A rocket-propulsion startup founded by a former Landspace vice president has signed an agreement tied to a commercial space base in Ningbo, according to reporting from 36Kr on October 17, 2026. The company, Huosheng Aerospace (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd., is developing a 200-ton-class liquid oxygen methane engine called Huosheng No.1, built around the same broad full-flow staged combustion architecture that powers SpaceX’s Raptor engine. The news lands at a moment when China’s private launch sector is racing to close the propulsion gap with the United States, and it raises a familiar question in Chinese commercial aerospace: how much daylight is there between a signed agreement and a working engine.
Huosheng Aerospace was established in November 2024, according to company-profile data cross-referencing Chinese commercial space registries, and has kept a low public profile since. That changed this week when word of the Ningbo tie-up surfaced alongside details about the company’s founder, Ge Minghe, and the scale of the industrial base his engine project is meant to anchor.
Who Is Huosheng Aerospace, and Who Is Ge Minghe
Reports describe Ge Minghe as the former Vice President of Landspace and General Manager of its Propulsion R&D Department, who departed the company in 2024 to found Huosheng Aerospace. Landspace is one of the founding names in China’s private launch industry, a company credited with pushing methane propulsion into the mainstream of the country’s commercial space sector. Ge’s prior work is reported in connection with the “Tianque” engine series and the Zhuque-2 Y2 mission, two of the most closely watched programs in Chinese private rocketry.
What isn’t established in current reporting is Ge’s exact tenure dates or the full scope of his responsibilities at Landspace beyond that vice president and propulsion R&D title. That distinction matters because the Huosheng pitch leans heavily on his pedigree. A founder who built his reputation steering one of China’s most credible methane-engine programs carries weight with provincial governments and industrial partners looking to back the country’s next propulsion bet, even before a single full engine has fired.
Landspace itself remains a useful yardstick for what a credible Chinese engine program looks like at scale. An independent tracker, Defense Briefing’s company profile of Landspace, shows the company has spent years and multiple funding rounds moving from early kerosene launchers to a reusable methane-fueled rocket family. Huosheng is effectively betting it can compress a similar engine-development arc by recruiting talent who already walked that path once.
Inside the Huosheng No.1 Engine
Huosheng No.1 is pitched as a 200-ton-class liquid oxygen methane engine running a full-flow staged combustion cycle. Reported figures diverge somewhat depending on the source: one account puts sea-level thrust at 175 tons, while a separate report describes the first production model at 140 tons, suggesting the “200-ton class” label describes a target engine category rather than one single, consistently published thrust number. Readers should treat the exact thrust figure as unsettled until Huosheng publishes its own specification sheet.
Other reported performance targets include a sea-level specific impulse of 315 seconds, a combustion chamber pressure of 20 megapascals, and a dry structural mass of roughly 1.5 tons. Those are ambitious numbers for a privately funded Chinese methane engine, and they sit in the same performance neighborhood that SpaceX has spent years refining with its own Raptor family, though neither company has published a like-for-like, apples-to-apples comparison.
What Full-Flow Staged Combustion Actually Means
Most staged-combustion rocket engines route only one propellant stream, usually the fuel-rich mixture, through a preburner to spin a turbopump before it joins the main combustion chamber. A full-flow design splits both the oxidizer and the fuel into separate preburners: one drives a turbine on oxygen-rich gas, the other drives a turbine on methane-rich gas, and nearly all of the propellant mass passes through a turbopump before it ever reaches the main chamber. The payoff is more turbopump power and, in principle, better overall engine efficiency and reusability margins. The cost is a dramatic jump in plumbing complexity, seal count, thermal stress, and combustion-control difficulty, which is precisely why so few engines of this type have ever reached flight.
SpaceX’s Raptor remains the best-known operational example of a full-flow staged combustion methane engine anywhere in the world, a status it earned only after years of iteration across multiple Raptor generations. Huosheng No.1 is explicitly aiming at that same architecture, which is the basis for comparisons framing the project as pursuing “SpaceX-identical” technology. Available reporting supports the claim that Huosheng is targeting the same broad engine cycle, but it does not establish that Huosheng’s internal systems, tolerances, or component designs are identical to SpaceX’s in any engineering sense.
Development Status: Preburners Tested, Full Engine Still to Come
As of October 2026, Huosheng had reportedly completed testing of a scaled-down preburner, but had not yet finished final assembly or run a full-engine hot-fire test. An earlier milestone, reported separately, involved a 3D-printed subscale thrust-chamber body completing a test campaign of 14 ignitions and 60 seconds of cumulative firing time back in November 2025.
By the first half of 2026, the gimbal mount, thrust chamber, and methane pump were reportedly complete, while the oxygen turbopump, the oxygen-rich and fuel-rich preburners, and major valves sat at roughly 90 to 95 percent completion. Huosheng has reportedly targeted assembling the complete engine and conducting full-system hot-fire testing by the end of 2026, which would be the single clearest evidence yet of whether the architecture works as designed. No completed full-engine test, flight test, production start date, unit price, or operational deployment has been confirmed in reporting to date, and readers should treat those milestones as targets rather than accomplished facts.
The Ningbo Agreement: What Was Actually Signed
On October 17, 2026, Huosheng signed an agreement connected to the Ningbo Marine Economic Development Demonstration Zone covering its 200-ton-class methane engine project. The associated commercial aerospace base is reported to span roughly 67 square kilometers, split between a 35-square-kilometer launch site and 32 square kilometers of industrial support space, with planned capacity for 100 launches a year.
Huosheng has described the Ningbo project as covering engine final assembly and testing, rocket manufacturing, and launch services, rather than engine research alone. That vertical-integration pitch, spanning propulsion development through to launch operations in a single coastal zone, is unusually ambitious even by the standards of China’s crowded commercial space sector, where most startups have historically specialized in either engines or vehicles rather than both plus launch infrastructure.
Conflicting Numbers: 86.6 Billion Yuan vs. 8.66 Billion Yuan
Reporting on the Ningbo base’s price tag is not consistent, and the discrepancy is large enough to flag directly. One account puts the total planned investment for the associated Ningbo commercial aerospace base at 86.6 billion yuan. A separate account, sourced to government-platform-based reporting covered by The Yangtzeer’s coverage of the bidding process, describes the Ningbo Commercial Aerospace Industry Base Project at approximately 8.66 billion yuan, roughly a tenth of the larger figure.
Both numbers trace back to real reporting, but they cannot both describe the same scope of investment. The more conservative, government-platform-sourced figure of approximately 8.66 billion yuan corresponds to Ningbo Commercial Aerospace Development Co., Ltd., identified as the tenderer for the base’s first-phase survey work, according to Futunn’s reporting on the investment total. It is plausible the larger 86.6 billion yuan figure refers to a longer-term, fully built-out vision for the zone, while the 8.66 billion yuan figure reflects a nearer-term, already-tendered phase, but that reconciliation has not been confirmed in available reporting. What is clear is that the available reports connect Huosheng’s engine project with the Ningbo base without establishing the precise mechanism by which base-level investment, whichever figure applies, would fund the company itself.
Huosheng No.1 Reported Specifications
| Specification | Reported Figure | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Engine class | 200-ton-class | Category label reported across sources |
| Sea-level thrust (account 1) | 175 tons | Reported figure, unconfirmed by Huosheng |
| Sea-level thrust (account 2, first production model) | 140 tons | Separately reported figure |
| Sea-level specific impulse | 315 seconds | Publicly reported target |
| Combustion chamber pressure | 20 MPa | Publicly reported target |
| Structural mass | Approximately 1.5 tons | Publicly reported target |
| Propellants | Liquid oxygen / liquid methane | Confirmed design choice |
| Cycle | Full-flow staged combustion | Confirmed design choice |
| Full-engine hot-fire test | Not yet completed | Targeted by end of 2026 |
How Huosheng Fits Among China’s Private Rocket Builders
China’s commercial launch sector has spent roughly a decade diversifying away from a single propellant and architecture strategy. iSpace is developing the methane-fueled Hyperbola-3. Space Pioneer is associated with the kerosene-and-oxygen Tianlong-3. Deep Blue Aerospace is working on the kerosene-and-oxygen Nebula-1 reusable launcher. Orienspace built its early reputation on the solid-fuel Gravity-1, a large solid rocket, with a Gravity-2 liquid-fueled vehicle reportedly under development. Landspace, Ge Minghe’s former employer, has pursued reusable methane propulsion longer than most of its domestic rivals.
Huosheng’s pitch is distinct from all of them in one respect: it is positioning itself as a dedicated propulsion specialist first, with the Ningbo deal extending that specialty into rocket manufacturing and launch operations, rather than starting from a vehicle design and working backward into engines, which has been the more common path for Chinese commercial space startups since 2018.
| Company | Primary Propellant | Flagship Program |
|---|---|---|
| Huosheng Aerospace | Liquid oxygen / methane | Huosheng No.1 (200-ton class) |
| Landspace | Liquid oxygen / methane | Zhuque-2 / Tianque engine series |
| iSpace | Liquid oxygen / methane | Hyperbola-3 |
| Space Pioneer | Liquid oxygen / kerosene | Tianlong-3 |
| Deep Blue Aerospace | Liquid oxygen / kerosene | Nebula-1 |
| Orienspace | Solid fuel (Gravity-1), liquid under development | Gravity-1 / Gravity-2 |
| SpaceX (for reference) | Liquid oxygen / methane | Raptor / Starship |
Historical Context: China’s Methane Engine Push
China’s shift toward methane propulsion in the private sector dates back to roughly 2018, when Landspace and a handful of peers began arguing that methane offered a better balance of cost, reusability, and ease of production than the kerosene engines that had powered China’s state rocket programs for decades. SpaceX’s own very public Raptor development, which ran through multiple design iterations before Starship’s first orbital-class flights, gave the broader industry a working proof point that full-flow staged combustion could eventually fly, even though it took SpaceX years of public setbacks to get there.
That history is the backdrop against which Huosheng’s announcement should be read. Reusable methane engines, and especially full-flow staged combustion designs, have a well-documented track record of taking longer and costing more than initial public timelines suggest, even at well-funded, well-staffed organizations. Coverage of SpaceX’s own Starship flight-test cadence and the company’s ongoing Florida pad testing illustrates how iterative and public that process tends to be, even for the one company that has already succeeded at it. The underlying engine hardware traces back to earlier cold-gas thruster work detailed in our report on SpaceX’s McGregor test facility.
Market Impact: Why Ningbo Is Betting on Propulsion
Provincial and municipal governments across China have spent the past several years competing to host commercial space infrastructure, following the same regional-industrial-policy playbook that built out the country’s electric vehicle and battery supply chains. Ningbo’s interest in anchoring a dedicated commercial aerospace base around Huosheng’s engine project fits that pattern: back a credible founder, offer land and tendering support, and hope the resulting industrial cluster attracts a vehicle manufacturer, a launch operator, and a supply chain around it.
The risk for Ningbo, and for any investors following its lead, is that the entire vertically integrated pitch, covering engine assembly, rocket manufacturing, and launch services, rests on an engine that has not yet completed a full hot-fire test. Industrial zones built around a single company’s propulsion roadmap carry concentration risk that diversified aerospace clusters, such as the ones built up around Landspace or around state-backed programs, typically avoid. If Huosheng’s full-system test slips past its end-of-2026 target, as full-flow staged combustion programs have slipped at other companies, the base’s buildout timeline slips with it.
For comparison, other large capital commitments in Chinese commercial aerospace have followed a similarly front-loaded pattern, announcing infrastructure investment ahead of flight-proven hardware. Broader industry tracking from The Wire China’s survey of the country’s private space sector frames this investment-ahead-of-hardware sequencing as characteristic of the entire industry, not unique to Huosheng.
Competitive Comparison: Huosheng vs. the Field
Measured purely on paper specifications, Huosheng No.1’s reported 315-second specific impulse and 20 MPa chamber pressure would place it in a competitive band with other advanced methane engines under development globally, though none of those figures have been independently verified through a completed full-engine test. Landspace’s own engine family has the advantage of actual flight history behind it, including the Zhuque-2 program, which gives it a credibility edge that a pre-hot-fire engine like Huosheng No.1 cannot yet claim regardless of its founder’s pedigree.
Rocket Lab’s own propulsion delays with its Neutron program, covered in our report on how rivals are gaining ground during Neutron’s slip, offer a useful outside-China reference point: even well-capitalized, publicly traded launch companies with established engine heritage have struggled to hit self-imposed propulsion milestones. Huosheng, as a newer and less publicly scrutinized entrant, faces at least the same execution risk, if not more, given it has not yet flown any hardware.
What Could Go Wrong Between Announcement and Flight
Full-flow staged combustion engines are notoriously unforgiving of design and manufacturing error. The architecture’s dual-preburner plumbing multiplies the number of high-pressure, high-temperature seals and joints relative to a conventional staged-combustion or gas-generator engine, and any one failure point can cascade into a full-engine loss during testing. SpaceX itself destroyed multiple early Raptor test articles during its own development program before reaching a reliable production design, a history that is well documented in the company’s public test record.
Huosheng’s reported component completion rates, with the oxygen turbopump and preburners sitting at roughly 90 to 95 percent as of the first half of 2026, suggest the company is close to a complete engine assembly but not yet there. The gap between 95 percent component completion and a successful full-system hot-fire test has historically been where propulsion programs lose the most time, since integration testing routinely surfaces problems that component-level testing cannot catch. Investors and government partners backing the Ningbo base should expect the end-of-2026 hot-fire target to be the first real checkpoint on whether Huosheng’s timeline holds.
Predictions: What Happens Next
- Huosheng will likely publish, or leak, results from its planned end-of-2026 full-engine hot-fire test, which will be the first hard evidence of whether the full-flow staged combustion design actually works as specified.
- Expect continued ambiguity over the Ningbo base’s true investment figure until either Huosheng or a Ningbo municipal authority issues a single reconciled number, rather than the current split between the 86.6 billion yuan and approximately 8.66 billion yuan accounts.
- Other Chinese methane-engine developers, including Landspace and iSpace, are likely to face renewed pressure to publicize their own full-flow or near-full-flow development milestones to avoid ceding narrative ground to Huosheng’s Ningbo announcement.
- If the hot-fire test slips significantly past 2026, expect scrutiny of the vertically integrated Ningbo industrial-base model, given how much of its buildout logic depends on Huosheng’s engine succeeding on schedule.
- Expect more scrutiny of Ge Minghe’s exact departure terms from Landspace, since the available reporting has not clarified whether any non-compete or technology-transfer restrictions apply to his new venture.
Why This Matters Beyond China
Full-flow staged combustion has been, for most of its history, a propulsion curiosity rather than a production reality. The Soviet-era Energomash RD-270 explored the architecture decades ago and never flew. SpaceX’s Raptor is the only full-flow engine to reach regular operational use, a milestone it took the company roughly a decade and several public test failures to reach after beginning Raptor development in the early 2010s. A second company anywhere in the world fielding a working full-flow methane engine, whether that’s Huosheng or any other entrant, would mark a genuine expansion of a very short list of organizations that have mastered the architecture.
That is also why the “SpaceX-identical” framing attached to this story deserves a caveat. Pursuing the same broad engine cycle as Raptor is a meaningful technical ambition, but it is not the same as having replicated SpaceX’s specific engineering solutions, tolerances, or manufacturing processes. Huosheng has not published detailed engineering data that would allow an independent comparison at that level, and no outside analyst has verified a one-to-one architectural match beyond the shared full-flow staged combustion category.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Huosheng Aerospace?
Huosheng Aerospace (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. is a Chinese rocket-propulsion company established in November 2024, developing a 200-ton-class liquid oxygen methane engine called Huosheng No.1 that uses a full-flow staged combustion cycle.
Who founded Huosheng Aerospace?
The company is associated with Ge Minghe, reported as the former Vice President of Landspace and General Manager of its Propulsion R&D Department, who departed Landspace in 2024.
What is full-flow staged combustion, in plain terms?
It is a rocket engine cycle where both the oxidizer and fuel streams pass through separate preburners that each drive a turbopump before the propellants ever reach the main combustion chamber. It improves potential engine efficiency and reusability but is extremely difficult to build and control. SpaceX’s Raptor is the best-known operational example.
Is Huosheng No.1’s technology actually identical to SpaceX’s Raptor?
No. Available reporting confirms Huosheng is targeting the same broad full-flow staged combustion architecture used in Raptor, but it does not establish that the two engines’ specific designs, tolerances, or systems are identical.
How much is the Ningbo commercial aerospace base worth?
Reporting conflicts. One account puts the total planned investment at 86.6 billion yuan, while a separate, government-platform-sourced account describes the project at approximately 8.66 billion yuan. The two figures have not been reconciled in available reporting.
Has Huosheng No.1 completed a full-engine test?
No. As of October 2026, Huosheng had tested a scaled-down preburner and an earlier subscale thrust-chamber body, but had not completed final assembly or a full-system hot-fire test. That test is reportedly targeted for the end of 2026.
What will the Ningbo base actually include?
Reports describe a roughly 67-square-kilometer zone split between a 35-square-kilometer launch site and 32 square kilometers of industrial support space, with planned capacity for 100 launches a year, covering engine assembly and testing, rocket manufacturing, and launch services.
How does Huosheng compare to other Chinese rocket companies?
It differs from peers like Space Pioneer and Deep Blue Aerospace, which use kerosene-oxygen engines, and from Orienspace’s solid-fuel Gravity-1. Huosheng’s methane approach is closer to Landspace and iSpace, though its full-flow architecture target is more technically ambitious than either of those companies has publicly claimed to date.
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