The Platform in the South China Sea
On a salt-stained deck somewhere in the waters off Hainan, a rocket stage the size of a commuter bus descended through tropical haze in February, its engines throttling against gravity, and settled — upright, controlled, intact — onto the steel grid of a platform called *Lingdaozhe*, or "Navigator" . It was the first time China had pulled off what SpaceX has been doing since 2015, and it mattered less for the technology than for what it signalled: the world's second space superpower had decided that throwaway rockets were no longer an acceptable cost of doing business. The Long March 10B that flew that day was not a prototype. It was operational hardware, built by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology and delivered to a purpose-built ocean recovery platform, the first of its kind in the Chinese fleet . The age of disposable launch vehicles, it seemed, had an expiration date.