36Kr Exclusive: Making the same "Chopsticks Clamping Rocket" as Musk's Starship, "Dahang Yueqian" Completes Hundred-Million-Level Seed Round Financing

Written by Zhang Yichi

Edited by Su Jianxun

36Kr has learned that the domestic recyclable commercial rocket company "Dahang Yueqian" has completed a 100 million yuan seed round of financing. This round of financing is led by Shenneng Chengyi, with Tianchuang Capital, Boyan Fund, K2VC, and the well-known investor Mr. Zhang Chao, etc. as co-investors. Chengyi Capital serves as the exclusive financing advisor. This financing will be used for the "Chopstick Clamp" tower recovery test and the development of the "Yueqian" carrier rocket.

Dahang Yueqian officially started operations in March 2024, featuring "ground capture + intelligent control" to create a low-cost, highly reliable, and reusable carrier rocket. It is currently the only private rocket company in China that focuses on tower recovery.

At present, the company has gathered a R & D team led by academician advisors and has completed a number of technical breakthroughs: including the construction of the "Chopstick Clamp" tower recovery verification platform, the development of the arrow-borne flight control computer "Flint One", and the development of the first domestic recovery tower controller "Little Flint". The company was invited to participate in the 75th International Astronautical Congress, becoming the first Chinese commercial aerospace company to give a report on the tower recovery and reusable rocket at the congress.

Source: Provided by the enterprise. Conceptual diagram of the tower recovery rocket

From a product perspective, the development of private rockets can be mainly divided into four stages: disposable solid orbit-entry rockets, disposable liquid orbit-entry rockets, liquid recyclable rockets, and flight-scheduled rockets. SpaceX can currently maturely recover Falcon 9, verifying the feasibility of private rocket companies completing the third stage - liquid recyclable rockets.

Dahang Yueqian's CEO Chen Shuguang introduced to 36Kr that in December 2015, Falcon 9 completed the first-stage rocket recovery for the first time, which greatly encouraged many domestic rocket field practitioners. A large number of start-up companies were established like mushrooms after rain in 2016, developing private disposable solid orbit-entry rockets from scratch, and gradually realizing the early operation mode of Chinese private rocket companies to go through the process, build supporting facilities, and obtain financing.

However, in the first stage in China, Chinese private rocket companies did not have a complete technical system reserve for liquid rockets, and key equipment such as engines lacked upstream suppliers, and there was a long distance from large-scale commercial practical combat.

Around 2020, a few domestic private rocket companies attempted to launch disposable liquid rockets. In 2023, the disposable liquid rocket was successfully launched into orbit, indicating that Chinese private rocket companies have initially solved the technical gap in the supply side of liquid rockets, and Chinese private rocket companies have officially entered the second stage of the development of private rockets.

Currently, there are no successful cases of liquid recyclable rockets being put into orbit in China. The leading domestic private rocket companies mainly refer to the development path of Falcon 9, and gradually develop liquid recyclable rockets through kilometer-level "Grasshopper Jump" recovery experiments.

It is understood that although Falcon 9 successfully completed the first recovery at the end of 2015, the launch volume of each generation of Falcon 9 did not exceed 25 times per year before 2020. However, the downstream demand brought by the successful layout of Starlink has brought a decisive catalyst for the batch launch of Falcon 9.

In 2019, SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 carrying 60 low-orbit satellites for the first time, kicking off the large-scale deployment of the Starlink constellation. As of October 2024, SpaceX has launched more than 7,000 Starlink satellites, bringing a total of 202 recyclable rocket launch demands.

Yuanxin Satellite and China Satellite Network Group were established in 2018 and 2019 respectively, and both have completed the experimental satellite launch. The GW constellation plan of Satellite Network Group and the Qianfan constellation plan of Yuanxin Satellite have a total scale of nearly 30,000 satellites. The clear networking of the two constellations of the two groups provides an urgent market demand for commercial rocket companies. If the single satellite weight is estimated at 500 kg and the launch price is estimated at 42,000 yuan/kg, the incremental market is about 600 billion yuan.

Chen Shuguang believes that the Chinese version of "Starlink" will bring substantial commercial demand to domestic private rocket companies. From a cost perspective, developing reusable rockets is the only way to go. Compared with disposable rockets, reusable rockets can ideally reduce the single launch cost by 60% - 80%.

Liquid recyclable rockets are mainly divided into "landing leg" recovery rockets similar to Falcon 9 and "tower" recovery rockets similar to Starship. Compared with "leg" recovery rockets, "tower" recovery rockets mainly have five characteristics: high carrying capacity, long service life of the rocket body, high recovery reliability, higher R & D efficiency, and high cost performance of the tower launch platform.

In terms of carrying capacity, the "tower" recovery rocket can directly save 3 - 5 tons of the leg recovery bracket. Compared with the "leg" rocket of the same scale, the theoretical carrying capacity limit is higher.

In terms of service life, when the "leg" rocket is recovered, the rocket body bears a large impact overload at the moment of landing. The tower uses the recovery method of "clamping chopsticks", which brings sufficient buffer space for the rocket body recovery, effectively reduces the impact damage, and prolongs the cycle service life of the rocket body and the engine.

In terms of recovery reliability, the "leg" recovery rocket needs to accurately grasp the engine shutdown time, and has extremely strict requirements for the stability of the flight attitude before landing. A slight deviation may cause it to be blown up on the recovery platform, and Falcon 9 has a similar experience. Through the "chopstick clamping" method, the "tower" recovery rocket has a broader height requirement and time window during the landing process, and the attitude stability can also be appropriately relaxed, and the recovery reliability is improved.

In terms of R & D efficiency, for the "leg" recovery rocket, the landing leg is a direct component of the rocket body, and the landing leg and the rocket body are fully coupled, with fewer test scenarios. The "tower" recovery rocket eliminates this problem. The tower is mainly independently studied by the ground recovery engineering team. The arrow is on the arrow, and the ground is on the ground, completely decoupled and developed in parallel, which greatly reduces the consideration of the recovery components by the rocket body R & D team.

In terms of the recovery platform, the tower is one of the representative outputs of the infrastructure mania, with the characteristics of high quality and high cost performance. Chen Shuguang told 36Kr that China has a mature tower industry chain foundation, which can lift hundreds of tons of goods, and it is more than enough to catch dozens of tons of rockets. The cost control of tower cranes is also leading globally, and the cost end of the future batch production and launch platform has inherent advantages.

Dahang Yueqian has currently gathered a "regular army" R & D team led by academician advisors. The backbone members are all from central enterprise aerospace institutes, with an average aerospace work experience of more than 10 years, with rich liquid rocket R & D experience, and covering the entire process background from design, development, testing to launch. The current R & D team has been focusing on the development of the recovery tower for nearly 1 year, and is the earliest team in China to systematically develop the recovery tower technology. The company has no historical burden of developing solid rockets and disposable liquid rocket products, and is currently only focused on the development of the "tower" recovery rocket product. The engineering focus will further improve the R & D efficiency.

In terms of future planning, Dahang Yueqian's "Chopstick Clamp" tower recovery test will be launched in November 2024, and the first-generation rocket Yueqian is planned to achieve orbit entry + first-stage recovery in 2026.