Meet Dai Zheng, the space veteran betting on China’s reusable rocket revolution

Ten years ago, Dai Zheng made a career-defining gamble: he left his secure, prestigious engineering post in China’s state space programme to join an unproven private start-up. On August 19, that risk paid off when a rocket booster returned from orbit and landed upright for the first time in Chinese commercial space history.For Dai, now chief commander of the Zhuque-3 missions at LandSpace, the successful touchdown marked both a major personal milestone and a critical leap forward in China’s drive to develop reusable launch vehicles.The landing followed an intense eight-month recovery effort after a crash during a failed attempt in December. More broadly, it vindicated Dai’s decade-long belief that reusability – recycling parts of a rocket so it can fly again – is essential to cutting launch costs and supporting Beijing’s ambitions for massive satellite constellations.