tells the engineers exactly where the problem lies, which section needs to be improved, and in which direction the next iteration should be optimized. The capital in the market pays a premium for this ability to quickly identify and solve the problem. The market invests in a visible ladder to ascend, paved with failures.

The Orders Must Come

If we no longer focus on the success or failure of the entire rocket recovery, but on the thousands of parts that make up a rocket, an even more impressive picture emerges.

This is the change of the "decoupling" of value in the value - creation chain.

Take Shenjian Technology Co., Ltd. as an example, whose stocks were traded. Its core business is products such as high - quality composite materials.

The company is not directly responsible for the recovery control algorithms or the design of the rocket's landing gear. But regardless of whether the rocket was successfully recovered or crashed, as long as it was launched, the materials it produced were consumed.

This is the crux of the matter.

When reusable rockets enter the phase of frequent test flights, first of all, it is not the economic benefit of the recovery that is promoted, but there is an "extreme stress test" and a "continuous demand for consumption" for the entire space industry supply chain.

Each launch requires, regardless of whether the first stage can be recovered, new or tested engines, a large amount of advanced composite materials, precise valves, special sensors, and powerful electronic components.

The development of reusable technology means that these components must be tested for their reliability under stricter conditions of cyclic use. The test intensity and the iteration speed are far higher than those in the era of traditional "single - use" rockets.

For the companies in the supply chain, a continuous and frequent launch plan jointly promoted by several commercial rocket companies (including the commercial projects of the "state - owned enterprises") means an unprecedented clarity in order prospects. What the market speculates on is the upper segment of high - tech manufacturing, which will soon be "saturated" and pushed onto a fast technological ascent path.

The even more important logical aspect lies in the risk diversification through the "double - check".

The Changzheng - 12A (with the technological background of the state - owned enterprises) and the Zhuque - 3 (representing the innovation speed of the private sector) tested similar technologies almost simultaneously. This is a groundbreaking event in Chinese space history. For the companies in the supply chain, this is equivalent to an "insurance for the technological path".

Two actors with different technological approaches and management models aim for a similar goal (vertical recovery) at the same time and use similar Chinese components.

This highly proves the necessity and reliability of these core components.

Regardless of whether the concept of the "state - owned enterprises" or that of the private enterprise wins in the end, the companies in the supply chain are firmly at the table and are indispensable "arms dealers".

Their value is "decoupled" from the successes or failures of a single rocket recovery and is instead closely linked to the intensity of the ascent of the entire Chinese space industry.

How Does the IPO Expectation Ignite the Sector's Stock Performance?

However, there is still an important reason.

We know that the explosive growth of any industry is based on a clear exit mechanism and the expectation of a wealth effect. The "guidelines" published by the Shanghai Stock Exchange at the end of 2025 were the institutional spark that ignited this capital feast.

This document has paved a clear and smart way for commercial rocket companies to enter the Star Market.

The most important wisdom in it is that the listing conditions are set as "the first successful placement of a payload into orbit by a medium - or large - sized carrier rocket with reusable technology", not as "successful recovery".

The regulatory authority has thus respected the objective laws of space projects.

The state accepts that the "successful entry into orbit" is an important milestone for the feasibility of commercial rocket technology and encourages the capital market to support companies with capital to master the last and most demanding stage from "entry into orbit" to "recovery".

This means that a rocket company, even if it has not yet achieved a successful recovery, can obtain a "ticket" to the public capital market as long as it can prove its strong carrying capacity and system reliability.

The rapid completion of the IPO consultation by Landspace after the release of the policy is an explanation of this logic.

The way for the listings of commercial space companies is now open, and a new high - tech and imaginative capital market sector will soon emerge.

So the funds in the secondary market moved and started a hot "placement game". They are frantically looking for and speculating on the "shadow stocks" that have supply - chain relationships, technological cooperation, or simply business relationships with top companies such as Landspace, iSpace, and CAS Space.

Basically, this is a bet on the rise of the entire commercial space ecosystem. Before the index fund for this new sector is officially established, investors are creating their own investment portfolios.

The liquidity of the entire sector was suddenly activated, and the valuation logic quickly changed from the traditional P/E and P/B values to the hope for future market share, technological barriers, and placement in the value - creation chain.

The Data Bonus of Failure

Under the high confidentiality requirements and the quality culture aimed at error - proofing, the lessons from failures in the traditional space sector were often highly closed off. The costs were borne by the state finances, and the experiences circulated mainly within the system. However, the commercial space sector, especially the private space sector, has creatively made the "failures" market - oriented and transparent.

Each public launch and recovery attempt like that of the Zhuque - 3, regardless of success or failure, generates a large amount of remote measurement data, high - speed images, and information about structural stress changes. This is a precious "engineering gold mine". These data not only belong to the development company itself, but will also more or less benefit the entire "public knowledge pool" of the Chinese space industry through media reports, industry exchanges, and feedback from the supply chain. Private capital bears the high risks of failed attempts, and the resulting experiences and lessons objectively reduce the costs and risks for subsequent attempts in the entire industry.

This makes every public and analyzable failure a rare resource that accelerates the entire industry's progress.

The capital market has obviously recognized this. The companies they invest in are not only buying rockets and launch services, but also the ticket to this constantly expanding "database of Chinese space failures" and the priority to learn from it and develop.

This ability to quickly collect engineering experience through the market mechanism will become a unique and efficient catching - up advantage for the Chinese commercial space sector compared to other countries.

At the top, the state undertakes the task of providing direction and bears the early risks of basic technologies through large - scale projects, investments in basic research, and policies such as the "action plan".

In the middle, venture capital (VC/PE) and private equity flow in at the instigation of the policy and bear the high risks and high returns of the phase from technological principle verification to the first successful placement of a payload into orbit.

And now, with the clarification of the fifth listing condition for the Star Market, the baton is passed on to the public capital market. The broad investors in the secondary market are invited to bear and manage the risks between "technological feasibility" and "commercial success" - namely stable recovery, cost reduction, order acquisition, and profit - making. This phase is full of challenges, but also has great potential.

The current frenzy of stocks in the sector can be regarded as a forward - looking participation of capital in the secondary market in the most dramatic phase of the space project, the phase from failure to success.

This is not blind speculation, but a bet on a risk level that one consciously chooses and can bear, within a risk spectrum clearly planned by the policy.

This is a great experiment planned by the state and shaped by the market to shorten the technological iteration time.

Concluding Remarks

Ultimately, if one puts aside all the technological glamour and capital - market frenzy, everything the Chinese commercial space sector has tried to do has only one ultimate goal: to reduce the cost of entering space by an order of magnitude.

Reusable rockets are not the goal, but a means.

The whole significance of them lies in that through the reuse of the most expensive part (the first stage of the rocket), the marginal cost of each launch can be drastically reduced. Only when the launch costs are low enough can the space economy really move from expensive state - sponsored research and special communication to large satellite constellations, space tourism, in - space production, and even deep - space mining in a broad commercial blue - ocean area.

The current "explosive increase" in the capital market is essentially also a collective bet on whether "Made in China" can repeat its miracle in cost control in the space sector.

Investors are betting that the Chinese commercial space sector, thanks to the complete industrial system, strong engineering capacity, efficient organizational model, and now abundant capital supply, can follow a steeper "cost - reduction curve" than SpaceX did back then. Every specific failure, as long as it brings useful data, improves the technology, and trains the team, will be regarded as another step on this cost curve, removing an obstacle.

The temporary crash of the rocket has not stifled hope, but has made the capital even more certain that the path is right, the method is effective, the iteration is fast, and the goal is achievable.

And when the rocket can finally return to the ground safely, frequently, and economically, the seemingly crazy capital today could be seen as... (The text seems incomplete here)